A wall of soil collapsed on August 13 near Nkaneng, an informal settlement outside Rustenburg in South Africa's mineral-rich North West province, killing 14 miners — most believed to be undocumented migrants — and exposing a sprawling criminal economy built on illegal chrome extraction. Organised networks recruit unemployed South Africans and migrants from Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique with promises of work, then control their earnings, supply explosives, and force them into unstable abandoned mine shafts where fatalities are routine. Experts warn that worsening poverty across Southern Africa, thousands of unrehabilitated mine shafts, and chrome's relatively shallow deposits make the trade easy to exploit, ensuring a constant flow of replaceable workers despite ongoing police operations targeting illegal mining networks.