Samuel emerged from the mine richer by 65,000 rand after paying his "connections" - corrupt policemen and security guards who help the smugglers to get down the shafts.

Mike Fryer, a police official in charge of an underground bust which netted 60 pirates, said his men faced an uphill task while staging raids.

"Its not natural light, it is very warm and the humidity is very high. There are dangerous gases and the places they work in are very dangerous for rockfalls," he told AFP.

The illicit miners also face peril and some perish. Fryer said in case of death, the pirates leave the corpse in a shaft lift used by legitimate miners, with a note containing his family's contacts.

There have been reports that some of the pirates have girlfriends or comfort women sent down to them but Samuel dismissed this, saying: "It's too hot down there for that."

Police captain Neels van der Merwe, who heads up a unit looking into the theft of precious metals, said corruption was a major problem.

The G-Hostel is insalubrious with shards of glass and rubbish littered around small streams set up to wash the gold. There are holes in the ground left behind by pestles used to break down gold bearing rock.

The smugglers then use an adapted gas bottle called 'penduka' to spin the crushed rock with iron balls and mercury and grind it down into gold dust.

The past two police raids at G-Hostel have yielded over five tons of gold dust, which smugglers wash with water and mercury to form a silver amalgam. This, when burned with a cutting torch, forms gold nuggets. Many suffer from mercury poison as the toxic substance seeps through the skin to attack the brain and kidneys.

South Africa is still the world's largest gold producer although dwindling output and a strengthening rand are weakening the industry, along with more than two billion rand lost every year through gold theft.

Part of South Africa's high crime levels, including gold smuggling, lie in the fact that nearly one third of the country's active workforce is unemployed.

"It's a crime world," says Van der Merwe, pointing to the scores of barefoot children running around the G-Hostel, who he says will probably grow up to become gold pirates.

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