It is April 28 2022, a day after South Africa’s Freedom Day. The price of platinum is US$939.60 per ounce and South Africa is the leading global producer of platinum, home to nearly 90% of the world’s reserves.

I am in Marikana, in South Africa’s North West Province, a place that has become almost synonymous with the brutal murder of 34 striking miners by the South African Police Service at the Lonmin platinum mine on August 16, 2012. It is almost a decade since this dark day and as Chris Molebatsi, a researcher at Benchmarks Foundation and a long-serving activist in the area, explains to me preparations are being made to honor those who lost their lives.

As we meet and speak with people in the many communities of Marikana, news is spreading of events taking place in Mmaditlhokoa, a settlement that borders the Tharisa Mine, a 20-minute drive from Marikana. Molebatsi makes a phone call and we enter Mmaditlhokoa from a main road, which connects the vast web of mines, smelters and communities to the rapidly growing town of Rustenburg. Among crowds of protesting people, Mdau Christinah, a spokesperson of Mining Host Communities in Crisis Network, approaches us and shares the significance of the day’s events: They have successfully lobbied against a blast that was due to take place at the encroaching open-pit platinum mine, just moments away from their homes.