Offering evidence of continuing human rights abuses within the South African mining industry - the biggest employer of labour and the country's main generator of wealth - this book looks at the historical links between the wealth of London and the rural poverty of Southern Africa. It examines the safety and accident record of a mining industry in which, the author states, one person dies for every ton of gold mined while the causes of preventable disasters are seldom properly probed by public enquiries. In discussing the possibilities for change, the book traces the rise of a black miners' union (illegal before 1982), the events behind the 1986 emergency, and the difficulties that existed before the release of Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and others in 1990.