
South Africa's Deadly Gold Rush & Tanzania's Witch Hunt
Two reports from the Unreported World series pair a wave of gendered killings with an underground economy built on desperation. In Tanzania, presenter Ade Adepitan investigates why nearly 500 women were murdered as accused witches in the first six months of 2017, often by strangulation, stabbing, or burning. Filming with police investigators, survivors, and practicing witch doctors, he traces how relatives exploit old beliefs about witchcraft to seize land and money from older women, turning superstition into a cover for financial motive. In Johannesburg, reporter Seyi Rhodes descends into South Africa's illegal gold mining underworld, where an estimated 30,000 "zama zamas" spend months at a time in abandoned shafts, kept fed and supplied by an underground logistics chain and protected, or preyed upon, by armed gangs. Above ground, Rhodes visits communities so overrun by mining-related violence that police and ambulance crews refuse to enter, leaving residents to fend for themselves. Both segments rely on direct access and firsthand testimony rather than commentary from a distance.