STILFONTEIN, South Africa —They look like the walking dead. Dusty men, skin and hair caked in dirt, skeletal. Some struggle to walk and collapse. They blink like moles in the harsh South African ...

For more than three decades, one of Brazil’s largest open-pit gold mines has remained frozen in time, its vast terraced crater still visible like a geological monument to a vanished era. The mine once ...

Rescue workers look on as a cage is lifted from an abandoned gold shaft in Stilfontein, South Africa, on Thursday. They look like the walking dead. Dusty men, skin and hair caked in dirt, skeletal.