Tommy Trenchard/Panos Pictures

Mishek Mugwire (38), a former baker from Pretoria, hacks away at the sandy soil with a piece of sharpened rebar in a newly dug tunnel at an illegal diamond mine. The work is hazardous in the extreme with tunnel collapses and cave-ins frequent, but Mugwire says he has little choice but to keep going in order to support his family. He prefers not to dwell on the risks of the job. "When you die, you die", he says. He is one of thousands of people who have flocked to the diamond-rich Namaqaland region of South Africa over the past three years in the hopes of making his fortune. New arrivals turn up from across southern Africa every day, driven by unemployment and poverty at home.