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WELKOM, South Africa - South Africa, the world's top gold producer, has launched a crackdown against "pirates" who live for months in the bowels of abandoned pits, plundering booty worth millions of dollars.

Police show a gold nugget confiscated during a raid in a hostel in Welkom, November 2006. South Africa. [AFP]

Known as the "Zama Zama", which means "Let's try our luck" in the local Zulu language, the so-called "gold pirates" have struck terror among local miners as well as police by setting up booby traps and homemade bombs to keep them away.

South African police have meanwhile turned up the heat, staging several operations to ferret out the bandits - some of whom have lived up to two years underground, braving the searing heat and poisonous fumes to seek instant riches.

Some appear unrepentant, such as 26-year-old Samuel - who did not want his full name used - who watched on as police raided what they described as the world's largest illegal gold smelting house in the mining town of Welkom, south of Johannesburg.

"Gold is the only way to survive in this country," he said. "I'm a mobster.

"You have to go down and get it yourself," said Samuel, who once spent four straight months underground, thereby earning 80,000 rand (11,300 dollars/8,500 euros).

"It's like being in jail, there is no water and you can't get food easily. You have to sleep on rocks, its really hot," he told AFP.

The raided facility, known as the G-Hostel, provides an intricate link in the gold smuggling process between the illegal miners who bring up gold-bearing rock and syndicates who then buy nuggets for about 100 rand a gram.

Once underground, the pirates buy food from legitimate miners, paying exorbitant sums. A loaf of bread costs about 20 rand - four times its market price - and a chicken's price at 120 rand is also just as expensive.

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