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Life in the 'City of Gold' as an economic migrant

Don't let the title fool you, Gold Diggers is not about women dating men for money. Nor is it about toiling miners.

The book is a page turning tale of struggle and triumph.

Our protagonists embark on an illicit journey across Zimbabwe and through the Limpopo River to get to the city of gold, Johannesburg.

The lives of the strangers are intertwined, and the reader is taken on an emotional journey with these brave and desperate individuals who have taken their fate into their hands to create a better life for themselves.

Life is brutal in the big city, you must have the guts to stick it out. It tends to swallow those who don't have the determination to stare it down.

But like the prospectors the book title alludes to, our protagonists dig deep to unearth treasures within themselves, to help navigate their new lives in this strange city.

Relationships are discovered and existing ones bolstered, bad choices are made, innocence is lost and death comes knocking for more than one of them.

The book touches on the xenophobic violence that spread across the city in 2008. The theme of violence is further explored by delving into how the city has a way of dealing violence to its non-native inhabitants, and how they reciprocate.

Author Sue Nyathi details the struggles of economic migrants in a simple yet arresting fashion. She reminds the reader that all their lives are connected by starting each individual experience in the middle of a page.

This is a book that makes one wonder why we see so many differences in each other when there are far more similarities, because after all, are we not all economic migrants searching for our own particular gold?

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