When Emmanuel Siyabonga was a boy, he wasn't fussy about the type of job he wanted when he grew up. Other boys dreamed of being footballers, doctors, soldiers. All Siyabonga wanted, he says, was a job that made him happy. He was born in 1994, the year Nelson Mandela came to power in South Africa ending centuries of exploitative white rule and ushering in a new era of hope for Black South Africans.

On an overcast day in March, he lay slumped in the dirt outside a derelict coal mine in the eastern province of Mpumalanga. His eyes were clenched shut, and his head throbbed in pain as he struggled to catch his breath. He'd just hauled a 110-pound sack of coal up 84 steep concrete steps to the surface from a mineshaft contaminated with toxic gas.

The job does not make him happy.

"Bit by bit i

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