At least 78 illegal miners have been carried dead from a South African mine where police blocked food and water supplies for months in what unions described as a “horrible” state crackdown on desperate people trying to eke out a living.
A total of 78 bodies and 166 survivors – some of them emaciated and disoriented – have been pulled up so far in a court-ordered rescue operation that began on Monday, while hundreds more men remain trapped two kilometers below the surface in a gold mine in Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.
Police had prevented food and water from being brought to the mine since August until a court ruled in December that volunteers could send essential aid to the miners, known locally as “zama zamas”.
“Our mandate was to combat crime and that is exactly what we have been doing,” said Athlenda Mathe, national spokesperson for the South African police, speaking at the scene. “By providing food, water and essential items to these illegal miners, the police would entertain and allow criminality to flourish,” he said.
The death toll makes the Stilfontein mine crackdown one of the deadliest for miners in South Africa’s recent history. As the number of victims has risen, so has criticism of the police and the government, who say the siege was part of a much-needed crackdown on illegal mining.
“These miners, many of them undocumented and desperate workers from Mozambique and other southern African countries, were left to die in one of the most horrific displays of deliberate state neglect in recent history,” the South African Federation of Trade Unions said in a statement. a statement. on Tuesday.
The Democratic Alliance, the second-largest party in the ruling coalition, said today that the situation at the mine had “seriously gotten out of control” and called for an independent investigation.
The 166 survivors rescued so far were immediately arrested and charged with criminal offences, including illegal immigration, trespassing and illegal mining, police said. None were hospitalized and all were taken into police custody.
“If you come out and can walk, they take you straight to the cells,” said Mzukisi Jam, a civil society activist who has been at the scene throughout the rescue operation.
Cage lowered to recover bodies and survivors from the mine
Only two of the bodies have been identified and claimed by their families, Mathe said.
Rescue efforts were in their third day today with a red cylindrical metal cage being laboriously lowered into the mine to extract survivors and bodies. The cage can hold a dozen people or corpses at a time.
“If you stand on the sides you can see the bodies being taken out of the cage and it’s incredibly distressing,” said Jessica Lawrence of the civil rights group Lawyers for Human Rights, who was at the scene.
Mannas Fourie, chief executive of a private rescue company involved in the operation, said each round trip took up to 45 minutes. “Even the illegal miners who are at the bottom are very interested in getting into the cage, so we load up as many people as we can at once and bring them to the surface,” he told Johannesburg. Radio 702.
Illegal mining costs the South African government and precious metals industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost sales, taxes and royalties.
“It is a criminal activity. “It is an attack on our economy by mostly foreign nationals,” said Mining Minister Gwede Mantashe, speaking at the scene on Tuesday.
Police said 1,576 unlicensed miners had left the mine under their own power before the rescue operation began. All of them were arrested and 121 of them have already been deported to their countries of origin, he added.
Most were from Mozambique. Many others came from Zimbabwe and Lesotho. Only 21 of them were South Africans, police said.
Normally, the zama zamas (from an isiZulu expression for taking a risk) to enter mines abandoned by commercial miners and try to extract what is left. Some are under the control of violent criminal gangs.
