Up to 4,000 miners are believed to be without food or water in a closed gold mine in South Africa, after authorities cut off supplies and refused to help them as part of a crackdown on the country’s illegal mining trade.
The group have been stuck down a disused shaft in Stilfontein for three months, breathing toxic dust in sweltering heat, and wearing only underwear as they mine for minerals to be sold on the black market.
But with the government stopping the supply of food, water and medicine, fears are growing that nobody will make it out alive.At least one decomposed body has already been recovered since police blocked most access points on October 18.
It is believed there are around 100,000 illegal miners called ‘zama zamas’ in South Africa.
Usually poor migrant workers, they are often hired by criminal gangs and spend months underground extracting material from the roughly 6,000 abandoned mines left open by companies and multinational corporations.
Gold, the most lucrative of these metals, is worth an estimated £610million to the black market each year. But the people who mine it are just the lowest rung of an illegal trade.
Kagiso Gabashane, a volunteer rescuer whose sister became pregnant by one of the men trapped underground, told South African publication Sowetan Live: ‘When he left, he said he was going to hustle because his girlfriend is pregnant.
‘When a person from this community says they’re going to hustle, they mean they’re going underground.’
In Stilfontein, the miners were reportedly lowered down a 1.8km shaft using pieces of rope tied together and attached to a jig.
This remains their only way out, but it takes an hour to lift just one person up. And, because the trade is illegal, they face arrest as soon as they reach the surface.
The longer they stay, the weaker they get — and the South African government is refusing to help because of its official policy against illegal mining.
One illegal miner, who didn’t go underground this time, said: ‘Life down there is very hard, and it is very hot underground.
‘We work wearing only underwear, and you constantly have to eat to get energy. So I can just imagine how those who are stuck there are feeling.’
It’s difficult to gauge the condition of the miners, let alone how many there are.
Some reports say there are a few hundred underground,while others estimate around 4,000. Police said 1,187 have already emerged. Each one of them has been arrested.
Those still underground have now spent more than four weeks without food, water and medicine making its way down to them.
‘At this point, they are starving, becoming dehydrated, and breathing toxic dust’, David Van Wyk, a lead researcher at Johannesburg-based Benchmarks Foundation, told CNN.
‘They’re going to come out very weak and ill when they do come up.’
South African authorities have dismissed claims that the miners are ‘trapped’ underground, which might otherwise require official rescue efforts.
A police spokesperson said: ‘There is no one who is trapped underground. This is an illegal mining operation, when you use the word ‘trapped’, it means it’s a legal mining operation.
‘This is an illegal operation and as a caring government, we’ve gone to great lengths to allow these illegal miners to resurface. It seems they’re refusing. Some have resurfaced.’
Cutting off supplies, blocking entrances, and detaining miners when they emerge is part of a bid to crack down on the illegal mining industry.
By starving the miners, authorities hope they will force them out of the mine, instead of having to send in police to retrieve them.
A police spokesperson said: ‘We are stopping and preventing food and water to go down there as a way of forcing these illegal miners to resurface because what they are doing is criminality.’
Cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said: ‘We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out.’
This approach has alarmed South Africa’s Federation of Trade Unions, which warned it ‘may end in tragedy’.
It has also prompted the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to investigate the police for restricting miners’ essential supplies.
An army of volunteers arrives each day at 9am to jimmy miners up on the rope, working through the day until they finish around 4pm.
Nearby, family members – mostly women – gather and cook over a fire as they wait for news of their loved ones.
While the government and police are keen to penalise the miners, campaign group Mining Affected Communities United in Action wants reform – starting with forcing companies to close old mines, and improving employment opportunities.
National coordinator Meshack Mbangula said: ‘If there were no open shafts, we won’t be having zama zamas.
‘We need to transform the sector and decriminalize it. If the sector is legalized and made safe, it can hire thousands of people and contribute to the economy of South Africa. It can assist in reducing poverty, unemployment, and crime
‘You can’t stop people from going down there (into disused mines) because they will risk their lives to make sure they put food on the table.’
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