78 Corpses Pulled From Besieged South Africa Mine After ‘Horrific’ Crackdown

Rescuers in South Africa made final efforts on Thursday to determine if anyone remained in an illegal gold mine, where at least 78 people died during a police siege.

Police had encircled the mine since August and cut off food and water supplies in an attempt to force the miners up to the surface so they could be arrested as part of a crackdown on illegal mining.

Use Of Metal Cage For Rescue

Since Monday, rescuers have used a cylindrical metal cage to pull up 78 dead bodies and 246 survivors, some of them emaciated and disorientated, in a court-ordered operation.

The survivors, who are mostly from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, have been arrested and charged with illegal immigration and mining.

‘Worst State-Sponsored Massacre’

The GIWUSA ((General Industries Workers Union Of South Africa) labour union called the events at the mine in Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg, “the worst state-sponsored massacre since the end of apartheid”.

“These miners died en masse due to a series of decisions and brutal crackdown by the operational management of the police, with the approval, and cheering of the political establishment and top echelons of the state,” it said late on Wednesday.

At the site on Thursday morning, the cage was lowered with no one in it but a camera, which police described as a way of verifying information from volunteers who went down on Wednesday evening and said they could see no one left in the mine.

Reliance On Volunteers

Throughout the rescue operation, police and contractors operating the cage have not been going down themselves.

Instead, they have relied on volunteers from the community in the local township where most of the undocumented miners were living.

Police have not explained why they were not going down themselves but Mannas Fourie, CEO of a rescue services company that is involved in the operation, said it was better for the volunteers to go because they knew the miners and could gain their trust.

“There is a risk as well where our people could be taken ransom,” he told Reuters at the scene.

No Way To Know If Bodies Lost Underground

Fourie said the volunteers had gone down as deep as 2,200 metres into the shaft and there was only water that far down.

Asked whether there could still be bodies in the tunnels, he said: “It’s difficult to confirm. If somebody got lost, you will never know whether somebody got left behind.”

Human rights lawyer and GIWUSA President, Mametlwe Sebei, has alleged that during the siege, the police removed a pulley system the miners had previously been using to get in and out, leaving them with no realistic prospect of getting out safely.

Sebei, who has been present at the Stilfontein site, said many miners had died crawling through flooded tunnels to try and reach another shaft to climb out.

The police have denied blocking the miners’ exit and said more than 1,500 miners did get out by their own means between the start of the siege in August and the rescue operation, which began on Monday.

Only two of the 78 recovered bodies have been identified so far because many of the illegal miners were undocumented and some of the bodies had decomposed, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.

Government Defends Actions Amid Mounting Criticism

As the toll mounted during the three days of rescue, so did criticism of the authorities.

The government has defended its actions as necessary to protect the economy and combat crime.

The Mines Minister has said that the illicit precious metals trade cost South Africa more than $3 billion last year.

Mathe said police were trying to identify the kingpins behind the illegal mining at Stilfontein and hoped there would be arrests soon.

Illegal Mining

Illegal mining is common in parts of gold-rich South Africa. Typically, undocumented miners known as zama zamas – from an isiZulu expression for “taking a chance” – move into mines abandoned by commercial miners and seek to extract whatever is left.

Some are under the control of violent criminal gangs.

Of the 246 survivors brought to the surface from Monday to Wednesday, nine had been hospitalized for medical treatment and were under police guard, Mathe said.

The others were in custody.

(With inputs from Reuters)