South African residents try to rescue trapped illegal miners after police refuse help
South African community members are working to rescue thousands of illegal miners trapped in a mine shaft in the country's northwest after authorities refused to help and blocked food and water from entering the shaft.
The miners have been holed underground for weeks after police say they broke into a closed mine shaft in Stilfontein, a mining town around 95 miles from Johannesburg.
Officials with the South African government said they've withheld aid from the illegal miners in order to "smoke them out." The move is part of a broader push by the South African government to crack down on illegal mining, which has taken a multibillion dollar toll on South Africa's economy. Some South Africans say the policy is inhumane and see illegal miners as victims of unemployment and a crumbling legal mining industry.
On Thursday, a decomposing body was brought to the mine shaft's surface, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe told reporters. Police opened an investigation into how the person died, she said.
"We are not sending help to criminals," South African minister of presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said at a news briefing on Wednesday. "They didn't go down there for the good benefit or good intention of the Republic, so we can't help them."
100 town residents join effort to rescue illegal miners
More than a hundred volunteers from the town have joined a relentless effort to save the illegal miners, even as local authorities have impeded the rescue effort and blocked deliveries of supplies to those trapped.
On Friday, they managed to pull two more people out of the shaft before authorities "disturbed the whole operation," Thembile Botman, a Stilfontein community leader leading the effort, said.
Botman, 48, who serves in the Stilfontein Greater Socioeconomic Empowerment Foundation, said volunteers fed a rope more than a mile deep into the shaft as around 50 people helped to hold it on the surface.
He said the effort kicked off when family members of the illegal miners who live in Stilfontein came to the community for help when police refused to pull their loved ones out.
"They are worried. They are scared," he said. "It's either you're going to get your family member alive or dead."
At least 1,173 illegal miners had returned to the surface, Mathe said on Thursday. Police say some illegal miners may be staying in the mine shaft to avoid arrest.
But the pace of resurfacing miners is slowing – just two climbed out on Thursday morning, and five came up on Wednesday, Mathe said.
Mathe said police are requiring town members demanding to enter the shaft to rescue the miners themselves to "sign indemnity forms as a way of exempting us."
Police officers and members of the military initially "blocked" communities around the mine shaft from delivering food and water to the trapped miners, according to a Nov. 2 police statement.
"This act of stamping the authority of the state eventually forced these illegal miners to resurface," police said.
By Nov. 13, authorities allowed the delivery of food and water to the miners, according to a statement. But Botman said police were still denying them access to food, medicine, and water.
"They need people on the surface to assist them to resurface," he said. Denying them access to food "is killing them, burying them alive," he added.
Operation 'plug the holes'
The response by authorities on the ground is part of what South African authorities call Operation Vala Umgodi – translating to "plug the hole" – an effort launched late last year to crack down on illegal mining. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa deployed more than 3,000 troops to combat illegal mining activity last November. Since the operation's creation through the beginning of this month, more than 13,691 were arrested on suspicion of illegal mining throughout seven provinces, according to police Lt. Gen. Shadrack Sibiya.
South Africa's illegal miners – called zama zamas, or "take a chance" in colloquial Zulu – are estimated to number more than 50,000, a tenfold increase in two decades. They mostly hunt for gold or diamonds, and work in abandoned or closed down mines where the risk of accidents or a tunnel collapsing runs high, according to a report from the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies.
Their growth comes as the country's mining industry, once its economic backbone, faces imminent doom amid billions of dollars of profits lost. Illegal gold mining alone takes a $70 billion toll on the country's economy, according to government estimates.
More than 75% of illegal miners are migrants lacking documentation from Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Mozambique, while others are career miners who resorted to illegal work after losing their jobs.
"People are getting involved in illegal mining because there's a high rate of unemployment," said Livhuwani Mammburu, national spokesperson for South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers. "Some of these retrenched mineworkers are highly skilled, so they are forced to get involved in illegal mining because they don't have work."
Botman said many of the illegal miners trapped in the Stilfontein shaft once worked legally in the town's mines. After around 12 mines closed, leaving only three or four open and triggering job loss and poverty, they returned to "something that they know best – to mine," he said.
"We want to see a situation where artisanal mining, or illegal mining, is legalized and regulated in South Africa, so that these people are able to pay tax and contribute to the economy," Mammburu said.