South Africa illegal gold mine death toll hits 36, police say

South African police officers record details of illegal miners rescued from an abandoned gold mine in Stilfontein on Tuesday. Photo / Christian Velcich, AFP

Thirty-six bodies have been lifted from an abandoned South African gold mine over two days, police say.

There are fears dozens of people are still underground despite a months-long effort to force them to leave the shaft.

Another 82 people have left alive since Monday but were then arrested, police Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said.

“All 82 that have been arrested are facing illegal mining, trespassing and contravention of the immigration act charges.”

Illegal miners had taken over the shaft that was once part of South Africa’s vast mining industry.

No longer viable for commercial mining, the men - many of them migrants from neighbouring countries - entered illicitly, hoping to ease their poverty by finding remnants of gold.

Blinded by the bright summer sun, haggard survivors staggered across ochre soil mixed with rubble near Stilfontein, about 140km southwest of Johannesburg.

Their legs, reduced to skin and bones, wobbled like sticks in oversized rubber boots as they walked to a police checkpoint.

Officers used metal detectors to check they had not brought gold up from the shaft that runs 2.6km underground.

Operations to remove them from the site began in August.

Since then, 1576 people have voluntarily left the shaft, all but 21 of them foreigners from neighbouring countries, according to the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy.

To force them out, police restricted the supplies of food and water the surrounding community had been dropping down the shaft.

“They are very sick. They are very dehydrated. You can see they are nearly dying,” community leader Johannes Qankase told AFP on Tuesday.

Dire conditions

Police say hundreds could still be underground but the exact number is unclear.

“Last week, we received a letter from underground indicating that there were more than 109 bodies,” Levies Pilusa, a spokesperson for the residents of the Khuma township, told AFP.

He said many of the miners had HIV, but police had refused to allow deliveries of the medication that keeps them alive.

A court ordered in November that police must end all restrictions at the shaft, allowing people above ground to resume lowering food and water to those below.

A professional mine rescue company on Monday set up a machine called a Rescue Winder to reach the miners through a rough hole in the ground.

Minerals Minister Gwede Mantashe, on a visit to the site Tuesday, called the miners “foot soldiers” for those who really profit from the illegal trade.

“These foot soldiers are taking this gold to somebody. That somebody must take responsibility for that,” he said.

“Those who make money out of gold mining must take full responsibility of the risk taken.”

The country boasts some of the deepest gold mines in the world, extending kilometres underground, according to the Minerals Council South Africa.

There were claims in mid-November that up to 4000 people were underground but police have said the figure was probably in the hundreds.

Over the past weeks, miners who exited the shaft reported dire conditions underground, including acute hunger and dehydration.

Zinzi Tom, 31, who grew up in Khuma, said the community had gone to court to force authorities to rescue the miners.

“There’s nothing to be happy about but at least those loved ones who have lost their family members, at least they will be able to bury them,” he said.

Locally known as “zama zamas” - “those who try” in the Zulu language - illegal miners frustrate mining companies and are often accused of criminality by residents.

© Agence France-Presse