Tragedy as South Africa starves illegal miners out of abandoned mines

A food and water blockade on illegal mines in South Africa by the authorities has resulted in what activists are terming a “massacre”.

In mid-January, 78 dead bodies were pulled from an illegal gold mine in Stilfontein about 90 miles from Johannesburg after an operation known as Operation Vala Umgodi – or Plug the Hole – was launched.

The rescue operation only took place after months of the authorities depriving the illegal miners of food and water in a bid to force them to surface.

Two hundred and forty-six illegal miners, known as 'zama zamas' – meaning those who try – emerged alive if emaciated while nine additional corpses were pulled from the mine earlier by volunteers.

Since August last year, as many as 1,907 illegal miners have been forced out of mines in the Stilfontein area, according to South African police.

Almost all were foreigners, and had come down to South African from Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe to work in mines considered financially unviable by legal mining companies.

Analysts believe there could be 30,000 'zama zamas' working 6,000 abandoned mines and contributing 10% to South Africa’s total gold output, the Guardian reports.

The mines are often controlled by mafia and the police are currently hunting down the alleged “kingpin” of the Stilfontein operation, James Neo Tshoaeli, a Lesotho national otherwise known as Tiger.

The illegal miners, who are now alive and above ground, blame Tshoaeli, for tortures and deaths in the mine and also for depriving them of what little food and water was available to them, according to the South African police.

One volunteer, Mzwandile Mkwayi, who went down the mine to help rescue the illegals, said that the smell of death was overpowering.

“It’s because when I spoke to the miners, they told me some of them had to eat other [people] inside the mine because there was no way they could find food. And they were also eating cockroaches," he told the BBC.

In an effort to justify the authorities’ dubious tactics in forcing the illegal miners out into the open, SA’s finance minister, Enoch Godongwana, told Reuters, “You have got people who voluntarily entered mines and did some illegal activities and in the process died inside those mines.”

“To then come back and say the state is going to take the blame for that, in my view, is misplaced,” he added.

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