These are horrific images: piles of human bodies wrapped in plastic and thrown on top of each other. They are of miners who died underground - died of hunger, thirst, crushed by rock debris or drowned in flooded tunnels. Half-alive, emaciated men, reduced to skin and bones, beg for help. Thus begins the report by the German public media ARD from the abandoned mine in Stilfontein, 180 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg, where illegal gold miners have been stranded for months and are fighting for their survival.
According to the aid organization MACUA, which fights for the rights of mining communities and mine workers, autopsies of the dead clearly show that the men died of starvation. "This is a mass killing - the biggest in South Africa's history," Christopher Rutledge, the director of the humanitarian organization, told ARD.
Minister wanted to "get them out of their holes"
About 1,500 illegal immigrants and self-proclaimed gold miners, also called "zama-zama" (translated as "trying their luck"), left the abandoned mines last year. Many others, however, prefer to stay underground because they fear being deported or going to prison.
Since the summer, South African authorities have been fighting illegal mining. Police have closed the entrances and exits of many mines and cut off the food supplies of the miners to force them out of the mines. “We are not helping these criminals, we are pulling them out of their holes” - these words of the relevant minister caused widespread outrage in the country.
“Now she needs to get their bodies so she can celebrate. It seems she has achieved what she wanted”, the spokesperson for SANCO - a South African civil rights organization - Mzukisi Jam told ARD.
Elevators and stairs dismantled in the mines
There is already talk of more than a hundred deaths in the tunnels, as well as cannibalism, as it is alleged that some of the miners who are still alive are eating corpses to avoid starving. Human rights lawyer Mametlwe Sebey accuses the police and the operators of the Stilfontein mine of dismantling the elevators and stairs in the shafts, thus deliberately sabotaging the miners' escape to the surface.
“For 13 days, the miners had no water, food or medicine and could not leave the tunnels on their own. They were trapped in a death trap,” Sebey said.
On Friday, the Gauteng High Court ordered authorities to immediately begin the rescue of “Zama-Zama”, entrusting the operation to a specialized company. In addition, the people trapped must be provided with food and medicine. The work has already begun, backed by a large police contingent.
No one knows how many people are still underground
The rescue operation is going like this: elevator cages with long steel cables are lowered into the hundreds of meters deep shafts. This method allows up to six people to be brought to the surface per hour. The rescue operation should be completed within 10 days, according to the South African government. However, no one knows exactly how many miners are still underground. It is believed that there are at least 300 of them, but it is not impossible that they could be over a thousand.
Therefore, aid organizations believe that it will take much longer to bring all the survivors to the surface.