South African union calls Stilfontein mine siege a 'state-sponsored massacre'
South African rescuers on Thursday ended their attempts to find anyone left in an illegal gold mine where at least 78 people died during a months-long police siege. The Giwusa labour union called the operation the "worst state-sponsored massacre" since the end of apartheid.
Issued on: 17/01/2025 - RFI
South African rescuers on Thursday ended their attempts to find anyone left in an illegal gold mine where at least 78 people died during a months-long police siege. The Giwusa labour union called the operation the "worst state-sponsored massacre" since the end of apartheid.
Issued on: 17/01/2025 - RFI
Mine rescue workers host up a cage that was used to rescue trapped miners at an abandoned gold mine, where miners were rescued from below ground, in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, 16 January 2025.
© Themba Hadebe / AP
Since Monday, rescuers have used a cylindrical metal cage to pull up 78 bodies and 248 survivors, some of them emaciated and disorientated, in a court-ordered operation at the mine near the town of Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.
The cage was sent down to 1,280 metres with cameras on Thursday for a final sweep.
"We couldn't see any person still left behind and we couldn't hear any voices on the recording," head of Mines Rescue Services, Mannas Fourie, told reporters at the site.
The police operation, "Vala Umgodi" ("close the hole" in Zulu), started in August. Over the course of the siege, 1,907 miners resurfaced, while 87 bodies were retrieved.
Most of the survivors are foreign nationals, including 1,125 Mozambicans and 465 Zimbabweans. Only 26 are South Africans, according to police.
They have been arrested and charged with illegal immigration, trespass, illegal mining and other offences.
Investigators now face "a mammoth task" in identifying the dead as some of the bodies were already decomposing, and in some cases just bones, police spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe told journalists.
Among the dead, only two have been identified so far, Mathe said.
Death toll rises as more bodies pulled from disused South African gold mine
Deaths could have been averted
No longer viable for commercial extraction, the mine – known as Shaft 11 – was entered illegally by the men trying to eke out a living.
Locally known as "zama zamas" – or "those who try" – illegal miners frustrate mining companies and are often accused of criminality by residents.
To force the miners out, police had restricted supplies of food and water that the surrounding community had been dropping down the shaft.
In November, a court ordered police to end all such restrictions.
UN panel seeks to stem mining abuses in global rush for critical minerals
But local community members, civil society groups and labour unions have denounced the Stilfontein crackdown.
Zinzi Tom told France 24 her brother had been down the mine for six months and she still didn't know what had become of him.
"Even if they’re saying he’s a criminal, does he deserve to die?" she said.
Community leader Johannes Qankase told French news agency AFP on Thursday that "the site had been turned into a mass grave by the government" and he believed most of the men starved to death.
Thembile Botman, a community leader in Khuma, told Reuters news agency that local residents had been warning for months that people would die, and the deaths could have been averted had the rescue operation taken place sooner.
Dehumanisation
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (Giwusa) condemned what it called "the dehumanisation and criminalisation of these poor, desperate miners".
"This is a bloody culmination of treacherous policies pursued by the government. This was a campaign of lies," its president Mametlwe Sebei told reporters.
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.
Africa takes centre stage as South Africa maps ambitious G20 agenda
Authorities said they were investigating the broader criminal networks that orchestrate the mining activity, recruit miners and traffic the illicit gold.
"Those ringleaders who are controlling what happens underground... some of them have been retrieved, some already in police custody, but we are looking for the real kingpins," Mathe said.
Illegal mining cost South Africa over $3 billion last year.
(with newswires)
Since Monday, rescuers have used a cylindrical metal cage to pull up 78 bodies and 248 survivors, some of them emaciated and disorientated, in a court-ordered operation at the mine near the town of Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.
The cage was sent down to 1,280 metres with cameras on Thursday for a final sweep.
"We couldn't see any person still left behind and we couldn't hear any voices on the recording," head of Mines Rescue Services, Mannas Fourie, told reporters at the site.
The police operation, "Vala Umgodi" ("close the hole" in Zulu), started in August. Over the course of the siege, 1,907 miners resurfaced, while 87 bodies were retrieved.
Most of the survivors are foreign nationals, including 1,125 Mozambicans and 465 Zimbabweans. Only 26 are South Africans, according to police.
They have been arrested and charged with illegal immigration, trespass, illegal mining and other offences.
Investigators now face "a mammoth task" in identifying the dead as some of the bodies were already decomposing, and in some cases just bones, police spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe told journalists.
Among the dead, only two have been identified so far, Mathe said.
Death toll rises as more bodies pulled from disused South African gold mine
Deaths could have been averted
No longer viable for commercial extraction, the mine – known as Shaft 11 – was entered illegally by the men trying to eke out a living.
Locally known as "zama zamas" – or "those who try" – illegal miners frustrate mining companies and are often accused of criminality by residents.
To force the miners out, police had restricted supplies of food and water that the surrounding community had been dropping down the shaft.
In November, a court ordered police to end all such restrictions.
UN panel seeks to stem mining abuses in global rush for critical minerals
But local community members, civil society groups and labour unions have denounced the Stilfontein crackdown.
Zinzi Tom told France 24 her brother had been down the mine for six months and she still didn't know what had become of him.
"Even if they’re saying he’s a criminal, does he deserve to die?" she said.
Community leader Johannes Qankase told French news agency AFP on Thursday that "the site had been turned into a mass grave by the government" and he believed most of the men starved to death.
Thembile Botman, a community leader in Khuma, told Reuters news agency that local residents had been warning for months that people would die, and the deaths could have been averted had the rescue operation taken place sooner.
Dehumanisation
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (Giwusa) condemned what it called "the dehumanisation and criminalisation of these poor, desperate miners".
"This is a bloody culmination of treacherous policies pursued by the government. This was a campaign of lies," its president Mametlwe Sebei told reporters.
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.
Africa takes centre stage as South Africa maps ambitious G20 agenda
Authorities said they were investigating the broader criminal networks that orchestrate the mining activity, recruit miners and traffic the illicit gold.
"Those ringleaders who are controlling what happens underground... some of them have been retrieved, some already in police custody, but we are looking for the real kingpins," Mathe said.
Illegal mining cost South Africa over $3 billion last year.
(with newswires)
Police have blocked “illegal miners” in an abandoned gold mine at Stilfontein near Johannesburg for months, resulting in over 100 deaths
A copper mine in South Africa (Picture: Bjorn Christian Torrissen)
By Camilla Royle
Wednesday 15 January 2025
Wednesday 15 January 2025
SOCIALIST WORKER Issue
The South African state has orchestrated a massacre of mine workers.
Thousands of “illegal miners” have been living more than a mile underground in an abandoned gold mine at Stilfontein near Johannesburg for months. They dig for scraps of gold and minerals in abandoned mines without permits.
The police blocked their access to necessities including food and water and threatened to arrest them if they came to the surface.
Sabelo Mnguni of the Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA) group said cops removed the ropes and pulleys that the miners had used to enter the mine.
The High Court last week ordered the government to start a rescue operation, which started on Monday. And horrific videos emerged of dead bodies wrapped in makeshift body bags— and the emaciated survivors.
A voice in one of the videos says, “We’re starting to show you the bodies of those who died underground. And this is not all of them. Do you see how people are struggling? Please we need help.”
As of Wednesday, 166 people had been brought up alive and 78 dead bodies. The miners say there are 109 dead in total. This makes it among the deadliest mining incidents in recent South African history.
The leader of the Giwusa general union, which released the video, said, “What has transpired here has to be called what it is—this is a Stilfontein massacre. This footage shows a pile of human bodies—of miners that died needlessly.”
Community activist Bongani Uhuru Jonas told Socialist Worker he was relieved that people are now going to be saved. But he said the rescue mission was long overdue and not well planned.
“We as communities have been raising funds for food. Two of our leaders are volunteering on a daily basis to go down in the crane and insure that people are assisted to resurface.”
In South Africa, up to 100,000 people work informally and often illegally in mines like the one at Stilfontein. The mines are abandoned by the multinationals when they are no longer a source of huge profits.
These miners are sometimes known as artisanal miners or “Zama Zama”—meaning “take a chance”.
Artisanal miners are often migrant workers from countries such as Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Mozambique who have few other options for work and face the threat of deportation if arrested.
They do an almost unimaginably dangerous job where they risk death from suffocation and mine collapses.
Clement Moeletsi, who was able to leave the mine in December, described watching people starve. “It was not an illness that killed them. It was starvation. A cruel, drawn-out death that consumed them piece by piece,” he said.
“This is what I saw underground. This is what we lived through, and this is why, respectfully, no one, despite what they have done, should ever endure such suffering again.”
He said he became a miner because he was “driven by financial hardship and the overwhelming need to provide for my family”. “Despite my best efforts, I was unable to secure employment,” he said.
“The pressure of not being able to provide food or basic necessities for my child and loved ones became unbearable. It left me with no choice but to take this desperate step in the hope of alleviating our dire situation.”
Bongani said that the narrative from the state has been to criminalise miners, and the community organisations that support them.
Mining minister Gwede Mantashe, who was at the site on Tuesday, said, “It’s a criminal activity. It’s an attack on our economy by foreign nationals in the main”.
Bongani added that Mantashe—a former mineworkers’ union activist—has done nothing to support these miners, other than calling them criminals. “But the wheels of justice have turned now,” he said.
“We want to insure that after this rescue mission the state is held accountable. We are going to advocate that the government decriminalises and legitimises the sector.
“The struggle of Stilfontein opens an eye to all mining affected communities. We have learnt as the working class that there cannot be a situation where workers are poor, where there are 6,000 derelict ownerless mines in South Africa.”
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