In South Africa, an operation began this week to try to rescue hundreds of illegal miners trapped underground in a disused gold mine in Stilfontein, about 150 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg.
Justice ordered the South African government to organize this rescue operation, while the deaths numbered in the dozens after the authorities cut off the miners’ food supply routes last November.
Emaciated, with dirty and torn clothes, barefoot or floating in rubber boots that are too big, the illegal miners resurface in small groups.
Then the cage, suspended at the end of a cable and operated by a winch, plunges back into the well, two kilometers deep.
Listen to the report in Stilfontein…
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A reaction too late
According to Mzukisi Jam, spokesperson for Sanco, a civil society organization, the rescue operation came too late: “We were in contact with the government when there was not a single death. But they waited for people to die. It was a massacre that was committed. The situation underground is so terrible that some consumed human flesh.
Last year, because the miners deliberately and illegally entered the Stilfontein pit, the authorities took a hard line, blocking their food supplies in order to force them out and be able to arrest them. Two months later, the situation deteriorated dramatically.
In front of the mine, access to which is still blocked by the police, a few dozen demonstrators are present. Visiting Stilfontein on Tuesday, the Minister of Mineral Resources, Gwede Mantashe, reiterated that the government would be firm with illegal miners.
According to him, “If anything needs to change regarding illegal miners, it is that we need to step up the fight against this activity. It is a crime, an attack on the economy.”
A feeling of abandonment
But for the miners’ family members, it is above all a question of saving human lives, deplores Zinzi Tom, whose brother is among the gold miners still stuck underground.
“We begged the government, she explains. But their position has always been to say that they are criminals. But they have the right to live! The government only cares about us when we want our votes.”
Since Monday, around a hundred survivors and 36 bodies have been brought back.
