Several dozen illegal workers have been living underground for months in the Stilfontein mine in South Africa. If more than a hundred were found alive, a provisional report shows 60 dead.
Sixty bodies of illegal miners were extracted in two days from an abandoned gold well in South Africa, the police announced this Wednesday, January 15, who have surrounded the site for months to dislodge the illegal workers.
“On the second day of operations, 106 live illegal miners were recovered and arrested for illegal mining. 51 were declared dead,” the police said in a statement.
Nine remains had already been brought back last Monday, on the first day of a rescue intervention, bringing the death toll to 60 deaths.
The gondola, lowered by means of a specialized winch into a 2.6 kilometer deep well, resumed its return trips this Wednesday in Stilfontein, about 150 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg. The previous police report from Tuesday afternoon noted 36 bodies extracted since the day before.
Bodies packed in haste
The operation must last ten days in total to extract an unknown number of “zama zamas”, as illegal miners are called in South Africa. The police mentioned several hundred of them when they began to restrict supplies to the site more than two months ago. Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, visiting Stilfontein on Tuesday, did not wish to give a precise figure.
“Every number we have here is an estimate, a guess,” he said. “It’s impossible for someone to tell us, ‘I know for sure there are so many of them’.”
A video sent to AFP on Monday January 13 by theNGO Macuawhich defends communities affected by mining activities, showed what appeared to be dozens of remains packed in the darkness of the galleries.
More than 1,500 illegal miners, most of them foreigners, have been arrested on the site by the police since August 2024. Among them, “121 illegal miners have already been deported, including 80 Mozambicans, 30 Basotho, 10 Zimbabweans and one Malawian”, have identified the South African authorities.
The men with emaciated faces who came out of the well on Tuesday appeared particularly weakened. They were subject to a metal detector search by the police to ensure that they did not bring up any gold nuggets from the basement.
Authorities have been accused of trying to force miners to the surface of what looked like a small underground city, by reducing food and water supplies brought by relatives who make a living from the economy since early November. informal around the mine.
“We will smoke them out and they will come out,” said the minister to the presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, in November, provoking indignant reactions.
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