“Voetsek!” Cleared ! » ; “You will answer for your crimes!” » While the ministers of police and mines visited the Stilfontein site on Tuesday, January 14, where rescue operations are underway, angry residents refused to let them speak, accusing them of murdering their loved ones.
“The ministers are at the scene of their crime. We are here to bring a charge of mass murder”insisted Mametlwe Sebei, lawyer from the NGO Lawyers for Human Rights, before the ministers disappeared in a cohort of all-terrain vehicles.
Two kilometers deep
Since Monday, a rescue operation imposed by the courts at the disused Stilfontein gold mine, 150 km southwest of Johannesburg, has brought 154 illegal miners and 60 bodies to the surface. A cage operated by a winch hoists the dead and the living from the bottom, located at a depth of nearly 2,000 meters. The survivors, escorted by the police to ambulances, float in patched clothes now too big for their emaciated, even skeletal, bodies. They see the light of day for the first time in months.
In August 2024, the South African police launched their operation “Vala Umgodi” (“close the hole” in Zulu) in Stilfontein, which aims to track down illegal miners in abandoned gold mines. They are part of a parallel economy often infiltrated by criminal organizations.
Stationed in front of the gaping holes serving as entrances, the police cut off food and water supplies for the hundreds of miners underground, in order to force them out. A method denounced by local communities and human rights organizations, who, unlike the police, have continued to claim that illegal miners cannot resurface without assistance.
“The police lied when they said that only the fear of being arrested stopped them from going back up. That would mean they preferred mass suicide! »dénonce Mametlwe Sebei.
“Smoke out the criminals so they get out”
With his eyes riveted on the mortuary trucks that rush by, Patrick is one of the 1,500 to stay (“those who try”, in Zulu), arrested by the police in recent months. On bail, he claims to have left the mine, through another entrance, in December 2024. “I had to climb. We were 1,300 meters underground, so it took me five days. It was horrible, there were dead bodies on the way, miners who had failed to get back up, it was like a horror film. One of my companions also fell. »
Descended in July, Patrick was to stay two months at the bottom of the mine, with the hope of unearthing a few nuggets of gold. “It was my first time”says the forty-year-old, wearing his rubber boots. “I had no choice, I have six children, I had to find a solution to feed them. » He claims that the police then prevented them from returning to the surface, forcing the miners to gradually starve to death. “I have seen people eat cockroaches, and even human flesh”assures the father.
On Monday, a video released by an NGO defending communities affected by mining activities showed what appeared to be dozens of wrapped remains in the depths of the galleries. The NGO estimates that more than a hundred miners died of hunger and thirst.
The government continues to defend the operation, saying it was necessary to combat illegal mining, “an attack on the economy”according to the Minister of Mines, Gwede Mantashe. “If there is anything to change in relation to illegal miners, it is that we must intensify the fight against this activity”he said on Tuesday.
In November, the minister to the presidency was just as inflexible: “We’re going to smoke out the criminals so they get out. »
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In the 1970s, South Africa produced more than two-thirds of global gold production and employed 500,000 people in this sector.
Since then, many mines have been shut downparticularly in the Transvaal province, in the north-east, because although the reserves remain significant, it is necessary to dig deeper and deeper and the metal is of lower quality.
Today, production has fallen by 90% and the sector employs fewer than 100,000 people. Overtaken by China, Ghana and Mali, South Africa is now struggling to remain in the ranking of the top ten producers.
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