South African police and ambulances were deployed Thursday to the site of a former gold mine where up to several thousand illegal miners are believed to be underground, risking arrest if they decide to come out.
Five of the men were pulled out of the Stilfontein pit, some 140 km southwest of Johannesburg, on Wednesday, and police urged other miners to come to the surface. “They were dehydrated and weak, they were hungry,” Sabata Mokgwabone, the provincial police spokesperson, told AFP. “They were treated by emergency services and placed in police custody,” he said.
More than 800 illegal miners were arrested at the beginning of the month while leaving this well, as part of vast police operations which notably blocked the roads used by their accomplices to supply them with food and water, by lowering ropes in the well.
Called “zama zamas” (“those who try” in Zulu), these men, often from neighboring countries, work in perilous conditions in mineral-rich South Africa. Their illegal activities are viewed negatively by mining companies and local residents, who associate them with an increase in crime.
This week, a local resident in contact with miners in the well suggested that there could be up to 4,000 of them underground, the spokesperson explained, claiming to have no way of verifying this figure.
Local residents gathered at the site also beg them to come back up. “We have brothers, sons, husbands there,” Emily Photsoa told AFP, calling on the State to intervene.
The government will not move, Minister to the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told the press on Wednesday.
“We will not send aid to criminals, we will smoke them out and they will get out,” she declared, provoking many indignant reactions, particularly within the opposition.
