By Thapelo Molefe and Amy Musgrave
Following three days of intense operations by Mine Rescue Services to save trapped illegal miners at an abandoned Stilfontein mine, it appears that all of them may have been saved and now the task turns to retrieving the bodies of those who died underground.
Since Monday, 246 miners have been rescued and 78 bodies retrieved from the North West mine.
The Gauteng forensic pathology service vans arrived in Stilfontein on Wednesday to help with the number of bodies retrieved.
The operation, one of the largest of its kind in recent years, has been marked by both heartbreak and hope.
Zinzi Tom, a sister of one of the miners, Ayanda, who is yet to be found, turned to the courts to speed up the rescue operations.
She said that seeing the pathology vans broke her spirit, adding that government ministers who visited the scene this week have shown no empathy.
“If you watch them closely, even how they address us, you can tell they do not care,” Tom said.
Community volunteers, who have been part of the retrieval operations, reported on Wednesday night that there were no more miners who were alive underground. However, SAPS Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said the police needed to verify this.
“We will rely on the Mine Rescue Services (MRS) to confirm this with their state-of-the-art equipment that will hopefully be able to give us a picture of what is happening underground,” Mathe said.
MRS will send a cage underground on Thursday to see if any miners resurface with the cage.
Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) spokesperson Magnificent Mndebele said on Wednesday night that many bodies were unaccounted for because they were either too far from where the cage was being sent to, or not retrievable.
“Some died in shaft 10 while climbing the litigators and some would have died while trying to move from shaft 10 to 11 where help was feasible either by rope or other means like this operation,” he said.
He also told Inside Politics that it was possible that there were still miners who were alive and were not close to the surface.
“But it is a scary line of inquiry and we are likely to never know. Zinzi’s brother was not retrieved at all. He is not from the dead nor is with those who are alive.”
Mathe said that of the bodies recovered, only two have been identified and claimed by families.
“What makes it quite difficult… is that [the deceased are] illegal immigrants that are undocumented. Those that are aware or know that their family members were part of this illicit mining operation are then advised to approach [the authorities],” she said.
Mathe said that before the operation commenced, authorities had urged the miners to voluntarily leave the shafts. However, reports of mistreatment and abuse surfaced, and that the miners were too weak to resurface by themselves.
“We are investigating those particular allegations that were brought forward to us, that there were some that were keeping food away from the illegal miners. That is some of the focus areas of our investigation unleashed by kingpins underground,” Mathe said.
The SAPS was probing claims that the syndicates exploited the miners and that they were “tortured, abused, and [had food] kept away” from them.
According to Mathe, the miners who resurfaced lacked clarity about their circumstances and origins.
Meanwhile the Democratic Alliance has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to establish an independent Commission of Inquiry into the tragic events at the Buffelsfontein mine.
DA Mineral and Petroleum Resources spokesperson James Lorimer criticised the lack of effective government action to address illegal mining and urged for an impartial investigation to hold responsible parties accountable.
“The scale of this disaster matches the worst fears of many people and raises serious questions about how the situation was allowed to escalate so disastrously,” Lorimer said.
The DA criticised both the SAPS and the Department of Mineral and Energy Resources for their handling of illegal mining. Lorimer questioned whether the SAPS failed to assess the situation underground accurately or, worse, knowingly withheld critical information from the public.
The police have said their primary mandate was to seal off shafts so that the miners had no access to food and enforce the law.
INSIDE POLITICS
