JOHANNESBURG
Two videos emerged Monday showing the bodies of several trapped illegal miners who went into hiding last year at an abandoned mine in South Africa’s North West province during a police operation.
The videos, released by the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA), show corpses wrapped in makeshift body bags and emaciated looking men.
“For days now, we have been receiving footage from underground where the miners are located which paints a very dire situation,” Mametlwe Sebei, president of the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) and a human rights lawyer, told reporters in the town of Stilfontein.
Sebei described what happened at the disused Stilfontein mine as a massacre, saying the pile of human bodies of miners shows how the government failed them.
South African police launched Operation Vala Umgodi, or Close the Hole, in December 2023, with more than 13,000 illegal miners being arrested.
Illegal mining has been a huge problem in South Africa for decades, where dozens of people risk their lives every day to enter disused mines to scrap for remaining precious metals.
Many claim that poverty and unemployment forces them to take the risks. Meanwhile, violent criminal syndicates are reported to be controlling some of the illegal mines.
Late last year, hundreds of illegal miners, fearing arrest, went into hiding in the Stilfontein mine, but in a bid to force them to the surface, police cut off food and water supply routes.
“People are dying because of hunger. The number of people who are already dead are 96. People are dying. Please help us. Bring us food or take us out quickly,” an illegal miner who seems to have recorded the video is heard saying.
On Monday, the government deployed a company that specializes in mine rescue efforts using a crane to start retrieving the illegal miners.
The bodies of nine illegal miners were retrieved and 26 people were brought to the surface alive.
The government has not yet confirmed the number of dead inside the abandoned mine.
