While rescue teams worked to retrieve illegal miners trapped in the Buffelsfontein gold mine just outside Stilfontein, anxious relatives watched from the sidelines as miners and corpses were brought out of the abandoned shaft.
‘Yesterday, I heard on the news that corpses were brought out of the mine,” Matumelo (not her real name) told Daily Maverick during day two of the rescue operation to retrieve miners trapped in the Buffelsfontein gold mine outside Stilfontein in North West. “Now, the only thing I am asking myself is: Is the father of my child still alive?”
Finding refuge from the sweltering heat under the shade of a tree, Matumelo looked towards the crane that had been set up to rescue the miners, contemplating what had become of her partner. The 26-year-old had not heard from him since August last year when police descended on the mine and closed off access to the abandoned shaft as part of Operation Vala Umgodi.

“I’m worried about him. He has been in the shaft for months now. I have given birth, and my child is two months old. She doesn’t even know her father,” said the young mother.
Matumelo’s fears summed up the general feeling of the angry and anxious Stilfontein residents who gathered outside the cordoned-off rescue site, anxiously waiting as miners — alive and dead — were brought out of Shaft 11 by rescue workers.

On Monday, disturbing footage obtained by the miners’ rights group Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) gave South Africans the first glimpses of conditions inside the mine.
The two videos revealed heaps of bodies wrapped in plastic and a shirtless, emaciated miner, the consequences of months without access to fresh supplies. The videos emerged after police blocked the miners’ supply of food, water and medication in a bid to “smoke them out” and arrest them for illegally entering and mining in the abandoned shaft.
As the operation continued, a fleet of pathology vans sped past journalists and residents camped outside the mine. From a distance, workers clad in white hazmat suits could be seen on the back of a red truck. By 4pm on Tuesday, 14 January, 27 corpses had been retrieved from the mine, their identities unknown. Fifty-six other miners were brought up alive.


On day one of the rescue operation, Monday, 13 January, 35 illegal miners were extracted, nine of whom were certified dead. This brings the total for the rescue operation, which is expected to last 16 days, to 188 miners removed from the shaft.
In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, SAPS spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe confirmed that the 82 surviving miners had been arrested for illegal mining, trespassing and contravention of the Immigration Act.
“Two illegal miners who were found in possession of gold have also been charged with being in the illegal possession of gold-bearing material,” said Mathe.
Ministers brief the media
Police Minister Senzo Mchunu and Mineral and Petroleum Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe visited the site of the rescue operation on Tuesday, where they addressed the media about the operation led by the Mine Rescue Services (MRS) team.

Mchunu said that there was no way of knowing exactly how many illegal miners were trapped underground, but insisted that the operation aimed to retrieve and arrest all those still alive in the mine.
“The illegal miners we have arrested after resurfacing are giving us different figures and estimates. We will only know how many people remain underground through this current operation. After 10 days, the operation will tell us how many remain underground. We will do our best to take everybody, dead or alive, out of the shaft,” said Mchunu.
While Mchunu’s address to the media was measured, Mantashe responded bluntly to the conditions the miners faced underground.
Labelling illegal mining “a war on the economy”, Mantashe defended the government’s slow response in rescuing the miners, saying that there was no humanitarian solution for people who broke the law and willingly put their lives at risk.
“It is a criminal activity. It is an attack on our economy by foreign nationals in the main,” said Mantashe.
Macua representative Sabelo Mnguni told Daily Maverick that Mantashe’s statement violated the constitutionally mandated right to life.
“Our lives as ordinary people in South Africa don’t mean anything to them; hence he says this. There is a lot of criminality happening in South Africa, but the government’s response to the miners’ situation shows that they do not care,” said Mnguni.
Tensions flare
After addressing the media, Mchunu and Mantashe, accompanied by a large entourage, made their way to the residents of Stilfontein who had gathered outside the demarcated shaft, calling for accountability from the government.
The ministers were meant to have a meeting with the community to hear their concerns and discuss the rescue operation. But the crowd, disinterested in the ministers’ presence, listened instead to Lawyers for Human Rights attorney Mametlwe Sebei as he lambasted the government for its slow response.

“We should call it what it is. These ministers are here at the scene of the crime. Hundreds of miners have died underground in what can only be a bloody culmination of their treacherous policies of the police operation, planned and executed with the approval at the highest echelons of the state, including the Cabinet,” said Sebei.
Mchunu lashed out at Sebei, shouting at the attorney to let him speak, which prompted the crowd to turn on the minister with loud shouts of “voetsek”.
The ministers left the scene with the crowd yelling insults as they sped off in their blue-light convoy.

‘I did it to eat’
Daily Maverick spoke to a miner who escaped the shaft in August, just as the police descended on the illegal mine. After weeks underground, said Moeketsi Kgathi, he surfaced from the mine in search of food, only to be confronted by the police who had arrived to close off the entrance to the mine.
“I had been in darkness in that mine for a long time, so when I surfaced, it took some time for my eyes to adjust to the light. When I saw the police, I was scared that I would be shot. I ran and dove to the ground. I didn’t realise I had fallen on a metal pipe,” said Kgathi, speaking in Setswana.
He lifted his shirt to show a scar on his chest where the pipe had impaled him. Kgathi said that he was spotted by community members who found him bleeding in the bushes and rushed him to hospital.

When asked why he went down into the mine, Kgathi said, “There are no jobs. Before I started mining, I used to break into houses at Khuma [a local township]. I was a gangster; I was a thief. This mine saved me from that life. We are hungry and the resources are there. The government is not giving us jobs, but they have allowed this mine to stay abandoned while people are suffering.
“What is happening right now is … very painful and hard to understand. It is even worse that it is being done by a government we voted for. I barely escaped that day with my life. Now I am standing here watching them pull up corpses. I have friends who are still trapped in there, and I don’t know if they are dead or alive.” DM
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