How it happens6:10“Please pray for us,” says the sister of a missing South African miner as police call off the rescue operation
First responders recovered dozens of bodies and hundreds of emaciated survivors from an abandoned gold mine this week, but Zinzi Tom’s brother was not among them.
South African police say there is no one left in the mine after removing 78 bodies and 246 survivors over the past two days.
They declared the court-ordered rescue operation over on Wednesday, thus canceling what was supposed to be a ten-day operation. This cruelly ended a months-long standoff involving illegal miners and their families.
“I don’t want to leave him dead,” said Tom How it happens Host Nil Köksal shortly after leaving the site. “I am full of hope and pray to God that he comes back.”
Illegal mining attracts desperate workers
Tom has not heard from her brother Ayanda since July 2024, when he first told her that he was going to the abandoned Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein to mine illegally.
At first, Tom says, she didn’t agree with his choice. But there were no other jobs for him, she said, and he had to make a living to provide for his children.
“(He) risked his life, went underground and said he was going to try to make ends meet,” she said. “It’s a very sad moment for us as a family.”
Illegal mining is a common practice in South AfricaWhere More than 30 percent of people are unemployed.
Migrants and others desperate to make ends meet are scouring the country’s thousands of abandoned mines for mineral deposits often used by organized crime networks.
To crack down on illegal mining, police cordoned off most exit points at the Stilfontein mine in August while hundreds of men were still working there.
The aim, a minister said at the time, was to “smoke them out”.
Community says miners starved to death
Police and government officials have maintained since the standoff began that the miners were never trapped, but rather unwilling to come out and face charges.
But friends, family and supporters of the miners argued that many were too frail, hungry and dehydrated to get out after police removed the pulley system used to provide them with food and water.
A court ruled in December that volunteers should be allowed to send vital supplies to the miners, and a separate ruling last week ordered the state to begin the rescue operation.
The Mining Affected Communities United in Action, which launched the lawsuit, said some miners were trapped deep in different parts of the mine, which is 2.5 kilometers deep and has multiple shafts, many levels and a maze of tunnels.
The South African Federation of Trade Unions accused the state on Tuesday of letting the men “starve in the depths of the earth”.
“These miners, many of them undocumented and desperate workers from Mozambique and other countries in southern Africa, were left to die in one of the most horrific examples of state willful negligence in recent history,” it said in a statement.
Athlenda Mathe, national spokesperson for the South African police, defended the operation.
“Our mission was to fight crime and that’s exactly what we did,” Mathe said at the scene on Wednesday.
“By providing these illegal miners with food, water and essentials, it would be the job of the police to entertain them and allow crime to thrive.”
“Please pray for us”
All of the survivors pulled out this week, many of whom were visibly frail, were taken into police custody.
According to the police, 1,576 miners escaped on their own between August and the start of the rescue operation. All of them had been arrested and 121 of them had already been deported, it was said.
“If you get out and can walk, they’ll take you straight to the cells,” she said Mzukisi Jam, a civil society activist who was on site throughout the rescue operation.
Meanwhile, Tom says she heard that some miners came out alone through another shaft. She says she hopes and prays her brother is on his way there now.
When she spoke to CBC, she still hadn’t told her family the rescue operation was over.
“I’m scared,” she said. “I’m afraid to look my mother in the eyes today and tell her the news.”
She asked people around the world who were following this news to keep her and her family in their prayers.
“I want my brother to come out alive,” she said. “Please pray for us.”
