The South African authorities said on Tuesday that they have removed a number of dead miners from the closed gold mine where they were working illegally until it was blocked by the police who had stopped food, water and other things.
As of Tuesday evening, the police reported that they found 60 bodies and pulled out 132 miners who were still alive. The death toll may rise as the government continues the difficult task that began on Monday to evacuate all the miners.
Authorities stepped in after a months-long standoff that drew criticism from human rights groups but praise from some South Africans, who view illegal miners as dangerous criminals.
It was not clear on Tuesday how many miners remained underground, but activists and authorities estimated that they could be in the hundreds.
The blockade of the mine, near Stilfontein, a town about two hours south of Johannesburg, was part of a national campaign to stamp out illegal miners, known locally as Zama Zamas.
In an attempt to force miners near Stilfontein above ground, police last year began cutting off their assets by patrolling all known mine entry points and pulling or cutting cables used to transport assets underground, photos released by the police showed.
The campaign to repair the system began this week following a court challenge filed by a community group and amid reports of appalling conditions in the mine, which is more than a kilometer deep.
A cell phone video of the underground conditions released by the advocacy group, Mining Affected Communities United in Action, showed dozens of bodies wrapped in plastic and the skeletons, skeletal frames of the miners who are still alive. The video was taken last week by one of the miners, said the organization.
“Inhumanity,” said Meshack Mbangula, an activist in the mining group. “You have no compassion for Zama and the community.”
As the mining industry declined in South Africa and mine owners began to abandon unprofitable sites, the Zama Zamas began mining what was left, without legal permits.
The miners have come under fire from some South Africans, who accuse them of fueling the criminal trade in illegal metals and fueling crime in the areas where they work. It is also heartbreaking because most of them are undocumented immigrants.
South African authorities say they believe the miners around Stilfontein chose to sit down to avoid arrest, a dispute disputed by human rights groups, who say some of the routes from the mine have been closed.
“We do not send aid to criminals,” said the minister in the president’s office, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, at a press conference last year. “We will smoke them. Criminals should not be helped; they will be persecuted.”
The controversy surrounding Stilfontein taps into deeper questions about wealth inequality in South Africa and the exploitative history of the mining industry.
Mining was the heart of the apartheid economy, with most Black people relegated to menial, low-paying jobs while white-owned and foreign corporations reaped huge profits. Today, that inequality persists. Some black companies have infiltrated the industry, but the wealth generally remains in the hands of petty officials.
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