More than a hundred people lost their lives in an abandoned gold mine in the Republic of South Africa in recent months, trapped there during illegal gold mining. This was reported on Monday by the South African police, which organized an operation to rescue stranded persons.
The recovery of bodies from the Stilfonteine mine, located approximately 150 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg, began last Friday. Since then, 18 bodies and seven living people have been brought to the surface.
Last Friday, rescuers also took pictures of dozens of bodies wrapped in plastic bags in the mine using their mobile phones. It is believed that these people died of starvation or dehydration. Access to the mine was blocked for several months as part of a police operation called Vala Umgodi aimed at arresting hundreds of illegal miners.
In order to force them to fart, their food and water supply has been restricted since the beginning of November 2024. The police also patrolled all exits from the mine so that they could detain people coming out of the ground. Local residents were allowed to rope down some supplies to the miners living in a kind of underground city, but rescue workers still described the situation in the mine as a humanitarian crisis.
Shortly after the restrictions were imposed, about 1,500 miners – most of them severely weakened, said local community officials – were out. It is believed that over 500 people remained underground. The miners have refused to cooperate with the authorities and cheat because some of them are undocumented – from neighboring countries such as Lesotho and Mozambique – and fear deportation. Illegal mining costs the South African government hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue every year.
Many South African mines have been closed and workers laid off in recent years. In order to survive, miners and undocumented immigrants go to the mines, where they illegally extract gold, which they then sell on the black market. Some spend months underground. Usually there is also a system of supplying them, when people from nearby villages supply them with food, cigarettes or ready-made meals.
The British station BBC reported in November 2024 that local residents begged the authorities to help the stranded miners – but this request was rejected. Police were reluctant to enter the mine because they feared some of the people inside might be armed.
