More than a hundred illegal miners are feared to have died in a mine at Stilfontein in North West Province, South Africa, after authorities blocked off an exit in August 2024. The operation was intended to flush the miners out of the mine, and involved removing a system of ropes and pullies from one entrance to the mine and thereby capture the miners as they escaped from the second entrance. However, local people have protested that the two shafts were not collected, and that miners had therefore been trapped underground with no means of escape other than a climb up a vertical shaft described as about 2 km deep.
South Africa is home to some of the deepest gold mines in the world, but many of these mines are now reaching the end of their lives and are being closed down by their owners. This has led to an increasing number of unemployed miners close to an obvious source of income - the mines in which they formerly worked, and many have returned to these pits, along with migrants from other parts of Africa, in informal mining operations. These are seen as illegal by the South African government, which claims that as much as 10% of the gold mined in South Africa may come from unofficial operations, costing the economy billions of Rand each year, and that the illegal mining fuels a black market in smuggled minerals controlled by violent criminals.
Miners descend into deep pits on ropes, and due to the length of the descent typically take supplies and equipment which enables them to stay underground for weeks or even months at a time. Entering such mines to try to arrest miners far more familiar with the environment is clearly an unattractive proposition to South African police officers, leading to operations such as the one at the Buffelsfontein, where mineshafts are blocked off by police to prevent family members sending food and water to the miners. Since the mine entrances were blocked off in August, about 1500 miners have emerged from one, leading the police to conclude that the operation was going successfully, but local people have been protesting that as many as 900 miners who had entered the second shaft were in fact trapped and could not escape. On Friday 10 January 2025 the High Court of South Africa agreed with a petition by Zinzi Tom, a local woman whose brother is one of those trapped in the mine, and ordered that a rescue mission be mounted.
On Monday 13 January, Mines Rescue Services, a commercial mine rescue company, began operations at the mine, lowering a cage into the shaft from a mobile crane, to bring out emaciated miners and the bodies of their less fortunate comrades. By the end of operations on Tuesday 14 January, 82 survivors and 36 bodies had been pulled from the shaft, in an operation which is likely to go on for days or even weeks. South African Police have been arresting survivors deemed fit enough to be charged, while others have been taken to a local hospital where they will be treated before also being arrested.
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