South African state has mine workers’ blood on its hands

A copper mine in South Africa (Picture: Bjorn Christian Torrissen)

The South African state has orchestrated a massacre of mine workers.

Thousands of “illegal miners” have been living more than a mile underground in an abandoned gold mine at Stilfontein near Johannesburg for months. They dig for scraps of gold and minerals in abandoned mines without permits.

The police blocked their access to necessities including food and water and threatened to arrest them if they came to the surface.

Sabelo Mnguni of the Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA) group said cops removed the ropes and pulleys that the miners had used to enter the mine.

The High Court last week ordered the government to start a rescue operation, which started on Monday. And horrific videos emerged of dead bodies wrapped in makeshift body bags— and the emaciated survivors.

A voice in one of the videos says, “We’re starting to show you the bodies of those who died underground. And this is not all of them. Do you see how people are struggling? Please we need help.”

As of Wednesday, 166 people had been brought up alive and 78 dead bodies. The miners say there are 109 dead in total. This makes it among the deadliest mining incidents in recent South African history.

The leader of the Giwusa general union, which released the video, said, “What has transpired here has to be called what it is—this is a Stilfontein massacre. This footage shows a pile of human bodies—of miners that died needlessly.”

Community activist Bongani Uhuru Jonas told Socialist Worker he was relieved that people are now going to be saved. But he said the rescue mission was long overdue and not well planned.

“We as communities have been raising funds for food. Two of our leaders are volunteering on a daily basis to go down in the crane and insure that people are assisted to resurface.”

In South Africa, up to 100,000 people work informally and often illegally in mines like the one at Stilfontein. The mines are abandoned by the multinationals when they are no longer a source of huge profits.

These miners are sometimes known as artisanal miners or “Zama Zama”—meaning “take a chance”.

Artisanal miners are often migrant workers from countries such as Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Mozambique who have few other options for work and face the threat of deportation if arrested.

They do an almost unimaginably dangerous job where they risk death from suffocation and mine collapses.

Clement Moeletsi, who was able to leave the mine in December, described watching people starve. “It was not an illness that killed them. It was starvation. A cruel, drawn-out death that consumed them piece by piece,” he said.

“This is what I saw underground. This is what we lived through, and this is why, respectfully, no one, despite what they have done, should ever endure such suffering again.”

He said he became a miner because he was “driven by financial hardship and the overwhelming need to provide for my family”. “Despite my best efforts, I was unable to secure employment,” he said.

“The pressure of not being able to provide food or basic necessities for my child and loved ones became unbearable. It left me with no choice but to take this desperate step in the hope of alleviating our dire situation.”

Bongani said that the narrative from the state has been to criminalise miners, and the community organisations that support them.

Mining minister Gwede Mantashe, who was at the site on Tuesday, said, “It’s a criminal activity. It’s an attack on our economy by foreign nationals in the main”. 

Bongani added that Mantashe—a former mineworkers’ union activist—has done nothing to support these miners, other than calling them criminals. “But the wheels of justice have turned now,” he said.

“We want to insure that after this rescue mission the state is held accountable. We are going to advocate that the government decriminalises and legitimises the sector.

“The struggle of Stilfontein opens an eye to all mining affected communities. We have learnt as the working class that there cannot be a situation where workers are poor, where there are 6,000 derelict ownerless mines in South Africa.”