South Africa Under Fire for ‘Horrific’ Response as 78 Bodies Recovered from Mine
The Democratic Alliance demands an independent investigation into the tragedy.
At least 78 bodies have been recovered from an abandoned gold mine in South Africa, where police implemented a controversial crackdown, cutting off food and water supplies for months. Trade unions have condemned the operation as a "horrific" response to people who were desperately trying to survive by mining.
Police announced Wednesday that they had concluded their rescue operation, stating that all survivors had been brought to safety and all bodies retrieved from the mine located near Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.
The operation was initially expected to continue until at least next week, but officials declared it over a day earlier than anticipated. Since the rescue effort began on Monday, authorities have recovered 78 bodies and rescued over 240 survivors from the mine, located two kilometers (1.24 miles) underground.
A final sweep of the site was planned for Thursday to ensure no further survivors or bodies remained.
The mine had been abandoned for some time, and in August, police cut off food and water supplies to force the illegal miners to the surface, where they could be arrested. In December, a court ruled that volunteers could send essential aid, but a full rescue operation did not commence until last week.
“Our mandate is to fight criminality, and that is what we’ve been doing,” Athlenda Mathe, national police spokesperson, told reporters at the site. “Providing food, water, and supplies would have allowed criminal activity to thrive,” she explained.
However, civil rights groups have accused the government of neglecting the miners, leaving them to perish from starvation and dehydration.
“These miners, many of whom were undocumented workers from Mozambique and other Southern African nations, were abandoned in what can only be described as a horrifying act of state negligence,” said the South African Federation of Trade Unions in a statement.
The Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s second-largest political party, called the situation “out of control” and demanded an independent investigation into the response.
Police reported that 1,576 miners had managed to leave the mine on their own between August and the start of the rescue mission, with all of them being arrested. Of those, 121 have already been deported.
Human rights lawyer Jessica Lawrence, present at the scene, expressed concern over how the situation was handled. “It’s incredibly distressing to see how this situation was managed by the authorities,” she said. “Had the state acted sooner, many of these lives could have been saved.”
The South African government has defended its actions, arguing that the crackdown was necessary to combat illegal mining, which Minister of Mines Gwede Mantashe called a “war on the economy.” He estimated that the illicit trade in precious metals cost the country 60 billion rand ($3.17 billion) last year in lost sales, taxes, and royalties.
“It’s a criminal activity. It’s an attack on our economy, primarily driven by foreign nationals,” Mantashe said during a visit to the site on Tuesday.
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