78 corpses pulled from besieged gold mine after ‘horrific’ crackdown in South Africa

At least 78 illegal miners have been pulled out dead from a South African mine where police blocked food and water supplies for months in what trade unions described as a “horrific” state crackdown on desperate people trying to eke out a living.

A total of 78 bodies and 166 survivors — some of them emaciated and disorientated — have been hauled out so far in a court-ordered rescue operation that began on Monday, with hundreds more men still stuck 1.5 miles below the surface in a gold mine at Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.

Police had stopped food and water supplies from being taken into the mine since August until a court ruled in December that volunteers could send down essential aid for the miners, known locally as “zama zamas”.

“Our mandate was to combat criminality and that is exactly what we’ve been doing,” said Athlenda Mathe, national spokesperson for the South African police, speaking at the site.

“By providing food, water and necessities to these illegal miners it would be the police entertaining and allowing criminality to thrive,” she said.

The death toll makes the crackdown on the Stilfontein mine one of the deadliest on miners in recent South African history. As the toll has mounted, so has criticism of the police and of the government, which says the siege was part of a much-needed crackdown on illegal mining.

“These miners, many of them undocumented and desperate workers from Mozambique and other Southern African countries, were left to die in one of the most horrific displays of state wilful negligence in recent history,” the South African Federation of Trade Unions said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest party in the ruling coalition, said on Wednesday the situation at the mine had got “badly out of hand” and called for an independent inquiry.

All 166 of the survivors rescued so far were immediately arrested and charged with criminal offences including illegal immigration, trespass and illegal mining, police said. None were hospitalized and all were taken into police custody.

“If you come out and you are able to walk they take you straight to the cells,” said Mzukisi Jam, a civil society activist, who has been at the site throughout the rescue operation.