The Current - Dozens of bodies pulled from mine after months-long standoff

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Hundreds of illegal miners have been trapped in a South African goldmine for months, refusing to surface over fears of arrest — even when authorities cut off food and water. Journalist Carien Du Plessis explains how this stand-off came about, and why a rescue operation ended abruptly this week with dozens of bodies being pulled from the mine. 

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA... and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast.

For months now, hundreds of illegal miners have been trapped in one of South Africa's deepest gold mines. A court ordered rescue operation began on Monday. This was supposed to last 10 days, but came to an abrupt end yesterday. Police say they removed 78 bodies and 246 survivors over days and that there's nobody left in the mine.

Another nine bodies had been removed previously. Karine Di Plessy has been covering the story. She's the Southern African correspondent for the Africa Report. Karine Di Plessy has been covering the story. She's the Southern African correspondent for the Africa Report. Karine, hello. Good day, Matt. What do we know? I'll talk about the rescue in just a moment, but what do we know about why these miners were down there in this shaft in the first place? Well, they got down, it was an abandoned mine shaft. There are a lot of these abandoned

mine shafts all over the country because our mining industry has been in decline for, I think, I don't know, past decade, past two decades now. So they go in there because the mines abandoned the shaft because it's not commercially viable, but it's still, there's still gold in those mines. So people go in there informally because they're desperate for money. There's a lot of unemployment in the area, especially when the mines close, people go in there informally because they're desperate for money, there's a

lot of unemployment in the area, especially when the mines close, people become unemployed. So it's out of desperation that a lot of people go down there. There are also criminal kingpins who run rings, very organized syndicates. It's a very lucrative business. So these miners were there, they were trespassing in the mine and allegedly, you know, mining illegally there. So that's the short story of how they end up there. There were something like two kilometers below the surface. How did they get trapped in this mine? Oh, yeah, these are very deep shafts and basically the police started an operation. I spoke to a Colonel earlier this morning,

I'm in Stilfontein. He said it started in December 2023 already, when the police started an operation against the illegal miners. A lot of them are from other countries and from neighboring countries. So it's a lot of foreigners and the police have been launching a lot of operations

against illegal migrants, people who are in the country illegally. And this was part of it. And the police, they were saying to the communities, don't take food down there to the miners, because normally people would go down there for days or months on end, and the community would take food. And it's a thriving business down there. And the police stopped this. They sat at the shafts and they basically tried to smoke these guys out, as one of the ministers said. And a lot of these people couldn't get out because it's very, because it's an informal business. There were rope systems, police systems, ladders. I mean, two kilometers underground is very deep if you don't have a

lift or good infrastructure to get out. And they became too weak and they couldn't get out and that's how they became trapped. A spokesperson for the Department for Mines and Energy said that he didn't believe that these miners were trapped. They were down there hiding essentially and wanted to avoid arrest and that's why they didn't come back out. I think that could be part of the story, and probably initially it was, because there is, as I understand it, from people who work in the industry and security, there's a low-level war going on down there.

There's a lot of, these Kingpins are well-armed, there's a lot of guns that go into the mines, a lot of coercion, they recruit people to work in the mines and they coerce them to stay down there. So yes, I can believe that there were some who didn't want to come up, but I think the problem was over time a lot of people just became so weak that they couldn't get up and they couldn't get out. In the early stages of the operation, I think at this mine, specifically 1,500 people did surface. So these ones that were rescued in the past week or so,

they were ones who got stuck there out of, they could be weak, they could have been ill, or they could not have been able to find a way out of there. And those were the last of them who were rescued. We're not quite sure. We believe that there could be more people down there who tried to escape through another shaft or who tried to surface through another shaft. They might not have believed that there was help on the way. It's difficult to know how many people are still down there, but it's a complicated, I think it's a very complex story and it's got many layers to it.

What do we know about the conditions that these people were living in? After the authorities had blocked food and water from being sent down, there were reports that people were surviving by eating cockroaches. They were eating toothpaste that had been seasoned with salt and that eventually, this is horrifying, but that they had turned to the bodies of some of their fellow miners who had died in the mineshaft earlier. Yes, those were, there's a horrible stories coming out there. I mean, it's difficult to verify because it's,

I mean, it's almost impossible to get down there to verify, not even the authorities could get down there to verify. But these were letters sent to lawyers and I think, and it was also in an affidavit of one of the guys who did surface and who was down there for many months. So, and the videos, there were two videos that surfaced of the guys sitting there and of the corpses. And it just looked, they were complaining about the stench of the decomposing bodies. They were asking for masks, face masks, because the smell was so bad. And they were asking for bleach to wash the bodies because they were maggots. It sounds like hell.

It really, really sounds terrible. So I don't think anybody would voluntarily stay down there in conditions like that, which is why I don't think everybody could get out. I just don't believe that. The South African Federation of Trade Unions said that the state had forced miners to, in their words, starve to death in the depths of the earth and that they were left to die in one of the most horrific displays of state willful negligence in recent history. What sort of accountability is being talked about

for police and for the state for what happened to these people who were underground? Well, I think, I mean, the police are still calling the operation, you know, the president was speaking over the weekend at the party event, and he was still calling the operation a success. They were, I mean, 17,000 people did surface from, you know, as a result of this operation, 17,000 illegal minors, but I'm not sure how he could call

that a success with a straight face. I think there could be a commission of inquiry coming because that's what always happens when there's big events like this of state neglect. Lawyers, human rights lawyers, are taking the state to court on this. I think there's a constitutional court case that was started on this. So I think there will be legal accountability, but the police have been defending themselves. They said these guys were trespassing. So if somebody comes and they break into your house, you're not gonna give them food.

That's their argument. But yeah, the lawyers are saying if you launch an operation like this, you should plan, you should warn people, you should give them a chance to surface, you should help them to surface if they're too weak. You can't, you know, it's criminal to neglect people and to, to let them starve down there.

So yeah, it's still early days, but I suspect it could be something like a commission of inquiry. I have to let you go, but just very, very briefly, I had read that something like 10% of the gold produced in South Africa comes from these illegal mines. This is an appalling story, but at the same time, as you said, people are desperate and they feel as though they can scratch out some living

by going and doing this work. Do you think this story will prevent people from going into those illegal mines, those abandoned mines in future? I don't know. I'm not sure that it will. I think it's a social, like many human rights activists have pointed out, this is a social economic issue. This is not just a criminal issue. So I don't think so. And the Kingpins out there that haven't been caught,

I mean, it's a lucrative industry, like you say, and at some point this gold gets legalized through legal channels, through jewelers, and it gets exported there and you know, you might even be wearing it in your next set of earrings. So it's a very big lucrative business and unless there's a big operation being launched and you know, the syndicates are being caught and the politically connected, those people who do benefit are being caught. I'm not sure that we'll win this war. Kareen, thank you very much for this. Thank you. benefit are being caught. I'm not sure that we'll win this war.

Karine, thank you very much for this. Thank you. Karine DiPlessi is the Southern African correspondent for the Africa Report.