South Africa, Mine Rescue Ends
South African rescuers ended their attempts on Thursday to find anyone left in an illegal gold mine where at least 78 people died during a police siege, as a local volunteer described the horror of extracting their bodies from deep underground.
Police had encircled the mine since August and cut off food and water supplies to try to force the miners out so they could be arrested, resulting in what the GIWASU labour union called the worst state-sponsored massacre since the end of apartheid.
Since Monday, rescuers have used a cylindrical metal cage to pull up 78 bodies and 246 survivors, some of them emaciated and disorientated, in a court-ordered operation at the mine near the town of Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.
The survivors, who are mostly from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho, have been arrested and charged with illegal immigration, trespass, illegal mining, and other offences.
The police have said they were enforcing a government crackdown on illegal mining and that to have allowed food and water down during the siege would have meant “allowing criminality to thrive.”
Mzwandile Mkwayi, 36, was one of two volunteers from the local township of Khuma, where most of the miners lived, who spent three days going up and down in the cage to bring out the corpses and survivors.
“I was scared. Those people were happy to see us, they were very happy. We told them,’we are here to help you, please don’t die,’ ” Reports said.
“I put the bodies in the bags with my own hands. It was my first time seeing a pile of dead. It will traumatise me for the rest of my life.”
Asked why he had volunteered, Mkwayi said: “Those people are our brothers. We’re living with them.”
On Thursday morning, the cage was sent down one last time, with a camera inside, which police described as a way of verifying information from volunteers who went down on Wednesday evening and said they could see no one left in the mine.
Reuters/Shakirat Sadiq
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