Trapped illegal gold miners hold out against police in South Africa

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Local communities have begun delivering emergency supplies to illegal gold miners trapped in abandoned shafts by a police blockade in South Africa in a tense stand-off that has spotlighted the surge of unlawful mining amid widespread economic desperation in the country.

The miners — the total number of whom are estimated to be anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand — have for weeks been hidden underground at the abandoned Buffelsfontein Mine in Stilfontein, east of Johannesburg, after the police in late October launched an operation to “smoke out” and arrest them.

Advocates warn that the remaining miners are running dangerously low on supplies, and the high court in Pretoria on Saturday issued an interim order instructing the police to lift the blockade ahead of a hearing on Tuesday, paving the way for emergency aid to be delivered.

More than 1,000 illegal miners, known as zama zamas, have voluntarily resurfaced and been arrested since the blockade began, while the decomposing body of one miner has also been removed. Negotiators have said the remaining miners might be too weak to resurface.

The heavy-handed tactics have sparked controversy in South Africa, with supporters calling it a much-needed crackdown on rampant criminality, while opponents say zama zama mining is a symptom of a dysfunctional economy in which one in three people cannot find a job.

Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, a minister in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government, said on Wednesday that authorities would show no mercy. “We are not sending help to criminals,” she said. “We are going to smoke them out. They will come out.”

But Yasmin Omar, a lawyer for non-profit group the Society for the Protection of Our Constitution, which appealed to the Pretoria High Court, said the government line was inhumane.

“Why are the ministers not asking the deeper questions, like why these mines are still opened, and why so many impoverished people are going down there?” she said.

Omar said the court order meant “the community will be free to drop food and essentials to the people underground”.

About 6,000 mines have closed since the apartheid era, when towns such as Stilfontein helped turn South Africa into one of the world’s top gold producers. Many have been taken over in the past decade by thousands of zama zamas — Zulu for “take a chance” — who sell what they scavenge on the black market.

Many in the nearby community blame the government for not providing them with alternatives, and have gathered around the mine shafts in recent days waving signs that read “Free our brothers” and “Smoke out the ANC”, a reference to the country’s governing party.

“They went there not because they wanted to, but out of desperation,” said one community member, Nozipho Ntuli, who told local broadcaster eNCA that her husband had been underground for months. “We are starving, and there’s no one to turn to for help. They saw others getting something from there and thought they could do the same.”

Local police said the court order would not prevent them from doing their job, vowing that healthy miners who resurfaced “will be processed and detained” while those who were sick “will be taken to hospital under police guard”.

But Neal Froneman, chief executive of listed mining company Sibanye-Stillwater, whose mines have also been targeted by zama zamas, said police action was long overdue.

“It has taken far too long for government to react to this crisis,” Froneman told the Financial Times. “The authorities need to deal with the kingpins. This is not a case of communities trying to scrounge a living for themselves. This is cut-throat organised crime.”