The entrance shaft of an abandoned mine is seen in Stilfontein on January 14, 2025. More than two dozen illegal miners have been rescued and at least 15 bodies recovered from an abandoned gold mine in South Africa, as operations continued on January 14, 2025 to reach potentially dozens more people who have been underground for months. (Photo by Christian Velcich / AFP)
As rescuers continued to pull survivors and body bags of illegal miners from an abandoned Stilfontein shaft, with the death toll having reached 78, a legal expert yesterday blamed government for being indecisive in handling the zama zamas.
While conceding that the illegal mining operation in Stilfontein and in other parts of the country was driven by crime syndicates buying gold at a discount and shipping it to markets in other countries, human rights lawyer Richard Spoor blamed government for the deaths of the zama zamas.
Spoor said there has been mixed messages from government ministers on how to deal with the Stilfontein crisis.
“Police Minister Senzo Mchunu spoke about the rescue last November, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said the miners should be smoked out and Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe was equally hostile.
“Police officers cut off food supplies and access to the miners, which added to the recklessness. You know that they are going to die but you carry on with your combat approach.
“The act by police to prevent the community from lowering food supplies to those underground or hauling them out of the shaft makes them liable for the deaths.
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“Police are directly responsible for all these deaths,” said Spoor.
He said the gold mined was “not going to the state, not being taxed but going to big organised crime syndicates, who use gold to launder money”.
With illegal mining having emerged in South Africa in the past 10 years, Spoor said government’s declaration of zama zama activities as illegal “attracts crime”.
“In Stilfontein we are talking about thousands of these miners working in various shafts – generating a huge amount of gold, which they have been selling for the past 10 years.
“Every day, there is a huge number of men lowering supplies and hauling gold up from underneath and selling it to syndicates.
“You want us to believe that police have been unaware of this, that Stilfontein police have not been in the know?
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“For over 10 years, police crime intelligence could not infiltrate these syndicates,” he said. Illegal mining is a statutory crime, “in existence for over 100 years – meant to protect gold and diamond mining industries, ensuring their thriving monopoly”.
Spoor argued that illegal miners were “not necessarily harming the economy”.
“If we look at a place like Stilfontein, where several thousand miners have been working in these abandoned mines since 2015, they have been keeping the local community alive.
“People in that community will have been a lot worse off without the contribution of these miners.
“The situation is the same in old gold mining towns like Virginia, Welkom and Orkney after the closure of most of the mines – leading to a shocking state of the economy,” said Spoor.
“It is only in South Africa, where it is illegal to possess uncut diamonds and gold. The only problem faced by these miners is that of mining or prospecting without a permit.
ALSO READ: ‘Massacre’: Government accused of murdering Stilfontein illegal miners as more zama zamas rescued
“In South Africa, we have a set of guidelines for the issuance of such permits on mining rights,” he added.
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