Concerned community members contacted police and rescue services after they heard yells coming from the open shaft.
Upon their arrival, police found illegal miners trapped in Grootvlei mine’s Shaft 7 in Kingsway.
According to Gauteng Provincial police spokesman Captain Augustinah Selepe, 11 people were rescued on Sunday and they had all sustained serious injuries.
“Upon arrival at 11am on Sunday, injured miners were crawling from the shaft, some with femur fractures and back injuries, all seriously injured.
“They were taken to different hospitals in the area,” said Capt Selepe on Monday.
It is alleged that the miners got trapped after being shot at by a gang on July 18.
According to EMS spokesman Roggers Mamaila, the rescued miners allege that they were mining for the gang, who they say comes from Lesotho and is called the Russians.
The gang returned on Thursday to claim their gold and opened fire on the miners.
They allegedly shot 30 miners, but the EMS can only account for 16 people.
“Five people were still trapped down there on July 28. Rescuers went to a depth of 100m, but they could only bring the last five up to 85m as the emergency board broke,” said Mamaila, adding that four of the miners were already dead and the fifth was seriously injured.
The rescue had to be stopped on July 28 to await permission from the Department of Minerals and Energy to rescue the last five people.
As the miners were trapped at a depth greater than 20m, the department had to be notified in order to get a specialised mine rescue team to come to the miners’ aid.
According to Mamaila, they responded to the emergency and went deeper underground than they are supposed to in their efforts to save the trapped miners.
On July 29, Mine Rescue Services from Carletonville arrived and they brought the last five miners out.
Brighton Mkwenya from Etwatwa said on Monday that his brother, Prosper, was one of the miners who had been trapped.
“We came to South Africa for a better life and I only just found a job. If my brother is dead, I do not know how to get his body to Zimbabwe,” said Mkwenya before the last living survivor was brought out of the mine.
His hopes that his brother was still alive were crushed when the last survivor was brought out and his name was announced.
The bodies of the other four illegal miners were brought out by Monday evening.
As yet, none of the Russians had been arrested.
However, according to Tsakane police station’s Capt Petro Mabuza, the surviving miners are all under police guard in various hospitals and, upon their release, will be arrested and charges will be laid against them for illegal mining.
