Police ‘closed the hole’ – and 87 miners died
Now the cops who orchestrated the Stilfontein tragedy are patting themselves on the back.
Job done. That was the message from acting North West province police commissioner Patrick Asaneng at a press conference on Thursday, as he announced plans to withdraw his officers from the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine.
They have been stationed there since last August, as part of a national police operation called Vala Umgodi – meaning “close the hole” in isiZulu.
The operation was designed to curb illegal mining activity in South Africa. Instead, it killed at least 87 miners in one of the country’s worst-ever man-made tragedies.
Home to the world’s richest seams of gold, South Africa was built on the profits – and the brutality – of its vast extractive industries. But minerals are a finite resource, and the country is littered with more than 6,000 abandoned mines.
These are not profitable for big mining companies to operate, but networks of illegal miners – working in dangerous and often exploitative conditions – have moved in to extract whatever value was left behind. Hundreds of these illegal miners – known locally as zama-zamas, or “chancers” – worked in Buffelsfontein Gold Mine, often staying deep underground for months at a time.
But when police arrived, they took the meaning of Operation Vala Umgodi all too literally – using explosives to seal off entries and exits, effectively laying siege to the miners. After a months-long stand-off and several court orders, the police finally allowed food and water underground, and sent rescue teams to bring miners to the surface. Of the 246 people who were rescued, most were emaciated and sick. And 87 bodies were brought to the surface. Many have yet to be identified.
A cabinet minister defended the government’s decision not to send in supplies earlier, saying that the purpose of the operation was to “smoke them out”.
President Cyril Ramaphosa was similarly blunt: “The Stilfontein mine is a crime scene where the offence of illegal mining is being committed. It is standard police practice everywhere to secure a crime scene and to block off escape routes that enable criminals to evade arrest.”
Much of Ramaphosa’s estimated $450-million fortune comes from his stakes in mining companies. In 2012, when 34 miners were killed by police during a wildcat strike in Marikana, Ramaphosa was widely criticised for advising law enforcement officials to take “concomitant action” to deal with the “dastard criminals” involved in the strike – advice which may have contributed to the heavy-handed response.
Public sympathy for the dead in Stilfontein has been limited. This is in part due to the role of organised criminal networks in illegal mining; and in part due to the fact that the zama-zamas are mostly foreign nationals.
The brutality of the police operation, and muted public opposition to it, is unsurprising given the anti- immigrant rhetoric that is espoused, with increasing virulence, by most major political parties.
Nonetheless, some commentators have wondered how the South African government can simultaneously paint itself as the “conscience of the world” in its efforts to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes in Gaza, while overseeing the deliberate starvation to death of dozens of people on its own territory.
A very skinny report - the zama-zamas are creating billions worth of damage to structures from creating sinkholes.
They are the bottom of the illegal miners and considered expendable.
The miners were offered to be rescued numerous times but refused. They chose to not be rescued.
The guvmint did the right action , after years of trying other methods that just don't work.
So waiting to arrest people is criminal? The miners were not prevented from leaving, they were aware that they would be arrested, and refused to or were prevented from leaving, by their own bosses.