Police blockade on South African miners lifted
A South African court has ruled that a police blockade at a disused goldmine, where hundreds of people are illegally located, must be removed.
Emergency services have been present at the site in Stilfontein, about 90 miles south-west of Johannesburg, for several days. Police had been preventing food and water from reaching the mine in an attempt to “smoke out” the miners, as described by a government minister.
The miners, who have been underground for a month, have refused to leave the mine due to concerns of being arrested. Among them are undocumented migrants who fear deportation.
While police welcomed the ruling, they stated that it would not stop them from arresting any miners who choose to exit the mine.
On Saturday, a Pretoria court ordered that the mine “may not be blocked by any person or institution, whether government or private.”
It also said that any person in the mine should be allowed to exit, and that “no non-emergency personnel may enter the mine shaft”.
The ruling comes after dozens of volunteers entered the abandoned mine to aid the miners, who reports suggest had resorted to eating vinegar and toothpaste to survive. Volunteers said they pulled a body from the mine on Thursday.
It also comes as police called in experts to assess the integrity of the mine shafts, to inform a decision as to whether they would conduct a forced evacuation, according to the AFP news agency.
Yasmin Omar, an attorney who helped bring the court case, told state broadcaster SABC that the ruling was a temporary order “that will at least allow us to get emergency relief to the people [who] need it”.
She said a full hearing on the matter would take place on Tuesday.
“These people underground are dying,” Ms Omar said, adding that the ruling means officials “must do all that is reasonable to give medical care to the people who are underground”.
In a statement, the South African Police Service (SAPS) welcomed the court order, which it stressed did not prevent officers from making arrests.
It said: “All those who resurface will continue to be assessed by emergency medical personnel on site, as has been the case.
“Those that are in a good health will be processed and detained. Those that require further medical care will be taken to hospital under police guard.”
The SAPS added that as of 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT) on Saturday, three of the miners had resurfaced.
More than 1,000 miners have already emerged and been arrested.
South Africa is a mineral-rich country. According to official estimates, it holds nearly 30% of the world’s gold deposits and 88% of all platinum deposits.
But many mines have closed down in recent years and miners have been laid off, contributing to a black market that costs the South African government hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
While gold remains a valuable commodity, rising mining costs – exacerbated by electricity disruptions and deeper deposits – have made the vast majority of mines unprofitable, according to the Minerals Council of South Africa, an industry body.
In a bid to survive impoverished circumstances, miners and undocumented migrants are increasingly entering closed mines to dig up their remaining deposits.
Some spend months underground, and illegal mining has spawned a small economy providing food and cigarettes to the miners.
However, the authorities are keen to end the practice. Illegal miners are sometimes recruited by criminal gangs and can be armed.
The SAPS has previously said that among those to resurface from the Stilfontein mine were individuals from Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
The force has launched a nationwide operation aimed at combatting illegal mining and related criminal activities.
On 3 November, it said that at least 565 people had emerged from a mine in Orkney, south-west of Johannesburg.
But the South African Human Rights Commission said on Friday that it had begun an investigation into the SAPS’s handling of the Stilfontein mine incident, following complaints that the blockade may have infringed the miners’ right to life.
