Dozens of men sat and lay together in small caves, some so shallow they couldn’t stand up. The air was wet and stuffy, and wracking coughs echoed in the confined space.
Bodies wrapped in fabric and twine were set aside in rows nearby. Bad odors permeated everything, so it was hard to distinguish what smells were coming from the dead versus the unwashed bodies or the damp rock.
The miners were emaciated from lack of food, which was hard to come by since police cracked down on their illegal mining and for a time halted the supply deliveries.
Usually, the men would eat meat, bread, and porridge cooked over camp stoves run by propane, but all of these had run out. With no mining work to distract them, they smoked cigarettes and marijuana for a while, when they still had it.
The description, from a miner and from cellphone videos sent to the surface earlier this month, sheds some light on the horror hundreds of men suffered deep underground in an abandoned mine in South Africa, after a police operation cut off food and supplies to “smoke them out” because they were digging illegally for gold. The videos were released publicly by a group representing the miners.
Police finally launched a rescue effort earlier this week, under court order, and said no one was left underground. Dozens of bodies were pulled out and at least 87 confirmed dead.
The miner, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, said he surfaced on Christmas Day after entering the shaft in July, spending months underground where he experienced extreme hunger and saw many of his fellow diggers dying from starvation and illnesses.
He is one of nearly 2,000 illegal miners who have surfaced from the mine near the town of Stilfontein since August last year when police targeted it as part of an operation that aims to tackle the widespread illicit mining trade. The trade bled the South African economy of more than $3 billion last year, according to the mines minister.
At the worst of times, said the miner, they ate rough salt, the only thing leftover to stanch the hunger.
“I felt like I have some bad luck because I had only been underground for two weeks when the operation started. That is when things started going bad, we stopped receiving food and we lost contact with the outside world, that could only mean that the police have arrived and probably arrested or scared off the people lowering the food,” he said.
The miner said the months that followed were horrendous.
“By September, things were really bad. People started getting hungry, they started getting sick, some started dying. We started having dead bodies. There is nothing worse than seeing somebody die and there is nothing you can do about it,” he said.
The miner, a 40-year-old father of six children, exited the mine in December through a separate shaft that had steel stairs. It is extremely difficult to navigate, and he bruised his hands badly on his way out.
“As we were climbing out, we saw dead bodies of other guys who had attempted to exit the same way. Others had fallen down, others were full corpses but there were also lots of bones, almost like skeletons. It’s not easy to exit there, many people died trying to do that,” he said.
So why do the miners go into this subterranean purgatory in the first place?
It mostly comes down to money. Illegal mining is one of the biggest sources of income for poor households in townships located near an estimated 6,100 disused mines around the country where illegal mining is rife.
The miner said he was told he could earn about $5,300 for working for a few weeks to a month in one of the country’s deepest gold mines, where there are no longer any official operations. It’s a huge sum in South Africa, which has deep inequality and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.
Many other miners come looking for work from neighboring countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi and Congo, and children are sometimes roped in. There were 13 children among those who came out of the Stilfontein mine last year.
Mmastona Mbizana, a community member of Khumo township, told The Associated Press that two of her sons were involved in illegal mining because of unemployment and poverty.
Her 22-year-old son was arrested after coming out of the mine during the police operation in December and is currently out on bail.
“I heard from somebody in the neighborhood that he had gone underground. His father died last year and he was not even here for the funeral because he was underground for months. They say they are doing it because of the situation here at home, things are tough,” said Mbizana.
Mbizana’s other son, Lucky, was arrested at the same mine while working as a runner on the surface sending food and other supplies down to the miners. Walking on crutches, he said he had been convicted for involvement in illegal mining.
“Out of the blue the police came, firing rubber bullets and teargas. The teargas blinded me and I fell, broke my leg and collapsed,” he said.
Lucky said he used to make $424 a month for lowering food and other parcels into the shaft daily, including tinned vegetables and fish, loaves of brown bread, porridge, meat, cigarettes and liquor.
Activists blame the South African government for the loss of lives that occurred at Stilfontein, saying authorities should have acted earlier.
However, the government has maintained that while the deaths were a tragedy, illegal mining is a criminal activity that is detrimental to the country’s economy.
Illegal mining in South Africa is known to cause far-reaching problems for nearby communities, including violent crime and the destruction of community infrastructure.
Community members also speak of hearing gun battles between rival mining groups.
“The people who must take responsibility for the deaths that have happened here are those who are benefitting from illegal mining,” Mines Minister Gwede Mantashe said in Stilfontein this week.
According to South African Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, authorities are investigating the entire value chain of illegal mining, including who the main beneficiaries are.
“Where these products go is a subject of our investigation,” said Mchunu, adding illegal mining is “robbing South Africa of a lot of money.”
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