The Pretoria High Court has postponed the case calling for the rescue of illegal miners trapped inside a mine shaft in Stilfontein, North West, to Thursday.
This is because the court needed more time to go through the answering affidavits and instructions from various ministers, which the judge allegedly received on Tuesday morning.
Lobby groups have come out in support of the trapped illegal miners. The Society for the Protection of our Constitution also stepped in. It argues that while these miners are illegal, they still needed basic needs including blankets, water and food. They need this in order to gather enough strength to come up, it says.
Illegal miners being starved
Yasim Omar, the society’s legal representative, said it is false information that these people choose to stay underground. She said without food and water, they were losing strength. And their chances of coming out are getting slimmer.
“The people underground are being denied food, they are being starved. And the attitude taken by the police was ‘either you surrender yourself or you die underground’. Now my clients say this is an infringement of a host of constitutional rights of the people underground.
“Everyone has a right to life. And they have been subjecting them to human torture while they are still underground,” said Omar.
She told Sunday World that the illegal miners were being treated unfairly. It was unacceptable to expect people who are said to be weak and on the brink of death to hang on to the rope pulling them out, she said.
She said the government has access to a mine rescue team. And she insists that they should be engaged to take care of the operation. Instead of alleging that people expected the inexperienced police to go down the shaft to rescue the trapped miners.
Survivors lying next to dead bodies
“After the court hearing on Saturday we learnt that two people were pulled out alive. But they were in a very weakened state. And they indicated that the people underground are in a terrible state. They are suffering and they are dying.
“In fact, they indicated that there are bodies down there and those that are alive are laying next to corpses. Now, this is beyond barbaric, it is complete violation of our constitution. And it is not how democracy should be run,” said Omar.
Nomahlubi Khwinana, South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) commissioner, also detaile d their stance. She told Sunday World that they could not join the court proceedings. But they decided to monitor the proceedings of the case and the situation at Stilfontein.
SAHRC monitoring the situation
She said a legal officer from the North West (SAHRC) office is on site as of Tuesday morning. This is in order to investigate with the aim to probe these allegations.
“We are noting the court proceedings for today. And we welcome the urgent interventions to assist the miners who have remained underground. We are calling upon all stakeholders to work together. This to ensure expeditious extraction of all the miners in order to save lives,” said Khwinana.
