When the men who had been holed up more than two kilometres underground for months in a disused mine in Stilfontein North West saw a team that had come to rescue them, they went down on their knees and threw themselves at the rescuers, their hands pressed together, pleading for help.
Still visibly distressed, Mandla Charles, one of the volunteers who joined the rescue team, told Sunday World of the gory scenes just after the rescue operation on Thursday.
The men’s bodies were emaciated, their skeletal bodies covered in sores and they had dry lips and sunken eyes.
Charles and Mzwandile Mkwayi were two community members from Khuma near Stilfontein who volunteered to go underground and retrieve the men and bodies during the government’s extraction operation this week.
Working with rescue company Mines Rescue Services (MRS), the government’s extraction operation took place at shaft 11 of the disused Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein from Monday to Thursday. Through the four-day extraction operation, a total of 246 men were rescued and arrested. A total of 78 bodies were recovered.
Speaking to Sunday World after the extraction operation was called off by MRS on Thursday afternoon, Charles said he was traumatised by the condition of the miners underground.
He said when he and Mkwayi got into the MRS cage, which was lowered underground starting on Monday, it would take approximately 30 minutes to reach the deep underground level.
“When we arrived underground, we told the miners to go and gather other miners and tell them to come closer to where we were because we had come to rescue them.
“They were so happy when they heard this.
“MRS told us we could only load seven miners at a time into the cage but we would load up to 12 miners because we realised they were extremely thin from starvation, and therefore there was enough space for more of them in the cage,” he said.
MRS used a mobile rescue winder to lower the cage underground. The cage had three cameras mounted on it and is designed to take a maximum of six people at a time, weighing a total of 450kg. The operations started at 6am until 10pm daily.
“It was difficult for us to choose who to load first in the cage and who to load later in the day. Some of those men did not believe that we would come back for another trip to take them out,” said Charles.
Charles said it took about 45 minutes for the cage to go back up to the ground level.
“When we were going up, the men were able to speak. I think being rescued gave them hope, energy and excitement,” said Charles.
He said when they were retrieving some of the corpses, some of them had turned into bones and other bodies were wrapped in woven sack bags.
“The smell of the dead bodies was disgusting. Mzwandile and I almost vomited. Each time we went down we were given body bags to load the dead bodies. They were already wrapped up, so we just loaded them into the cage,” said Charles.
Charles said he volunteered to go underground because the men holed up underground came from his community and some of them are his friends.
Meanwhile, community member, George Dube, 28, said he had been hitchhiking to shaft 11 the whole of this week in a bid to find his brother Fred.
Dube said Fred had been underground since August.
“On Tuesday I went to the Klerksdorp Hospital mortuary to look for my brother. I found the police there and told them I was looking for my brother. They told me I should come back after the operation is complete,” said Dube.
With tears in her eyes, Thandeka Tom was at the mine every day looking on as miners were rescued and bodies retrieved.
“My 36-year-old brother is trapped as well. He is the breadwinner at his home and supports his wife and two children. I am worried about him because he takes chronic medication for an illness he has,” said Tom.
Out of the 246 rescued men, 128 are Mozambicans, 80 Lesotho nationals, 33 Zimbabweans and five South Africans.
Police minister Senzo Mchunu, who visited the site on Tuesday, revealed that more than 1 576 illegal miners had been arrested between August 2024 and January 12. They include 997 Mozambicans, 427 Zimbabweans, 118 Basotho, 21 South Africans, a Malawian, and a Congolese.
According to Mchunu, 1 540 illegal miners who were arrested are still being held by the police.
He said 121 illegal miners had already been deported, including 80 Mozambicans, 30 Basotho, 10 Zimbabweans and one Malawian.
Mchunu said 46 had already been found guilty of illegal mining, trespassing, and contravening the Immigration Act.
He said the court handed down a sentence of a R12 000 fine or six months imprisonment wholly suspended for five years on condition that the offenders are not found guilty of similar crimes.
