The illegal mining saga at a disused Stilfontein, North West, gold mine has made news headlines for weeks now, with developments announced almost round the clock. The death toll also keeps ticking up, with bodies pulled out of the disused shaft every other day.
The initial estimates that hundreds of illegal miners were holed up underground seem to be close to the mark as no less than 53 miners had emerged from the Buffelsfontein gold mine shafts by Friday morning. The indications are that many more are still underground.
But the standoff in the area, where police have been guarding the abandoned shafts, waiting to arrest the zama zamas, as the illegal miners are commonly known, as soon as they emerge to the surface, continues.
Knowing they face arrest the minute they set foot on the surface, the miners have held out underground, refusing to resurface, instead asking for food and water supplies to sustain them in the belly of the earth. This has resulted in a stand-off and conflict between authorities and local community members from Khuma township who have been trying to help the zama zamas with food supplies.
Now, one thing that is not in doubt is that the activities of the zama zamas are nothing but criminal, hence the police waiting to cart them off once they resurface.
What is interesting, though, is how NGOs, notably the Society for the Protection of Our Constitution have entered the fray in the name of human rights on the side of those breaking the law, the zama zamas.
The NGO has gone to court, seeking that humanitarian aid be allowed to the miners as their basic rights entitle them to access to basic necessities needed to sustain life.
South Africa has since 1994 chosen to be a constitutional democracy where human rights reign supreme and are protected by a Bill of Rights embedded in our Constitution, hence a step such as that taken by Society for the Protection of Our Constitution was to be expected.
The conundrum is: should the state be forced to feed criminals who are busy breaking the law in the name of upholding human rights?
Is that not tantamount to aiding and abetting since some of the zama zamas have emerged from the shafts claiming they had been held against their will and forced to work for faceless people?
Litigation in high courts doesn’t come cheap, and we are starting to wonder who sponsors these NGOs to take on such costly assignments with money that could be put to better use fighting for the betterment of society at large.
Remember, it is the state, in other words you and I fellow taxpayers, that funds the response to such litigation.
Presumably, when such a battle is won by the NGO, the government could be required to provide the essentials needed by the men of virtue doing their bit for the nation down those mine shafts.
Could that money also not be put to better use?
We sometimes wonder what the true intentions of these NGOs that seemingly fight for lawbreakers, often of foreign origin, are.
I agree with the MK party. SA had mining assets and a huge unemployment problem there should be an honest regulated way of bringing them together.