LOCAL communities have started offering support of emergency supplies to illegal miners trapped in the Buffelsfontein mine, east of Johannesburg.
The miners, possibly numbering in their hundreds, have been underground for weeks after police launched a blockade to “smoke out” and arrest them, said the Financial Times on Sunday.
Earlier on Saturday, the high court in Pretoria issued an interim order instructing the police to lift the blockade ahead of a hearing on Tuesday, paving the way for emergency aid to be delivered, said the newspaper.
Yasmin Omar, a lawyer for non-profit group the Society for the Protection of Our Constitution, which appealed to the Pretoria High Court, said the government line was inhumane.
“Why are the ministers not asking the deeper questions, like why these mines are still opened, and why so many impoverished people are going down there?” she told the Financial Times. Omar said the court order meant “the community will be free to drop food and essentials to the people underground”.
“They went there not because they wanted to, but out of desperation,” said one community member, Nozipho Ntuli, who told local broadcaster eNCA that her husband had been underground for months. “We are starving, and there’s no one to turn to for help. They saw others getting something from there and thought they could do the same.”
Neal Froneman, CEO Sibanye-Stillwater, whose mines have also been targeted by zama zamas, said police action was long overdue. “It has taken far too long for government to react to this crisis,” Froneman told the Financial Times.
“The authorities need to deal with the kingpins. This is not a case of communities trying to scrounge a living for themselves. This is cut-throat organised crime.”
