The South African government says it will not send help to hundreds of illegal miners who are believed to be hiding inside an abandoned mine in the country’s North West province.
Authorities have cut off food and water to the miners, a day after cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni vowed that the police will “smoke them out.”
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped. Criminals are to be persecuted,” Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday.
Police have been working for weeks to empty the abandoned gold shaft located around 155 km southwest of the African state’s biggest city, Johannesburg.
On Thursday, the South African Police Service (SAP) announced that despite multiple calls, several of the suspects have refused to cooperate.
“A decomposed body of an illegal miner was brought up earlier. Police have registered an inquest to investigate circumstances surrounding his death,” SAP wrote on X.
The move is part of SAP’s operation Vala Umgodi (Close the hole), which includes blocking off access to supplies to force the illegal miners out of the pits and arrest them. Most of them are said to be undocumented migrants from neighboring countries, including Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Mozambique.
South Africa is one of the world’s top gold producers, although mining output has been in decline for decades. According to authorities, the downturn is in part due to thousands of illegal miners who hinder operations and are viewed as a source of criminality by locals.
On Thursday, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe estimated that between 350 and 400 people may be locked underground in the Stilfontein mines, far fewer than the earlier figure of 4,000 reported by authorities based on information obtained from those who assisted in rescuing three of them.
According to law enforcement, 15 suspects, including Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Basotho (people from Lesotho), and South Africans, voluntarily resurfaced on Tuesday and are being processed for court on charges of “possession of gold dust, contravention of the Immigration Act, 2002, and illicit mining.”
SAP said more than 1,000 illegal miners had been arrested in recent weeks. “SAP remains resolute in its commitment to uphold law and order and urges all remaining illegal miners to adhere to police calls to resurface,” it said in a statement on Thursday.