South African rescuers on Thursday ended their attempts to find anyone left in an illegal gold mine where at least 78 people died during a months-long police siege. The Giwusa labour union called the operation the "worst state-sponsored massacre" since the end of apartheid.
Since Monday, rescuers have used a cylindrical metal cage to pull up 78 bodies and 248 survivors, some of them emaciated and disorientated, in a court-ordered operation at the mine near the town of Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.
The cage was sent down to 1,280 metres with cameras on Thursday for a final sweep.
"We couldn't see any person still left behind and we couldn't hear any voices on the recording," head of Mines Rescue Services, Mannas Fourie, told reporters at the site.
The police operation, "Vala Umgodi" ("close the hole" in Zulu), started in August. Over the course of the siege, 1,907 miners resurfaced, while 87 bodies were retrieved.
Most of the survivors are foreign nationals, including 1,125 Mozambicans and 465 Zimbabweans. Only 26 are South Africans, according to police.
They have been arrested and charged with illegal immigration, trespass, illegal mining and other offences.
Investigators now face "a mammoth task" in identifying the dead as some of the bodies were already decomposing, and in some cases just bones, police spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe told journalists.
Among the dead, only two have been identified so far, Mathe said.
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Deaths could have been averted
No longer viable for commercial extraction, the mine – known as Shaft 11 – was entered illegally by the men trying to eke out a living.
Locally known as "zama zamas" – or "those who try" – illegal miners frustrate mining companies and are often accused of criminality by residents.
To force the miners out, police had restricted supplies of food and water that the surrounding community had been dropping down the shaft.
In November, a court ordered police to end all such restrictions.
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But local community members, civil society groups and labour unions have denounced the Stilfontein crackdown.
Zinzi Tom told France 24 her brother had been down the mine for six months and she still didn't know what had become of him.
"Even if they’re saying he’s a criminal, does he deserve to die?" she said.
Community leader Johannes Qankase told French news agency AFP on Thursday that "the site had been turned into a mass grave by the government" and he believed most of the men starved to death.
Thembile Botman, a community leader in Khuma, told Reuters news agency that local residents had been warning for months that people would die, and the deaths could have been averted had the rescue operation taken place sooner.
Dehumanisation
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (Giwusa) condemned what it called "the dehumanisation and criminalisation of these poor, desperate miners".
"This is a bloody culmination of treacherous policies pursued by the government. This was a campaign of lies," its president Mametlwe Sebei told reporters.
The police have denied blocking the miners' exit and said more than 1,500 miners did get out by their own means between the start of the siege in August and the rescue operation.
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Authorities said they were investigating the broader criminal networks that orchestrate the mining activity, recruit miners and traffic the illicit gold.
"Those ringleaders who are controlling what happens underground... some of them have been retrieved, some already in police custody, but we are looking for the real kingpins," Mathe said.
Illegal mining cost South Africa over $3 billion last year.
(with newswires)
