Footage from a South Africa raid reveals dead bodies underground and imprisoned miners

Two months after a police raid, a group representing illegal miners in South Africa said Monday that at least 400 of them were still trapped below. The organization also supplied video of the mine, showing malnourished individuals and dozens of dead bodies.

A request for response from a South Africa Police Service (SAPS) official was not answered. Spokesman Makhosonke Buthelezi of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy stated that although remains had been recovered from the mine, no other information could be released until an official report was released. The South African miners’ rights organization Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA) acquired the two tapes on Monday, and Reuters confirmed that they were authentic. When a pulley was attached to the cavern’s bottom on January 10, miners came out of the Northwest Province gold mine with them.

The film appeared to show three dozen dead, according to a Reuters reporter. The body-shaped items wrapped in plastic at the bottom of the mine shaft were not identifiable as bodies by Reuters.

While surviving miners who are still trapped beneath begged for assistance, the first movie allegedly showed mounds of workers’ remains covered in plastic and bags. Miners without shirts were shown in a second video appearing gaunt, their ribs showing.

As part of a crackdown on illicit mining that has afflicted South Africa for decades, police said they stopped the miners’ access to food and water in order to drive them out and arrest them for breaking into the abandoned mine in search of left-over gold.

More than 400 miners are still awaiting rescue following a two-month standoff with South African police, according to MACUA spokeswoman Magnificent Mndebele.

A pulley system that was meant to lower supplies to the miners and allow them to escape was destroyed, according to Mndebele, but MACUA fixed it on January 9.

“The shaft has a depth of two kilometers. There is no way for individuals to ascend,” Mndebele declared.

According to Buthelezi, South African officials are presently at the mine with equipment in preparation for a scheduled rescue this week.

“The pulley system was put in place by community members, but it has been replaced with machinery used by mine rescue services,” according to him. 

“The mine rescue services were contracted by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.”