Illegal miners 'starving' underground in South Africa standoff

Illegal miners at a disused South African shaft are starving because police are limiting supplies in an attempt to force out the hundreds believed to be underground, a miner and a community leader have said.

"There's nothing left for someone to eat, to drink or anything that can make a human being survive. There is nothing left underground for now," said 35-year-old miner Ayanda Ndabeni on Sunday, who was hoisted out of the shaft by rope on Friday.

One decomposed body was brought out last week from the shaft at Stilfontein, about 140 kilometres southwest of Johannesburg, and there are fears there may be more.

Around a dozen people have resurfaced in the past week when authorities intermittently blocked locals from lowering food and water in a nearly two-week push to empty the shaft.

A court ordered on Saturday that police must end all restrictions at the abandoned gold mine shaft, a rough hole in the ground in an area of open veld where police were stationed on Sunday to see if any more people emerged.

Locals were able to lower 600 packets of instant porridge and 600 litres of water by rope on Saturday, community leader Johannes Qankase said, welcoming the court order.

This was the first supply since Tuesday, he said. "We can save lives because now," he said. "They must get food, they must get water, they must get their medical pills."

"We've seen from the people who have been resurfacing, they are very weak, they are very dehydrated," he said.

'Zama zamas'

Earlier this week, a local claimed to have been told there were around 4,000 miners underground. Police said the figure was probably in the hundreds.

The authorities' reaction has outraged many in South Africa, particularly the comments of the minister of the presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, who told reporters Wednesday: "Honestly, we're not sending help to criminals; we're going to smoke them out."

Thousands of illegal miners, many of them hailing from other countries, are said to operate in abandoned mine shafts in mineral-rich South Africa.

Locally known as "zama zamas" — "those who try" in the Zulu language — the miners frustrate mining companies and are accused of criminality by residents.

"We are calling on all those illegal miners to resurface," police spokeswoman Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said on Sunday.

The government has said it would assemble a team of mine rescue experts to suggest a plan to remove all the miners, she said.