Government's R12m Stilfontein rescue kicks into gear

The government has begun a long-awaited rescue operation at the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine in Stilfontein amid a flurry of urgent litigation. 

On Thursday the Pretoria high court heard that there were 109 dead bodies in shafts 10 and 11 of the mine. The operation will cost R12m and the bill will be shared between the government and the Minerals Council South Africa.

One corpse was pulled up on Thursday, but another 108 still had to be extracted, said Anna-Marie de Vos SC, counsel for Zinzi Tom, sister to one of the miners underground. “In reality, the mineworkers cannot wait as they are dying by the hour and this is evidenced by the continued retrieval of dead bodies,” said Tom in an affidavit to the court on Friday. 

At 4pm on Friday, the court heard that the necessary contracts were ready to be signed for the rescue operation to commence. Yesterday Andries Fourie, the CEO of rescue company Mines Rescue Services (MRS), said in a statement submitted to the Constitutional Court in a separate matter that the paperwork had been signed and the company was “currently in the process to conduct groundwork to enable our mobile rescue winder [a bespoke crane device] to drive on the gravel roads to the number 11 shaft”.

We need to remember that people’s lives are at stake ... So let’s make sure that they’ve got food, water and medical supplies

—  Judge Ronel Tolmay 

Once this was complete, “we will immediately start with the hoisting”, he said.

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), which has been assisting the zama zamas and the affected community, said it had met MRS representatives and it was hoped groundwork would be complete by today, Sunday, or tomorrow morning at the latest.

In an affidavit to the Pretoria court on Friday Pieter Alberts, chief director of legal services for the department of mineral resources & energy, the Minerals Council (formerly the Chamber of Mines) would contribute to the costs of the rescue — estimated to be about R12m. It emerged during the hearing that the cost would be split 50/50 between the Minerals Council and the government. 

The rescue winder would work in 10-hour shifts, lifting the miners in small groups, the government’s counsel, Cassie Badenhorst SC, said in court. Once the access road was completed, it would take about 16 days to extract an estimated 550 miners, said Alberts.

Judge Ronel Tolmay said that, in the meantime, “we need to remember that people’s lives are at stake ... So let’s make sure that they’ve got food, water and medical supplies.”

A desperate handwritten letter from the miners was received on Thursday asking for face masks, because of the smell from the dead bodies, and Jeyes fluid — “to wash away the maggots”, said De Vos.

Badenhorst said police were not impeding efforts by the community to provide food and support. Tolmay said if the community or NGOs had any problems in getting food and water to the miners, including over the weekend, she wanted to know “immediately”.

“On my watch, nobody’s going without food,” she said.

LHR had urgently approached the high court on Thursday night on behalf of Tom. The application was heard on Friday morning.

LHR had already urgently approached the Constitutional Court on behalf of community organisation, Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua), with chilling testimony from informal miners that the situation was so desperate that some had resorted to cannibalism. Macua asked for similar orders from the Constitutional Court as from the high court on Friday, but also wanted Buffelsfontein Gold Mine, which holds the mining right over the mine, to be part of the rescue.

“To leave these miners abandoned in darkness is to sentence them to a fate unworthy of any human being. The law, the constitution, and the principles of ubuntu demand more of us,” said Macua to the Constitutional Court. The court had directed answering affidavits to be filed by yesterday.

It was a tense day in court on Friday. Alberts said the Pretoria high court application was “entirely unnecessary and indeed unhelpful because it distracts from the state’s ongoing efforts to find a solution for the challenging situation”. This was the seventh time the state had been taken to court, he said, which did “not aid the resolution of the crisis but rather diverts attention and resources from the state’s ongoing efforts”. 

De Vos said this attitude from the state was “upsetting”. When LHR started the process, all the miners were alive, she said. “If the state had complied with their constitutional duties, those people would still have been alive and it would not have been necessary to bring an application in the middle of the night.”

Towards the end of the day, Tolmay said her impression was that all counsel were “tired and overburdened by this case”.

“Everyone should just take a deep breath; and then we just make sure that the food goes down,” she said. In the end, no order was made by the court, after the government had given its commitments and the judge had said any party could approach her if there was a problem.

In its Constitutional Court papers, Macua said the miners were trapped underground, unable to get out without assistance. The police were directly responsible for the humanitarian crisis, it said.

Operation Vala Umgodi — “close the hole” — was intended to combat illegal and illicit mining, but was based on a “fatally flawed” assumption that shafts 10 and 11 were linked to the Margaret shaft, which provided a viable exit for the miners, said Macua. But in fact there was no access to this shaft from the two shafts where the miners were now trapped. 

The government’s response to these specific allegations may come later in court papers to the Constitutional Court but Alberts said in the Pretoria court that the state “has been acting responsibly and with sensitivity ... at all material times and continues to do so”. It is unclear what will happen with the urgent Constitutional Court application now that the rescue has begun. 

It emerged in correspondence attached to the court papers before the high court that the government has been arguing with Buffelsfontein Gold Mine as to who is liable to bear the R12m cost of the rescue. The government claimed that the mining company had a legal duty to the “trespassing illegal miners”. But the mine said while it would co-operate and give practical assistance, it never undertook to cover the costs.

The company had “at all material times” complied with its legal obligations and there was no legal obligation on the mine to fund the rescue, it said in correspondence.