XPost: soc.culture.south-africa, sci.engr.mining, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.law-enforcement   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   STILFONTEIN, South Africa —They look like the walking dead. Dusty men,   
   skin and hair caked in dirt, skeletal. Some struggle to walk and collapse.   
   They blink like moles in the harsh South African sunlight. Some look   
   painfully young.   
      
   Operations to rescue hundreds of illegal miners at an abandoned gold mine   
   in Stilfontein, a small mining town about 100 miles Southwest of   
   Johannesburg, started Monday and ended Thursday when rescuers said there   
   was no longer anyone left in the shaft.   
      
   In total during the rescue operation, 246 illegal gold miners were brought   
   to the surface alive. Seventy-eight more were brought up dead.   
      
   Known here as "zama zamas" or "those who take a chance" in Zulu, the   
   illegal miners have been underground for months, with their condition   
   deteriorating rapidly after police cut off their food and water supplies   
   in November as part of Operation "Vala Umgodi," or "close the hole."   
      
   The authorities said this was done to get them to resurface, or as one   
   minister put it "smoke them out," so that they could be arrested. At   
   first, police said they were in a standoff with the illegal miners, who   
   were refusing to come up of their own accord because they feared arrest.   
      
   But as the weeks wore on, community activists and trade unions said the   
   men had become too emaciated and weak to make the hazardous 2-kilometer   
   climb up the mineshaft back to the surface even if they wanted to.   
      
   Earlier this month a mine workers union shared videos taken underground of   
   how dire the situation had become. In one video an unknown miner, his ribs   
   sticking out, begs for help. Another video showed how the miners were   
   living among dozens of corpses.   
      
   In affidavits filed to court, several zama zamas who had resurfaced since   
   the police operation started shared harrowing details about life   
   underground, with people eating cockroaches or surviving on toothpaste for   
   sustenance.   
      
   Mzukisi Jam, a local community leader who has been at the abandoned mine   
   for more than two months organizing getting supplies down to the illegal   
   miners, pulls no punches in his criticism of the government.   
      
   Standing at the dirt road leading down to the rescue site in Stilfontein,   
   where ambulances waited for survivors and people in hazmat suits handled   
   bodies, Jam said "a massacre" had taken place.   
      
   "We're not going to celebrate and give accolades and say thank you to the   
   government," he told NPR. "We started communicating with the government   
   before there was even a single fatality…but they had to wait until people   
   started dying."   
      
   Near the enormous hole leading to the disused mineshaft, specialized   
   machinery was used to lower a cage down to bring up the men and the   
   bodies. It can bring up about seven people at a time and takes around an   
   hour per rotation. No police or rescue workers would go down, saying the   
   risks were too high, so it was left to ordinary volunteers from the local   
   township to undertake the devastating task.   
      
   Zinzi Tom, whose 26-year-old brother has been underground since July, has   
   been advocating for government help for months. After several   
   organizations went to court to try and force the government to relent, she   
   eventually brought the final court case that saw the rescue operation   
   ordered this month.   
      
   "We have knocked on many doors, pleading with the government, help us,"   
   she said. "Our government only knows that you are human beings when it   
   needs votes."   
      
   Her brother, Ayanda, is the father of two young children. He had looked   
   for work unsuccessfully she said, and was driven by desperation to eke out   
   a dangerous living deep underground.   
      
   She has been outside the rescue site day after day, along with a small but   
   vocal group of family and community members singing protest songs and   
   holding signs reading "#Black Lives Matter" and "Every Life Counts. Stop   
   Xenophobia."   
      
   Many here think the fact that most of the Stilfontein zama zamas are   
   Mozambicans and Zimbabweans has played a big part in the government's   
   attitude. And, in fact, many ordinary South Africans have been unmoved by   
   their plight, with countless comments on social media platforms saying   
   they should be left to die.   
      
   Anti-immigrant sentiment is high in South Africa, where migrants are often   
   used as scapegoats for other problems. Youth unemployment in South Africa   
   is at over 45 percent.   
      
   Stilfontein is a microcosm of the post-apartheid government's failure to   
   better the lives of many poor black people. Cows graze in green fields,   
   but the landscape is pockmarked with large mine dumps, many now shuttered.   
      
   South Africa was once the world's largest gold producer, but large-scale   
   industrial mining became unprofitable and many mines have closed, laying   
   off tens of thousands of workers.   
      
   Samuel Sehebeng, 47, sitting having a midmorning drink at a tavern in the   
   nearby dusty township of Khuma, is one of them.   
      
   "We are a mining town, our economy is dependent on mining, but recently   
   most of the mines have closed down so the local economy is suffering a   
   lot," he told NPR. "I used to work in the mining industry, I lost my job,   
   full retrenchment. It was in 2017, since then I've been unemployed."   
      
   Sehebeng says he feels sympathy for the men who take up the life of the   
   zama zama. There are thousands of abandoned mine shafts where they can   
   search for a tiny fraction of the gold that made this country rich.   
      
   The government has long vowed to get tough on illegal mining, which they   
   say cost the South African economy 60 billion rand ($3 billion) in 2024.   
   They say the zama zamas are sometimes violent criminals who terrorize   
   their communities.   
      
   But experts on illegal mining say there are different hierarchies in the   
   zama zama-world; the heavily armed gang leaders who run operations,   
   brutalize and coerce their underlings, and are getting rich, and the   
   ordinary men who risk life and limb underground for a pittance.   
      
   "Darkest Point in Our History"   
      
   On 10 January, more than two months after news of the crisis at   
   Stilfontein had emerged, the Pretoria High Court ordered the government to   
   launch a rescue operation.   
      
   "We do not want a situation where this will be marked as the darkest point   
   in our history," the judge said in his ruling.   
      
   But by the time the rescue operations ended on Thursday, with 78 dead,   
   Stilfontein might indeed prove one of the darkest episodes of South   
   Africa's post-apartheid era.   
      
   While one party in South Africa's coalition government, the Democratic   
   Alliance, has belatedly condemned what's taken place at Stilfontein,   
   members of the largest party in government, the African National Congress,   
   are sticking to their guns.   
      
   "You attack the economy of South Africa, you are declaring war on the   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)