Public protests took place in Cape Town and Pretoria Feb. 5 in solidarity with the immigrant gold miners killed by starvation as they were forced to stay for weeks in the deep underground gold mine in Stilfontein, South Africa.
Demanding justice for the miners and that the ANC-led government accept responsibility for their deaths, 50 protesters picketed outside a large conference of mine bosses, related investors and South African government leaders in Cape Town. Another protest of 100 marched to the offices of the government’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy in Pretoria.
“We believe that the people’s constitutional rights were violated and the government needs to be held accountable,” Meshack Mbangula, national coordinator of Mining Affected Communities United in Action, told GroundUp News. “We also want to assist the families affected to receive some sort of justice.”
At the Cape Town conference, Gwede Mantashe, ANC minister for Mineral and Petroleum Resources, claimed the government wasn’t responsible for the deaths of the Stilfontein miners, and had no obligation to provide food and water to them. He blamed the miners themselves for their deaths.
“It’s like committing suicide,” he said. “Committing suicide can’t be a humanitarian case.”
In a press statement released the next day, Mining Affected Communities United in Action and the Stilfontein Solidarity Committee condemned the government’s “deliberate starvation and murder of over 87 miners in Stilfontein.”
“By refusing to provide humanitarian assistance, by blocking efforts to bring food and water, and by allowing these miners to die slow, painful deaths from starvation and dehydration,” the statement said, “the South African government has carried out an intentional act of state-sponsored extermination.”
An independent pathologist brought in by Mining Affected Communities United in Action performed autopsies on 20 of the dead miners, confirming that “the primary causes of death” were starvation and dehydration.
For weeks the trapped miners suffered the ravages of tuberculosis, pneumonia and bowel infections before they died.
The government has yet to release its own report on the cause of the deaths of the miners, citing ongoing police investigations.
Mining Affected Communities United in Action and the Stilfontein Solidarity Committee are calling for criminal charges to be brought against Mantashe and all government officials responsible for the deaths in Stilfontein. They call for a commission of inquiry into the “deliberate starvation of the miners,” and for an end to intimidation of individuals and organizations who have aided the Stilfontein miners.
The two groups also call for government regulation of the artisanal and small-scale mining sector, so “alternatives” can be developed to workers being forced into gang-run informal mining to try to survive.