Dozens of bodies have been removed from a mine in South Africa after months of police standoff

First responders pulled dozens of bodies and hundreds of emaciated survivors from the abandoned gold mine this week, but Zinzi Tom’s brother was not among them.

After removing 78 bodies and 246 survivors over the past two days, South African police said no one was left in the mine.

On Wednesday, they announced the end of the court-ordered rescue operation, cutting short a 10-day operation, bringing a gruesome end to months of conflict with illegal miners and their families.

“I don’t want to pronounce him dead,” said Tom As it is presenter Nil Köksal left the operation site shortly after. “I hope and pray to God that he will come back.”

Illegal mining attracts desperate workers

Tom has not heard from his brother Ayanda since July 2024, when he told him he was going to mine illegally at the abandoned Buffelsfontein Gold Mine in Stilfontein.

At first, Tom says he doesn’t like her choice. But there was no other work for her, and she said she had to earn a living to take care of her children.

“(He) said he was going to risk his life by going underground and trying to make a living,” he said. “It’s a very sad moment for us as a family.”

Illegal mining is a common practice in South Africawhere more than 30 percent of people are unemployed.

Migrants and others desperate to make ends meet scour the country’s thousands of abandoned mines for mineral deposits, often exploited by organized crime rings.

Police cut off most of the exit points at the Stilfontein mine in August to crack down on illegal mining, with hundreds of men still working inside.

The aim, a cabinet minister said at the time, was to “smoke them out”.

The community says the miners are starving

Police and government officials have said the miners have never been trapped since the standoff began, but have refused to come out and face charges.

But friends, families and supporters of the miners claimed many were left very weak, hungry and dehydrated after police dismantled the wheeled system used to deliver food and water to them.

A court ruled in December that volunteers should be allowed to send essential supplies to the miners, and a separate ruling last week ordered the state to begin rescue efforts.

Mine Affected Communities United Action, which launched the lawsuit, said some miners were trapped 2.5 kilometers deep in different parts of the mine, which has multiple shafts, multiple levels and a labyrinth of tunnels.

The Federation of South African Trade Unions accused the state on Tuesday of allowing the men to “starve deep underground”.

“These miners, many of them undocumented and desperate workers from Mozambique and other southern African countries, have been left to die in one of the worst displays of willful state negligence in recent history,” the statement said.

South African police national spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe defended the operation.

“Our mandate was to fight crime and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Mathe said on the site Wednesday.

“By giving these illegal miners food, water and supplies, the police will be amused and allow crime to thrive.”

‘Pray for us’

All the survivors were taken out this week, many visibly frail, into police custody.

Police said that 1,576 miners went out with their own vehicles from August to the start of the rescue operation. All of them have been arrested and 121 of them have already been deported.

“If you can walk out, they take you straight to the cells,” he said Mzukisi Jam, a civil society activist who was in the area throughout the rescue operation.

Meanwhile, Tom says he’s heard of some miners getting out of another shaft on their own. She said she hopes and prays her brother goes there now.

When he spoke to the CBC, he still hadn’t told his family the rescue was over.

“I’m afraid,” he said. Today, I am afraid to look into my mother’s eyes and tell her the news.”

He asked people around the world watching the news to keep him and his family in their prayers.

“I need my brother to survive,” he said. “Pray for us.”