‘Giant task’ to identify bodies, police say

It will be a “mammoth task” to identify bodies pulled from a disused mine in South Africa this week, a police spokesman says.

Seventy-eight bodies, along with more than 240 illegal miners, have been brought to the surface since Monday as part of a rescue operation, Brigadier Athlenda Mathe told reporters near the top of the mine shaft in Stilfontein. .

They had been underground since at least November.

It was then that authorities intensified their efforts to put an end to illicit mining activities by surrounding the entrance to the shaft and refusing to allow food and water to be brought down.

The police always said that the miners were free to leave at any time.

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According to the police, there are no bodies or living people left in the mine.

So far only two of the deceased have been positively identified, Brigadier General Mathe said.

“Some of (the bodies) were decomposed bodies that appeared mostly as bones,” he added.

DNA testing is being done, but an additional challenge in uncovering identities is that “the majority of (those found) are undocumented immigrants,” he added. Their families may not know they were in the mine shaft in the first place.

The vast majority of those who came out alive came from neighboring countries such as Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

A union and human rights activists accused authorities of overseeing a massacre.

But police have defended their actions, saying they involved criminality and that it was the bosses in charge of illicit mining who controlled the flow of supplies and tried to prevent people from reappearing.

During a visit on Tuesday, police and mines ministers were insulted and forced to leave by an angry crowd who blamed the government for the deaths.

Police said more than 1,500 miners had come to the surface before the rescue operation began.

However, others remained underground, either because they feared arrest or because the gangs that control the mine forced them to stay there.

Many mines in South Africa have been abandoned over the past three decades by companies that did not consider them economically viable.

The mines have been taken over by gangs, often former employees, who sell minerals they find on the black market.

This includes the mine in Stilfontein, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of the country’s largest city, Johannesburg, which has been the focus of government efforts to crack down on the illegal industry.

A rescue cage had been lowered down a shaft to reach the miners believed to be at least 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) underground.

Many of the survivors had been without food or water since November, leaving them emaciated. They are now receiving medical attention.

Authorities say they will be charged with illegal mining, trespassing and contravening immigration laws, since most of the miners are undocumented immigrants.

“It is a crime against the economy, it is an attack on the economy,” Mines Minister Gwede Mantashe said on Wednesday, defending the hard line taken against the miners.

South Africa relied heavily on miners from countries such as Lesotho and Mozambique before the industry went into decline.

Unemployment in South Africa currently exceeds 30% and many former miners say they have few alternative sources of income.