The tragedy of miners trapped underground and the police’s Operation Vala Umgodi is an all-time low for human rights – the government of national unity must act now
“Then came the final moments for some. Their breath grew shallow, their bodies still. They didn’t die with any great commotion, just a quiet surrender, as if their bodies had finally given up. The hollow, lifeless look in their eyes was a constant reminder of what awaited the rest of us.
“It was not an illness that killed them. It was starvation. A cruel, drawn-out death that consumed them piece by piece. This is what I saw underground. This is what we lived through, and this is why, respectfully, no one, despite what they have done, should ever endure such suffering again.”
These are the words of Clement Moeletsi. He was underground at the Stilfontein mine from the end of July 2024 until 9 December, when he was sent out by the other miners because of his frail and weakened state. The words are in an affidavit, one of the founding documents in the application of NGO Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) being brought before the constitutional court for urgent relief and an order directing the state to rescue the remaining miners, numbered 600 to 900, still trapped underground.
The rest of his affidavit and those of the other deponents are harrowing and speak of a level of existence that we cannot want to imagine.
But what made Moeletsi decide to go underground? The dangers are well known, including the illegality of artisanal mining, as zama zama activity is now known.
Again in his own words: “I made the difficult decision to descend two kilometres underground, driven by financial hardship and the overwhelming need to provide for my family. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to secure employment, leaving me without the means to support my household. The pressure of not being able to provide food or basic necessities for my child and loved ones became unbearable, leaving me with no choice but to take this desperate step in the hope of alleviating our dire situation.”
In the documentary A Decent Path, produced by the Social Policy Initiative (SPI), about the R370 social relief of distress grant, Wiseman Magasela, a social policy expert and former special adviser to then minister of social development, Zola Skweyiya, says of government social security and labour market policies: “… you cannot deny people both a job and a grant. You have to give one or the other.”
Recent statistics for the R370 grant put monthly applications at just over 15 million people. Eight million applicants are approved monthly for the grant. This leaves millions of people without any reliable source of income, given the 41.9% unemployment rate (which includes people who have given up looking for work). This is the second highest unemployment rate in the world.
Formal sector jobs shrunk by 27 000 year-on-year, according to the third quarter figures in 2024. Informal sector jobs increased by 237 000 — including 11 000 informal mining jobs.
Moeletsi’s story of trying to eke out an existence when the state and the formal sector have failed to provide formal income is common.
Informality is not synonymous with illegality. But, in the case of artisanal mining, much of it is done on abandoned mines and so miners are often trespassers and are tried as such. They are usually also convicted of the intention to commit theft of gold bearing material or other minerals.
Thokozani Chilenga-Butao, a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, said in an article that the increase in informal, often illegal mining, has been enabled by the state’s failure to finalise its draft Mine Closure Strategy since 2021. The ongoing absence of this strategy, which would place the costs of mine rehabilitation on the departing mine owners, has led to two great ills — a proliferation of polluted ground, water and ground arising from the untreated mines and an increase in illegal mining of the abandoned mines.
The state’s policy at Stilfontein mine of Vala Umgodi (close the hole) is a deliberate policy to force illegal mineworkers to the surface.
For those still under the surface conditions are appalling according to the affidavits of Moeletsi and others, and include starvation, cannibalism and drinking contaminated water.
South Africa has crisis levels of unemployment, an ocean of poverty and destitution and is the most unequal country in the world, which means we will inevitably see dystopic events unfolding if there are no clear and successful state interventions that address the root causes of poverty and unemployment and a growing state of hopelessness.
The irony of this tragedy is that gold prices reached new records in 2024.
The state’s reluctant payment of the monthly R370 grant to eight million poor and unemployed adults is certainly not enough to meet the needs of so many desperate people. This leaky policy flies in the face of the socio-economic constitutional rights to social security as well as sufficient food for all in South Africa.
The greater right — the right to human dignity for all — is a fundamental constitutional right in South Africa. The state is obliged to not only respect and protect, but also to promote and fulfil the rights of the Constitution. If we expect people to obey principles such as the rule of law and to respect the right to private property, then the state must surely meet its obligations to fulfil the fundamental right of human dignity for all. We prosecute trespassers and judge the actions of the desperate.
The conditions described by Moeletsi and others, caused by deliberate state police actions, are inhumane and degrading. The living conditions of poverty that led to cases of infanticide by mothers that I wrote about last year are equally inhumane. It is this state of poverty that led Road Accident Fund chief executive Collins Letsoalo to feel the need to caution last December that although he understood that people live in dire socio-economic circumstances, they must not throw themselves in front of cars to get compensation payouts. Inhumane and degrading.
Under the multiparty government of national unity, the state has to take decisive action and to act humanely in line with the obligations of the Constitution under which the state itself is constituted.
In recent months, and especially after the announcement of the closing of SPI because of a lack of funding, I have had surprising conversations with people from unexpected quarters — well-to-do business people. The one thing that they have in common is the growth of their support for the economic stimulus policy potential of a decent universal basic income that SPI proposed. With its 96% self- financing, pro-growth multiplier dynamic, people recognise that there is no alternative policy on the table that has the ability to interrupt immediately and in a fail-safe way the levels of poverty and of desperation that is life for more than 30 million South Africans than to pay a universal monthly income of R1 634, taxed back from those above the tax threshold.
And if the GNU state continues to fail its constitutional obligations, the elections of 2029 will be won by a leadership that is not concerned about middle-class sensibilities; instead the elections will be won by those who address the deep resentments of the majority whose needs are ignored by the current leadership.
Isobel Frye is the founder and former executive director of the Social Policy Initiative. She is a national minimum wage commissioner. She writes in her personal capacity.
