Help stop these death factories
Yesterday, the country woke up to the news of six illegal miners who were killed by gas explosion at Gloria coal mine, near Middelburg, in Mpumalanga,
More than 20 zama zamas, as illegal miners are known, were reported to be still trapped underground the Gupta-owned mine.
The mine’s business rescue practitioner Mike Elliott said the search was called off after the six were rescued as the teams could not access or determine the point where the explosion had occurred.
He said rescue personnel had to first restore power to the transformers to ensure ventilation and then remove the toxic gases from underground.
“We can’t reach the other 22 that the community is saying are still underground. We can’t reach them because we are not certain of the location,” Elliot said.
He said the mine was under siege from illegal mining syndicate who wanted to strip it of equipment.
Elsewhere in this newspaper today, we report that more than 20 people could still be trapped in the belly of the earth yet a visitor from Mars would be excused for believing SA would not be bothered by such wanton loss of life. The tragedy competed for attention with other typical South African news dominating headlines. People carried on with their lives as if nothing had happened because these were not legitimate miners and therefore did not deserve much sympathy.
According to Minerals Council South Africa, zama zamas risk their lives as most of them die in underground rockfalls or factional fights among themselves.
They reopened old decommissioned mine shafts , putting lives of nearby communities in danger with their illegal, unsupervised activities, often ending in catastrophe as witnessed at Gloria mine.
Innocent people also get killed in clashes with illegal miners, just like the security guard at Gloria said they had to flee last week when they were attacked by men carrying pangas who emerged from the shafts.
Why are we allowing such mayhem to go unchecked and not report it to the police?
What happened to the value of human lives? Are we fine with seeing blood spilled with such gay abandon?