Mashaba to assist Lily Mine families

Sifiso Mavusa’s lip quivered yesterday as he quietly listened to Harry Mazibuko, former worker at the Lily Mine, explain the situation surrounding the miners who died during a shaft collapse four years ago, and the struggles the families and former miners have had to endure since 5 February 2016.

Mavusa is the younger brother of Pretty Nkambule, one of the three miners who was trapped in a container underground after the entrance to the mine collapsed.

He lowered his head from time to time to cry into his shirt as he told The Citizen: “From my dad’s side she was my only sister. She was so kind and supportive and she was helping us. She was the breadwinner. She also had four children, three boys and one daughter who was only five months when she died.”

He explained that his sister had worked through the hours of her night shift and was about to knock off when she was asked to work an extra shift to fill in for an absent colleague.

He said two hours into the new shift, the container collapsed, trapping his sister underground.

“It was heartbreaking,” he said, his eyes bloodshot.

He said it was the beginning of a nightmare as his family soon found out that it would be difficult to recover his sister’s body from the container. Although there was an intervention to rescue the trapped miners, it failed. And that was the first of numerous failed attempts to rescue the trio for the past four years.

Former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba has vowed to offer financial assistance to the affected families to get the mine to retrieve the bodies.