As the police's battle to force illegal miners to resurface from abandoned mines in North West continues, a body was brought up from one of the shafts in Stilfontein on Tuesday, and there were reports that there were more dead bodies underground.
Police confirmed that the body of a man was retrieved on Tuesday.
The retrieval happened as the Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) returned to the Pretoria High Court on Tuesday night for an urgent order declaring that police minister Senzo Mchunu was in breach of a court order made on Sunday, by imposing limitations on what can be lowered underground.
On Sunday, the Pretoria High Court ordered the minister of police and other ministers to allow community members, charitable organisations and interested people to, in an orderly manner, provide humanitarian aid including water, food and medication to the artisanal miners trapped underground at shafts 10 and 11 of the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine. Macua was granted the interim relief pending the finalisation of the main application which will be heard on Thursday.
Despite the court order, police limited the amount and type of food and medication that could be delivered underground by charitable organisations, forcing Macua to approach the court on Tuesday.
In a hearing held virtually on Tuesday evening, the court declared that the police minister had breached Sunday's court order. It said costs for Tuesday's application would be decided when Macua's application is heard in court on Thursday.
Counsel for the minister Bongani Lukhele said during arguments that police did not permit the lowering of bulk supplies of foodstuff to the miners because they understood it would interfere with their operation.
Lukhele admitted that what the minister had permitted was not compliant with the court order. However, he said that conduct was not in bad faith.
However, judge Nicoline Janse van Nieuwenhuizen said the minister's affidavit was deposed to by a senior police official, deputy national police commissioner Tebello Mosikili. The judge said Mosikili did not indicate in her affidavit that police did not understand Sunday's court order.
The judge said Lukhele's explanation that the police's conduct was not wilful was not contained in the police's affidavit to the court.
The judge said there was not even an attempt by the police to inform the court that “if we were wrong, we apologise”.
The judge said nowhere in Sunday's order was there mention of limited water, food and medication that should be supplied to the miners.
“The word limited is not in your order,” Lukhele admitted.
Police and soldiers began blocking supplies of food, water and other necessities to the illegal miners in November. Hundreds of starving miners started resurfacing a few days later, but this has dropped to a trickle in the last few days.
Macua spokesperson Magnificent Mndebele said the organisation received information from letters sent from underground on Tuesday about six other dead miners.
Mndebele said it was not true these miners were reluctant to resurface, but said the rope that was used to assist them to resurface had been damaged.
“Any time the rope was thrown down, miners came up. The impression that they are reluctant to come out is false,” Mndebele said. The last time they had food was on November 16 and they still needed to climb about 1.5km to reach above ground.”
Mndebele said some shafts were flooded, making exiting them difficult.
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