South African police and ambulances were at the site Thursday of an old gold mine shaft where around 4,000 illegal miners were claimed to be underground, facing arrest if they surface.
Five clandestine miners were hauled out of the shaft by rope Wednesday at Stilfontein, about 140 kilometres (90 miles) southwest of Johannesburg, a police spokesman said, and police were urging more to leave.
“They were dehydrated and a bit hungry and weak,” North West police spokesman Sabata Mokgwabone told AFP.
“They were stabilised by paramedics and taken into custody.”
At least 1,000 people were arrested at the site this month as part of a police operation to flush them out of the shaft by restricting food and water supplies that were being lowered by people in the area.
Earlier this week, a member of the surrounding community had been able to communicate with the men underground and claimed to have been told there were around 4,000 people still there, as well as some dead bodies, Mokgwabone said.
Authorities could not verify the figure.
“It is difficult to say it is not true. We are going on the basis of what he told us,” Mokgwabone said.
Volunteers were sending the men water and porridge so they could get the strength to leave the mine, he added.
People gathered at the site also urged the men to leave the shaft.
“Those people must come out because we have brothers there, we have sons there, the fathers of our kids are there, our children are struggling,” local resident Emily Photsoa told AFP Wednesday.
She called for the government to intervene.
But the government does not intend to help, minister of the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters Wednesday.
“Honestly, we’re not sending help to criminals, we’re going to smoke them out. They will come out,” she said, in comments that drew criticism.
Thousands of illegal miners, many of them hailing from other countries, are said to operate in abandoned mine shafts in mineral-rich South Africa.
Locally known as “zama zamas” — “those who try” in the Zulu language — the miners frustrate mining companies and are accused of criminality by residents.
