Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: An attempt to crack down on illegal mining in South
Speaker 2: Africa has ended in disaster.
Speaker 3: The total of three hundred and twenty four the extraction
Speaker 3: has been done and out of the three hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty four, seventy eight.
Speaker 1: Remm remains or corpses.
Speaker 2: Authorities sealed off shafts at the buffos Fontein gold mine
Speaker 2: in October, hoping to cut off the miners access to essentials,
Speaker 2: but it left as many as one thousand people trapped
Speaker 2: underground without any access to help. Civil rights groups claim
Speaker 2: more than one hundred people have now died.
Speaker 4: I've witnessed data, I've witnessed a lot of things, have
Speaker 4: seen hair with my It's like I was in a
Speaker 4: scary movie, but it was reality to me because I
Speaker 4: was there. I was witnessing everything, and then I took risky.
Speaker 4: I told myself, I'm not gonna die under clown.
Speaker 2: In today's episode of The Next Africa podcast, we'll ask
Speaker 2: what's driving people into illegal mining, why the authorities were
Speaker 2: so keen to try and shut it down, and how
Speaker 2: this ended in tragedy, with the government forced to back
Speaker 2: down and rescue the miners.
Speaker 3: Then some members of the government are parents to boy
Speaker 3: children and how would they feel if their children were
Speaker 3: underground dying of hunger.
Speaker 2: I'm Jennifer's Abasadja and this is the Next Africa Podcast,
Speaker 2: bringing you one story each week from the continent driving
Speaker 2: the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg
Speaker 2: can provide. Joining me this week is Bloomberg stembile Sele,
Speaker 2: who's been on the ground at the Bulfha Spontein mine.
Speaker 1: Cimbilee.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining us, especially considering a lot
Speaker 2: of the work and the reporting that's gone into this.
Speaker 2: So let's just start with a bit of context. How
Speaker 2: big of an issue is illegal mining for South Africa.
Speaker 3: So the closest estimates that we have is the potential
Speaker 3: loss or what the Minerals Minister, Guero Mandasha refers to
Speaker 3: as a leekal to the economy.
Speaker 1: In fact, he.
Speaker 3: Goes as far as to call it as an attack
Speaker 3: on the economy. But he's saying that in the last year,
Speaker 3: sixty billion iran that's three billion dollars has been lost
Speaker 3: as a result of illegal mining. And then where the
Speaker 3: stems from really is a number of abandoned or disused
Speaker 3: mines in South Africa is about six thousand in totals,
Speaker 3: where you have people going into them and mining independently
Speaker 3: or artisanal mining as it's called in some places, but
Speaker 3: in South Africa it's illegal. So it's illegal mining trying
Speaker 3: to get whatever it is that they can still extract
Speaker 3: from the earth to sell for money.
Speaker 1: And it happens on a number of levels.
Speaker 3: Because I think the first maybe point of context is
Speaker 3: around former miners who themselves were a part of these
Speaker 3: minds when they were active and licensed and so on,
Speaker 3: and so they have a good sense of how things
Speaker 3: are underneath. They know where the sections of the shafts
Speaker 3: are where they're likely to get.
Speaker 1: The most minerals from.
Speaker 3: And so I think that's the first category of miners
Speaker 3: that we're seeing test. Basically, people that use to work
Speaker 3: in minds, they lost their jobs when the minds closed,
Speaker 3: and now they're failing to make.
Speaker 1: An income in any other way.
Speaker 3: Then you have people that have never mind before, but
Speaker 3: they're hearing, hey, there's a bit of a gold rush
Speaker 3: happening underneath the earth. Go and try your luck, and
Speaker 3: when you are hungry. The unemployment rate is one of
Speaker 3: the highest recorded in the world. It does become a
Speaker 3: very real option. And then I think the third category
Speaker 3: is given this vacuum that is there, given the lack
Speaker 3: of formalization around artisanal mining, if we could call it that,
Speaker 3: you have these massive cross border criminal syndicates that have
Speaker 3: gotten involved, and their operations are extensive, they're highly armed,
Speaker 3: they're very dangerous. You'll find in these communities where there
Speaker 3: are these abandoned minds and there is this activity, particularly words,
Speaker 3: driven by these syndicates, crime tends to skyrocket in the
Speaker 3: early as well. We've heard horror stories of mass rapes
Speaker 3: of women, extreme violence that happens in people's home as
Speaker 3: a results of these syndicates. The other side of it,
Speaker 3: and we'll get into this a little bit later on
Speaker 3: when we speak about the people that have surfaced from
Speaker 3: this mine, is that there is an element that appears
Speaker 3: to be human trafficking where you see people from neighboring
Speaker 3: countries mallowing Mosim beacon particular, that find themselves maybe being
Speaker 3: called by a relative to say, hey, so and so
Speaker 3: is in South Africa. Go and stay with them for
Speaker 3: a while. They've got a really good opportunity for you.
Speaker 3: They make their way across the border. Most of the
Speaker 3: time illegally. When they arrive, they told that they need
Speaker 3: to go underground and mine for the cold and other precious.
Speaker 1: Messiles, and they were essentially held hostage.
Speaker 3: They're against their will, they're not allowed to leave, and
Speaker 3: their lives are run explosisively by these syndicates. And so
Speaker 3: I think that's broadly the picture of how it's unfolding.
Speaker 3: The other missing elements I think around this is where
Speaker 3: is the market, because obviously South Africa exports all of
Speaker 3: its precious metals, and so it's not clear where these
Speaker 3: minerals are actually going. But it goes without saying that
Speaker 3: they are leaving the ports and the borders of South
Speaker 3: FA and I think that's something that the police really
Speaker 3: need to be looking into, because in as far as
Speaker 3: you can't shut down that market, you're going to struggle
Speaker 3: to clamp down on this practice for as long as
Speaker 3: you believe that it shouldn't be formulized and should be
Speaker 3: done away with.
Speaker 2: It's such a complicated and nuanced picture that you just
Speaker 2: painted there.
Speaker 1: You were talking about the police.
Speaker 2: So let's bring in sort of what we've been seeing
Speaker 2: over the past few months here in South Africa, and
Speaker 2: that's really this crackdown. We saw the authorities targeting this
Speaker 2: Buffa Spontein gold mine. Why this one and what were
Speaker 2: they doing to try and shut it down?
Speaker 3: So I think for context, this is not the only operation,
Speaker 3: and the security forces embarked on what they call on
Speaker 3: operation of Islam Quoti, which is the literal Zoo translation
Speaker 3: for close the whole. And so they've looked at a
Speaker 3: number of disused or abandoned minds where there is this
Speaker 3: illegal minding activity taking place, and they've sort of taken
Speaker 3: this approach. I think this has just been on a
Speaker 3: more larger scale and it's been one of the most
Speaker 3: active that.
Speaker 1: They have taken this project on.
Speaker 3: Right, So this particular instance begins in October of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four.
Speaker 1: You have police arriving in their numbers and.
Speaker 3: They attempt to close the shaft basically, and what that
Speaker 3: looks like in reality is to say, any provisions food, water,
Speaker 3: medication that goes down the shaft, we're stopping that from happening.
Speaker 3: We're stopping people from entering the mine already. And so
Speaker 3: when you're an illegal miner, the way that it works
Speaker 3: is that you rely on people on the outside to
Speaker 3: bring these provisions to you also to let you inside
Speaker 3: and outside of the shaft. So if there's no one
Speaker 3: on the other side that's assisting you, you are stuck there.
Speaker 3: I think something else to bear in mind is that
Speaker 3: they are underground for months at a time. So in
Speaker 3: the case of bufore Fontane, there are people that say
Speaker 3: that they've been there since February, so that's almost a year.
Speaker 3: And so the police's intention with the strategy really was
Speaker 3: to say you are now forced to come out because
Speaker 3: you have no way of surviving underground, and that's to
Speaker 3: look like prohibiting community members or people that they work
Speaker 3: alongside these illegal miners from bringing them these provisions. And
Speaker 3: what we've seen is the number of court cases led
Speaker 3: by NGOs that are assisting community members and family members
Speaker 3: of people underground to try and compel the government to
Speaker 3: allow for these provisions to be let down. So the intention,
Speaker 3: as I mentioned, is to force people.
Speaker 1: To come out.
Speaker 3: And when we look at the setup as it were
Speaker 3: of this particular mind, there's three shafts and the men
Speaker 3: that we're dealing with two of those shafts. It is
Speaker 3: possible for you to come out by yourself without assistance.
Speaker 3: It's not easy, but there's infrastructure, there's a stair wall,
Speaker 3: there's a staircase, there's something that you can hold on to,
Speaker 3: you to drag yourself up the mind that has become
Speaker 3: the death trap where this tragedy is now unfolding.
Speaker 1: It's shaft number eleven.
Speaker 3: The difficulty with this one is that it's three klumeters
Speaker 3: deep underground. There is no climbing infrastructure, so the only
Speaker 3: way in and out is to be dragged out. And
Speaker 3: so initially, when the police had stopped people from going
Speaker 3: in and out, the community and family members had taken
Speaker 3: it upon themselves to create like a makeshift pulley system
Speaker 3: that was made of rope, and so some of the people,
Speaker 3: very few that who've seen emerge from this particular shaft
Speaker 3: of the three have been retrieved or extracted in that manner.
Speaker 3: At some point the police came in and they stopped
Speaker 3: even that community driven initiative from taking place, and I
Speaker 3: think so that's how we've seen the sort of escalation
Speaker 3: over the past few weeks where there's no food getting
Speaker 3: two people, particularly in the shaft, and so a number
Speaker 3: of them, we believe that number maybeage one hundred by
Speaker 3: the end of this week.
Speaker 1: Many of them have starved to death.
Speaker 3: Some of them all have fall into their death trying
Speaker 3: to make it up that police system when it was
Speaker 3: a possibility. We understand that things got so severe. There
Speaker 3: are claims by some of the miners that have been
Speaker 3: able to come up that things got so bad people
Speaker 3: were eating cockroaches down there. Some are claiming that there
Speaker 3: were instances of cannibalism.
Speaker 1: Of course, we can't confirm me.
Speaker 3: Any of that, but that is the reports and that's
Speaker 3: how people are describing the conditions at Shoft number eleven.
Speaker 1: Stick with us. We come back.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about the rescue operation that's finally taking place
Speaker 2: and whether or not there's actually going to be more
Speaker 2: crackdowns like this and some of the other mines across
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Welcome back today on the podcast, we're talking about illegal
Speaker 2: mining and how a crackdown on one mine in South
Speaker 2: Africa reportedly led to the deaths of as many as
Speaker 2: one hundred miners. Stembulay is still with us and has
Speaker 2: been on the scene there, so Stimbulay, the government refused
Speaker 2: at first to help get miners out, as you were
Speaker 2: describing for us earlier, who were the people then that
Speaker 2: helped them. Is it some of these NGOs that you
Speaker 2: were mentioning.
Speaker 3: So I think this is also what has led to
Speaker 3: the mass of animosity and hostility that is taking place
Speaker 3: between community members, family members, and the governments. In the
Speaker 3: very early days of this operation, where it really wasn't
Speaker 3: clear what the setup was and that there was a
Speaker 3: shoft where people, even if they wanted to come out
Speaker 3: physically could not, the government took a really tough position.
Speaker 3: We heard the Minister and the Presidency don't have any
Speaker 3: saying that government was not going to get involved in
Speaker 3: assisting people that were essentially criminals. Of course they've not
Speaker 3: been bought at that point before a court of law,
Speaker 3: but they were for all intents and purposes, involved in
Speaker 3: criminal activity by participating in this illegal gold mining. And
Speaker 3: so I think that's where the breakdown and the relationship happened.
Speaker 3: And when the government was folding their arms and saying,
Speaker 3: you do what you want, but we will arrest you
Speaker 3: as soon as you come up here, we then saw
Speaker 3: community members coming in and the first thing that they did,
Speaker 3: obviously was to fundraise money to try and get food.
Speaker 3: When the court orders did come that temporarily did allow
Speaker 3: for some provision to send down. We saw them putting
Speaker 3: together this Pulley system. On the sidelines of that, we
Speaker 3: also saw court action that was driven by NGOs or
Speaker 3: sponsored by them on behalf of family and community members.
Speaker 3: And this is where they were also doing their part
Speaker 3: before the court to try and compel governments to do
Speaker 3: something about this. This then comes to a head last
Speaker 3: week Friday when an applicant Zinzi Tom is a woman
Speaker 3: whose brother is underground at shaft number eleven. She then
Speaker 3: went to court and I think this would have been
Speaker 3: the fifth court case involving the government in this particular
Speaker 3: matter where she was pleading with the court basically to
Speaker 3: force government to assist her. And in that session before court,
Speaker 3: government then said, you know what, we don't need to
Speaker 3: carry on with this case. We are happy to reach
Speaker 3: a settlement. We are going to assist. And what that
Speaker 3: assistance has looked like is bringing the Minerals Council organization
Speaker 3: on board to provide the twelve million Rand that is
Speaker 3: needed to fund this rescue operation.
Speaker 1: They bring the heavy machinery that.
Speaker 3: Has basically a cage that goes down like an elevator
Speaker 3: and is able to then extract to bring people back
Speaker 3: from this two point eight kilometer put and so this
Speaker 3: rescue operation it.
Speaker 1: Began on Monday.
Speaker 3: For their part, the government is arguing that at some
Speaker 3: point they did make the realization and it's not that
Speaker 3: they were against assisting people, but that they were just
Speaker 3: waiting for the best way to go about it, and
Speaker 3: when that opportunity presented itself, they found the funding, they
Speaker 3: found a plan that would work. They they did embark
Speaker 3: upon it. They weren't dragging their feeds. But I think
Speaker 3: the complicated part is it also depends on who you're
Speaker 3: speaking to, because again the Minerals minister Guende Mandesha, he
Speaker 3: is adamant that this is an illegal activity. There's no
Speaker 3: human rights element, there's no humanitarian assistance that is required.
Speaker 3: You can't do these things for people that are obviously
Speaker 3: anciently criminals. And so that's the lay of the land
Speaker 3: politically speaking. But there really has been then some animosity
Speaker 3: given the stance from government between them and the NGOs
Speaker 3: and community and family members of those who are trapped,
Speaker 3: particularly at Shoft eleven of this mine.
Speaker 2: Before we let you go, stim be like, can you
Speaker 2: just describe for us the situation there on the ground.
Speaker 2: You spent time there, obviously speaking with authorities but also
Speaker 2: with the community. What can you tell us about some
Speaker 2: of the takeaways that you got from being there.
Speaker 3: I think just incredibly somber. Watching things unfold is kind
Speaker 3: of in the middle of nowhere, It deserted, it is
Speaker 3: extremely hot, and you just see the hub of activity,
Speaker 3: so many police vehicles, and I think just the most
Speaker 3: chilling thing is really seeing the amounts of Forensic Pathology
Speaker 3: Services vehicles that were standing by to gather up the bodies.
Speaker 3: And so even though we're at somewhat of a distance
Speaker 3: from the actual shaft opening, you could see when the
Speaker 3: bodies were being extracted and they were loaded into these vehicles.
Speaker 3: And I must just tell you that the smell of
Speaker 3: the decomposed bodies was extreme. It stuck to the people
Speaker 3: that had emerged or were rescued from the shaft. Of
Speaker 3: the people that we saw are being rescued yesterday and
Speaker 3: the day before, they were extremely young, some young boys
Speaker 3: who were about fourteen fifteen years old, who were nothing
Speaker 3: but skin and bones, given that they'd been underground for
Speaker 3: so long without any provision, and so the scenes really
Speaker 3: unfolding there an absolutely horrific situation.
Speaker 1: To be watching, and I'm assuming that you're.
Speaker 3: A family member or a community member, you have someone
Speaker 3: that's underground that you care about.
Speaker 1: It is also a really scary moment.
Speaker 3: For you because you're hoping for the best and that
Speaker 3: they're be one of the lucky ones that.
Speaker 1: Actually emerge still alive.
Speaker 3: But there's also those that have given up and have
Speaker 3: got in the sense that they're just waiting for a
Speaker 3: body and they just want the closure to be able
Speaker 3: to bury the person that they love. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: I think there's a very somber mood there at the
Speaker 3: before sputeen mine.
Speaker 2: And you can read all of our coverage across Bloomberg platforms.
Speaker 2: Now here's some of the other stories we've been following
Speaker 2: across the region. This week, the US State Department demanded
Speaker 2: that Rwanda stop using GPS jamming equipment in Eastern Democratic
Speaker 2: Republic of Congo, where millions of people displaced by conflict
Speaker 2: are desperate for aid. The jamming and the so called
Speaker 2: spoofing is preventing United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian aircraft from
Speaker 2: flying in the region, the Department said in a statement
Speaker 2: on Wednesday. And Gaban's military leader has picked a new
Speaker 2: Economy Minister to resolve the Central African oil producers' debt woes.
Speaker 2: Mark Domba, an entrepreneur who's studied public administration at Harvard University,
Speaker 2: takes the helm of the key ministry after a cabinet
Speaker 2: reshuffle announced Wednesday on the Presidency's Facebook page. The shakeup
Speaker 2: comes days after the World Banks suspended disbursements to Gabon
Speaker 2: over arrears of twenty seven million dollars. The OPEC member
Speaker 2: also has dollar bonds maturing in June of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: And you can follow these stories across Bloomberg, including the
Speaker 2: Next African Newsletter. We'll put a link to that in
Speaker 2: the show notes. This program was produced by Adrian Bradley.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to follow and review this show wherever you
Speaker 2: usually get your podcasts. I'm Jennifer Zabasandra. Thanks as always
Speaker 2: for listening.