Stilfontein mine tragedy highlights the need for a much clearer SAPS Code of Conduct

19 Jan 2025

Should the police have taken more care to reduce the risk that the operation would result in the loss of life? And is it valid for the police to take action that is likely to lead to many deaths of people because they are involved in illegal mining?

With 87 bodies having been removed from the Stilfontein mine (whether there are others remains unclear) and with the scale of the tragedy beginning to fully sink in, there will be many different and necessary reckonings.

There have been calls for a commission of inquiry but the first and most urgent task may involve identifying the deceased. It is reported that only two of the 87 bodies that are recovered have been identified. Where the identities of deceased miners are known, family and relatives will be involved in recovering their bodies, burying and mourning them, as well as beginning to reflect on the costs that burial and the loss of these incomes may impose on them. They may also want answers about culpability for the deaths of the miners. And they may wonder whether it is not a very heartless place that allows this type of thing to happen.

While comparisons with Marikana are being made, the Stilfontein episode is also in some ways reminiscent of the Albert Street fire in Johannesburg in August 2023 in which a large number of people (77) were also killed. As in Albert Street those who have died in Stilfontein are people occupying marginal positions in South African society, many of them foreigners, and living in conditions that reflect their desperation.

Police should be under an obligation to minimise the risk of unnecessary loss of life irrespective of nationality.

The fact that the vast majority of the deceased miners were foreigners motivates some people to treat their deaths with relative indifference. This is aligned with a body of opinion that holds that, because the deceased were involved in economic activity which is defined under the law as illegal, the response of the government and police has been entirely proportional and legitimate. Some appear to feel that the only people who should be regarded as responsible for the deaths are the miners themselves, including the mafias who exercise authority underground. As at Marikana, and in Albert Street, the issues involved are complex.

Read more: Notes on the underground — where the most desperate and impoverished scavenge for illicit gold

Clarifying questions of responsibility may involve disentangling fact from fiction in numerous different accounts.

Notwithstanding differences of perception about questions of culpability, many people are likely to be able to agree that this is a tragedy. Those who have suffered most have been impoverished men trying to make a living for themselves and their families. They may be foreigners who are engaged in a type of crime. But we can see the bitterness of their fate − to have died needlessly from deliberately imposed starvation far underground in the brutal conditions in which informal sector deep-level mining in South Africa takes place.

One issue will be about the lessons for policing in South Africa. The key question is: should the police have taken more care to reduce the risk that the operation would result in the loss of life? Related to this, is it valid for the police to take action that is likely to lead to many deaths of people because they are involved in illegal mining? This is an ethical question about what level of importance the SAPS gives to the protection of life. Ultimately it concerns the type of ethics that the South African public wants the SAPS to uphold and apply.

The point that protecting rights involves, above all, taking care to protect life, is not one which the SAPS appears to understand.

The fact that the deceased were mostly foreign should not make any difference here. Police should be under an obligation to minimise the risk of unnecessary loss of life irrespective of nationality. Even when foreigners are illegally in the country, we should acknowledge them to be fellow human beings and Africans and not regard it as a matter of indifference to us whether they live or die. Though there is mafia-like violence and lawlessness associated with the zama zama industry, it is likely that most miners are not directly implicated in it.

The SAPS Code of Conduct commits members to “uphold and protect the fundamental rights of every person”. But the point that protecting rights involves, above all, taking care to protect life, is not one which the SAPS appears to understand. As the South African Council of Churches has said: “We firmly believe that it could have been possible to respond to the challenges posed by this reality, without losing so much life. One of the most sacred tasks of any government, especially one like ours – born from the ruins of Apartheid and built on the values of our Constitution – is to protect and preserve life.”

Along with protecting life it is the responsibility of the SAPS to enforce the law. An alternative approach to the Stilfontein situation aimed at prioritising life, need not have involved permissiveness about criminality. It may have taken more time and involved greater financial expense. But the delay and expense would likely have been nothing compared with the likely burden to the government, including the cost of civil litigation, considering the current death toll.

One of the risks of continuing high levels of violence in South Africa is that we become callous about the suffering of others. This extends to an indifference about whether others live or die. Police, who are exposed to violence far more frequently than most of us, are at heightened risk of this kind of callousness. This is one reason for taking police occupational burnout and trauma seriously. It also calls for clarity about fundamental policing ethics.

As we reckon with the legacy of Stilfontein, we can see that the potential for police to cause grave harm extends beyond the use of force.

The ethical point in this case is that, in every operation that they are involved in, the first question that police must ask is whether there is a risk to life. If so, how can they minimise the risk that people, including themselves, will be killed? This is not intended to be a motivation for cowardice but for taking the right level of care to ensure that the operation is successful while minimising the level of harm that it causes.

The fact that this is not already understood by the SAPS suggests that the current police Code of Conduct needs to be replaced by a statement of values that is much clearer about the fundamental ethical responsibilities of the police. For reasons that are not known, the SAPS has refused to implement a 2018 use of force policy that embodies the protection of life principle, notwithstanding the fact that it was signed off by then minister of police Bheki Cele.

Protection of life is generally seen as relevant to the use of firearms and other lethal force. Operation Vala Umgodi shows that other poorly considered actions by the police can also result in the needless loss of life. As we reckon with the legacy of Stilfontein, we can see that the potential for the police to cause grave harm extends beyond the use of force. It should be clear by now that there is no way forward for the SAPS that does not embody much greater care about the protection of human life. DM

David Bruce is a researcher focusing on policing and public security.

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