Stilfontein solidarity in Cape Town: Miners ‘are human beings and their dignity should have been protected’

Chants of “Stilfontein is now! We want justice on the ground!” and “Justice for the miners” reverberated on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba in Cape Town on Wednesday, 5 February 2025, as local grassroots movements, activists and civil society organisations gathered in a display of solidarity with the artisanal miners of Stilfontein.

Among the groups were Fossil Free South Africa, the African Climate Alliance, the Green Connection and the Climate Justice Coalition, and humanitarian workers from Klerksdorp who provided aid to the Stilfontein survivors on the ground.

Petrus Moshe, from the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Klerksdorp near Stilfontein, addresses the crowd at the Stilfontein solidarity picket on 5 February 2025 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre during the Mining Indaba. (Photo: Kristin Engel)

Mahdio Mohapi and Petrus Moshe, from the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Klerksdorp, near Stilfontein, addressed the crowd in Cape Town, recounting their experience. Mohapi was in tears when she spoke.

Moshe and Mohapi were part of the group providing humanitarian services, food and water to those who resurfaced from the shafts.

“We saw them, we smelled those who had died. It was horrible. It was horrible. You can feel that these people are alive, but dead,” Moshe said.

Moshe told Daily Maverick, “When the government took the position of refusing to give the underground miners water and food … that was disturbing because food and water is a human rights issue – whether you are a criminal or not.

A group of people picket outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre during the Mining Indaba on 5 February 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

“We are sad about the position of the police to starve the underground miners. We are supposed to allow those people to surface and if they are criminals, arrest them, rather than kill them like mice underground. They are human beings and their dignity should have been protected.”

Read more: Stilfontein massacre a stark reminder of South Africa’s ongoing struggle with human rights violations

Government criticised for ‘brutality’

As part of the Stilfontein community, they said it was painful to hear a Cabinet minister, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, say that she would smoke the miners out – which then happened.

“She smoked them out… After she said that, we lost a lot of people,” Mohapi said.

Minister in the Presidency Ntshavheni made these remarks during a media briefing in November 2025, three months after the South African Police Service in North West descended on the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine just outside Stilfontein.

Read more: ‘We will smoke them out’ – Ntshavheni talks tough amid scepticism over number of zama zamas trapped underground

When asked if the government would help the people trapped in the shaft by sending food and water, Ntshavheni laughed the question off.

Protesters picket outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre during the Mining Indaba on 5 February 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

“You want us to send help to criminals? You want us to send help to criminals, honestly? We’re not sending help to criminals. We’re going to smoke them out, they will come out. Criminals are not to be helped, criminals are to be persecuted. We didn’t send them there and they didn’t go down there for the benefit of the republic so we can’t help them,” she said during the briefing.

Operation Vala Umgodi

The Stilfontein crisis started as part of Operation Vala Umgodi (launched to tackle illegal mining in SA), in August 2024 when the police sealed off all entrances to shaft 11 in an attempt to lure the miners out.

This meant the miners’ access to fresh water, food and medicine was effectively cut off. In November, appeals for the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria to compel the government to provide aid and immediate rescue were dismissed as the miners trapped underground sent letters to the surface begging for food and medication.

Between November 2024 and January 2025, gruesome stories emerged of the miners trapped in the hot, dark shaft along with the bodies of those who had allegedly died of starvation, with the living forced to allegedly eat cockroaches and human flesh for sustenance.

It was only after Zinzi Tom, a relative to one of the trapped miners, filed an urgent application that the Pretoria high court ordered the government to rescue the miners from the shaft in early January.

By the end of the three-day operation, 78 bodies had been retrieved from the mine, all of them in advanced decomposition, and 246 miners were brought up alive.

News24 revealed that 75 unidentified bodies of miners, recovered from Shalft 11 in Stilfontein, were being held in government mortuaries in North West. Only five have been identified and released to relatives, while the rest will be given paupers’ burials if no family members come forward. These are largely miners from Lesotho, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and a few from Malawi.

Read more: Stilfontein mine rescue ends with 78 dead, 246 rescued and ringleaders in custody

Addressing the crowd in Cape Town, Moshe said: “We are outraged by the deliberate murder of artisanal and small-scale miners across the continent at the hands of the state apparatus and mining companies. The recent activities in Stilfontein in the North West province of South Africa, where scores of artisanal miners perished as a result of the implementation of Operation Vala Umgodi, represent the dismal policy failure of the government.

“The Stilfontien crisis is but a microcosm of how governments treat artisanal miners across the continent. It denies communities full benefit to their minerals and this represents structural violence of the system.”

Moshe said that many regimes unleashed brute force on artisanal miners and lynched them daily, justifying this as a crime-busting campaign.

Mantashe unmoved

In stark contrast to the Stilfontein residents who picketed outside the Mining Indaba in Cape Town, Mineral and Petroleum Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe reiterated his stance on the Stilfontein crisis.

Delivering the opening address inside the CTICC on Monday, Mantashe dismissed criticism of the handling of the Stilfontein crisis, saying that the miners trapped in Shaft 11 did not deserve humanitarian aid.

“South Africans say on humanitarian grounds, it’s a human rights issue, please protect the illegal miners. Give them food. Give them treatment. Give them this and that. And I ask: you want us to be humanitarian when dealing with criminals? What are we going to do when we must deal with people who are genuine and contributing to the economy?” Mantashe asked

He said the people in Shaft 11 voluntarily went underground which nullified the need for the government to treat what had happened at Stilfontein as a “humanitarian case”.

“It’s like committing suicide. Committing suicide can’t be a humanitarian case,” the minister said.

Calls for justice

The solidarity picket was part of a broader action by the Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) in Gauteng, as a nationwide call for justice.

The picketers demanded the following from the state on Wednesday:

• intensified efforts to rescue and provide provisions to all individuals still trapped in the mineshafts;


• immediate medical treatment by medical professionals for all individuals rescued;


• legal assistance for those arrested and in brutal police custody;


• the return of the bodies of the deceased to their families;


• rehabilitation of over 6,000 abandoned mines to prevent further loss of life;


• and the legalisation and regulation of independent mining to ensure the safety and rights of miners.

Gabriel Klaasen, general secretary of the Climate Justice Coalition and one of the youth organisers part of the collective of activists that organised the solidarity picket, said they intended to amplify the voices and demands of the artisanal miners in Stilfontein and mining-affected communities.

“We need to start seeing our government take action and accountability for what they could have prevented,” Klaasen said.

He added there is no such thing as “illegals”, just people who were being treated unfairly.

“You don’t talk about people or any living thing as ‘smoking them out’... What we should have been seeing was an effort to provide provisions for those under the ground in the shafts, to make sure healthcare was provided for those rescued and at all costs, try to prevent lives from being lost and killed, ” Klaasen said.

Stilfontein Solidarity Committee member Hannah Kaniki, an intersectional justice activist at Protest as Praxis and Artists4Equity, told Daily Maverick the government and the police should have engaged in dialogue with the miners to understand their grievances and provide safe and legal exit1 strategies for those underground, rather than using starvation tactics.

Kaniki said that Macua and various community representatives repeatedly attempted to engage the government and mining corporations on artisanal miners but responses had been dismissive and inadequate. DM