Illegal miners battling to survive S Africa standoff

Hundreds of clandestine miners at a disused South African shaft are struggling to survive in grim conditions because of a police operation to force them out, one of the men who escaped told AFP Sunday.

For nearly two weeks police have been stationed outside the abandoned gold mine at Stilfontein, about 150 kilometres (100 miles) southwest of Johannesburg, intermittently blocking locals from sending down food and water, and arresting undocumented migrants who surface.

"There's nothing left for someone to eat, to drink or anything that can make a human being survive. There is nothing left underground for now," said Ayanda Ndabeni, who was hoisted out the shaft by rope on Friday.

"This operation of the police stopped everything, we suffered underground. Some of us, they died. Some of us are sick, critical."

One decomposed body was brought out last week and there are fears there may be more.

A local who works with the miners has claimed to have been told there were around 4,000 people underground. Police said the figure was probably in the hundreds.

Ndabeni -- who has been a zama zama, as clandestine miners in South Africa are known, for 10 years -- says there were 800 men on the level of the mine where he worked.

He started mining illegally after the regular mine where he worked shut down in 2014.

The mine owners left this shaft open after they abandoned it, he said, a cigarette and a beer in hand.

As he had no work and needed to support his family, he decided to become a zama zama, which in Zulu means "those who try".

Only about four to five people can exit the shaft a day, he said, because there is only one rope down the rough-hewn, gaping hole in the ground in an area of rocky open veld.

The shaft is about 1500 metres (4,900 feet) deep, but tunnels can go deeper, Ndabeni said. AFP