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People watch as Senzo Mchunu, South African police minister (not pictured), inspects outside the mineshaft where it is estimated that hundreds of illegal miners are believed to be hiding ...
South Africa's government says it will let thousands of illegal miners starve until they accept their fate and emerge from an abandoned shaft to face arrest. South Africa is trying to starve 4,000 ...
South Africa's illegal miners – called zama zamas, or "take a chance" in colloquial Zulu – are estimated to number more than 50,000, a tenfold increase in two decades.
A government delegation led by police minister Senzo Mchunu visited the site of the disused mine on Friday to engage with the community and relatives of the miners who are underground. While Mchunu insisted that the illegal miners were committing a crime, he said the government also wanted to save their lives.
A South African court ordered police to end a standoff with illegal miners to allow emergency workers to gain access to a mine shaft where several hundred are believed to remain after the ...
Mnguni said that the more than 500 miners still underground were in different places in the mine, which is one of the deepest in South Africa at 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) deep and has multiple shafts, many levels and is a maze of tunnels, he said.
Zama zamas are illegal artisanal miners in South Africa who occupy closed or operational mines to mine for minerals such as gold, iron ore, coal, and manganese. The term zama zama loosely translates to "take a chance" in isiZulu and they use rudimentary tools and explosives for mining.
Illegal gold miners, commonly referred to as "zama zamas", operate in abandoned mine shafts and use the empty gas cylinders, known as "phendukas", to process the stolen ore. The cylinders, often stolen, are first drained of gas, then cut open so that ore can be placed in them along with a steel ball which crushes the ore as the cylinder is rotated.