South Africa wants illegal miners hiding underground to be arrested

November 14 (UPI) — Authorities in South Africa have cut off supplies to nearly 4,000 illegal gold miners hiding underground as the government pushes to “eliminate” and arrest them, officials announced Thursday.

miners They have been at a well in Stilfontein in the North West province for nearly a month and have refused to co-operate with authorities.

“We are going put them out with smoke. They will go out. We do not send aid to criminals. Criminals should not be helped, they should be persecuted (sic),” Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said on Wednesday. BBC reported.

Some of the miners are undocumented immigrants and came from neighboring Lesotho and Mozambique. Known as “zama zama,” which means “to try one’s luck” in Zulu, the team operates in abandoned mines in the mineral-rich country, hoping to find traces of gold left behind by commercial mining operations.

Some commercial mining companies have closed in recent years, leaving abandoned mines behind and laying off workers who went underground illegally to collect gold they could sell on the black market.

Busi Thabane of the Benchmarks Foundation, a charity that monitors companies in South Africa, said underground conditions had deteriorated and were said to be dire as supplies were cut. BBC’s News Day program.

“It’s not about illegal miners anymore,” he said. “This is a humanitarian crisis.”

Some stay in mines for months. A small underground economy developed around the miners, selling food, cigarettes and other things they needed. It was stated that the police were afraid to enter the mine for fear of being shot.

Illegal mining costs South Africa hundreds of millions of dollars a year in gold sales, officials said.