Mining rescue operation impasse resolved

Following a lengthy stalemate at the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine in Stilfontein, operations by Mining Rescue Services (MRS) to rescue the trapped miners are underway. The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) on Friday ruled that government must use MRS to end the impasse. The court heard that there are 109 corpses in shafts 10 and 11 of the mine. The Sunday Times reports that the court addressed an urgent application brought by Zinzi Tom, whose brother, Ayanda Toot, is among the hundreds of miners still trapped in the mine. ‘In reality, the mineworkers cannot wait as they are dying by the hour and this is evidenced by the continued retrieval of dead bodies,’ said Tom in an affidavit to the court. The Citizen reports that the court ordered the government to finalise a service level agreement and appointment of MRS, a non-profit company. Human rights organisation Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) said the court also mandated the uninterrupted delivery of food, water, and medical aid to the trapped miners over the weekend’. The rescue winder would work in 10-hour shifts, lifting the miners in small groups, the government’s counsel, Cassie Badenhorst SC, said in court. Once the access road was completed, it would take about 16 days to extract an estimated 550 miners, said Pieter Alberts, chief director of legal services for the Department of Mineral Resources & Energy. Judge Ronel Tolmay said that, in the meantime, ‘we need to remember that people’s lives are at stake ... So let’s make sure that they’ve got food, water and medical supplies.’

In court papers to the Constitutional Court in December, Macua said the police was directly responsible for the humanitarian crisis that has unfolded. According to TimesLIVE, Tolmay said this matter should have long been resolved and, ‘if we have a grain of humanity’, the parties would not leave court without some sort of resolution. It emerged in the court papers that the government had been in a war of words with Buffelsfontein Gold Mine about who was liable to bear the R12m costs of the rescue. The immediate impasse seems to have been resolved by the Minerals Council stepping in.