Some of the miners who participated in the four-day sit-in said they did not have food during their stay in the shaft as more than 400 mineworkers emerged from an underground shaft at the Gold One Mine in Springs on Monday.
The delicate situation that unfolded at the gold mine east of Johannesburg was previously described as both a hostage situation and a labor-related sit-in, as some of the miners were acting in solidarity with the 50 workers who were retrenched in October for their participation in another sit-in.
Some of the workers who emerged from the shaft on Monday said they wanted their colleagues who had been fired or suspended to be reinstated.
Vuyolwethu Makwenda, one of the miners who stayed underground for four days, told journalists at the mine that they didn’t have food and that hunger forced them to end the sit-in.
After four days underground, more than 400 workers from the Gold One East Operations mine emerged on Monday. Image credit: Itumeleng English/Independent Newspapers
“This is the first meal I’ve had in four days.” I’m much better now, because it was very difficult. We only had underground water. “That was all we had,” Makwenda explained.
On Monday morning, IOL reported that the more than 400 mineworkers had remained underground amid allegations that they were being held against their will, with some of the miners being stripped and routinely assaulted.
In an interview with Newzroom Afrika, Victor Ngwane, regional organiser of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), stated that there was no voluntary sit-in taking place, but rather a hostage situation characterized by severe flogging of underground workers with racial bias.
“What we know is that everyone who is underground is being held hostage right now.” “There is no management managing the situation,” Ngwane said in the interview.
According to the most recent information, it has now become a racial issue. “There are white miners who are being humiliated underground,” he said.
“They’re undressed, and they’re getting whipped now and then.” The perpetrators claim that if they thrash these white men, management and the government will listen to them.”
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) members. Tracey Adams/Independent Media/File Photo
Over the weekend, a severely beaten “white miner” emerged from the shaft, according to Ngwane.
“When the white miner was brutally beaten and brought to the surface, he was naked.” He appeared on the surface naked. “They beat him up and left him by the station; they (perpetrators) called for the cage to be removed, and he was returned to the surface,” he explained.
