More than 400 mineworkers have remained underground since last week at the Gold One Mine in Springs, amid allegations that the workers are being forcefully held against their will, while some of the miners are being stripped and routinely assaulted.
The mine’s head of legal, Ziyaad Hassam was previously quoted on SABC as saying the situation playing out at the mine, east of Johannesburg, was both a hostage situation and a sit-in as some of the miners were acting in solidarity with the 50 workers that were retrenched for their involvement in the October sit-in.
However, in an interview with broadcaster Newzroom Afrika, Victor Ngwane regional organiser of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said there was no voluntary sit-in being staged, but a hostage situation characterised by severe flogging of the workers underground, with racial bias.
“What we know is that everyone who is underground is being held hostage now. There is no management managing the situation,” Ngwane said in the interview.
“The latest (information) is that it has now escalated to a racial issue. There are white miners underground who are being humiliated,” he said.
“They are undressed, and they are being whipped from time to time. The perpetrators say if they beat up these white guys, management and government will listen to them.”
Ngwane said over the weekend, a severely beaten up “white miner” emerged from the shaft.
“The white miner who was brutally beaten and came to surface, he was naked. He came to the surface naked. They beat him up and left him by the station, they (perpetrators) called for the cage to come down and he was returned to surface,” he said.
According to the NUM, the “white miner” had a note threatening to kill people if food was not sent underground within two hours.
Ngwane said black miners were also being assaulted underground.
He said during his visit to the mine over the weekend, Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe saw the heavily assaulted “white miner”.
In his interview with Newzroom Afrika on Sunday, Mantashe concurred with the NUM, that the situation was a pure hostage situation and the police have now taken over.
“Today the situation changed dramatically. It became a hostage drama in the sense that three people came from underground heavily beaten,” said Mantashe.
“Once you begin to beat people up, it means they are held hostage. They are underground against their own will and therefore it should be dealt with as an offence that requires police intervention.”
He said the perpetrators underground sent a threat “which was said to be a message from Amcu the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), which demands a number of issues and must be responded to within two hours otherwise a miner who is underground will be thrown down the drain and die”.
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