The two survivors speak quietly as they recount how emaciated miners broke the ultimate taboo to avoid dying of hunger.
Trapped nearly a mile beneath the earth after police blocked their food and water, one recalled how his colleagues “resorted to cannibalism”.
“They cut parts of legs, arms, and ribs for sustenance. They decided it was their only remaining option for survival,” the man, who declined to be named, told The Telegraph.
His claims echo similar accounts slowly emerging from a mining disaster which has shocked but also divided South Africa.
While he and his colleague insist they did not take part, they were forced into their own desperate acts, eating cockroaches after running out of food.
Images of skeletal miners emerging from the shafts have prompted accusations of a police ‘massacre’ – Ihsaan Haffejee/Anadolu
Last week rescuers retrieved 78 bodies and 246 survivors from abandoned shafts of one of the country’s deepest mines.
The deaths came in a lengthy stand-off between police and illegal miners who make a risky living by trespassing in disused gold mines to eke out what is left of the deposits.
In August, police began blocking food and water from entering the old Buffelsfontein Gold Mine near Stilfontein in the North West province of South Africa, to try to force hundreds of illegal prospectors back to the surface.
‘Smoke them out’
Illegal mining is common and the government has taken a popular hard line on what it says are highly organised and ruthless criminal gangs behind the business.
Police said it was too dangerous to enter the warren of old workings to confront armed criminal gangs, and instead they would stop supplies to “smoke them out”.
As the stand-off continued, the authorities maintained that the miners were able to make their way out, but were resisting in order to avoid arrest and deportation.
More than 1,300 did return to the surface and appeared in court.
‘Horrific display of state wilful negligence’
Yet as the months wore on, unions and local people said large numbers of others were actually trapped or too weak to get out, and needed to be rescued.
Courts eventually ordered the authorities to provide humanitarian aid and employ a mining rescue company to bring up the remainder.
Images of scores of body bags being hauled to the surface and skeletal miners emerging into the light have now prompted accusations that the police committed a “massacre”.
An aerial view of the mine shaft where an estimated 4000 illegal miners were trapped – AP
The government’s coalition partner has called for an investigation, while the country’s second-largest trade union federation called the incident “one of the most horrific displays of state wilful negligence in recent history”.
Pressure on the police intensified this week when they admitted an alleged kingpin who oversaw the illegal Buffelsfontein operation had escaped custody with the help of corrupt officers.
The government has remained defiant, however. Gwede Mantashehe, the mining minister, said this week: “If you go to a dangerous place such as a neglected mine and stay there for about three months, starving yourself to death, how does that become the responsibility of the state?”
Acts of desperation
South Africa is rich in gold, platinum, manganese and other metals, and the country is strewn with 6,000 abandoned mines that have been exhausted or are now uneconomical. But in a country with a 32 per cent unemployment rate, plenty are desperate enough to break into the disused shafts to see if anything is left.
South Africa estimates the activity loses the country £3 billion a year in revenue, while the miners, who are often from neighbouring countries, are accused of bringing crime waves to nearby communities. The illegal miners are known as “zama zamas”, which translates roughly as “those who take a chance” or “those who try their luck”.
The two South African-born miners who spoke to The Telegraph said they had entered a shaft in July 2024 and worked on the supply lines ferrying food and people into the depths by rope.
“Food, medicine, alcohol and beverages were once plentiful,” they recalled.
They were making approximately £400 a month and intended to save up to get driving licences and security guard certificates.
Vanished mysteriously
Police cut off all supplies in August. When they briefly resumed months later after the local community obtained court orders to compel the authorities, the underground gang bosses began hoarding what made its way down.
Police allege that a Lesotho national named James Neo Tshoaeli was a ringleader of the underground operation and was responsible for some deaths, assaults and torture said to have taken place. Tshoaeli, known as “Tiger”, is accused of hoarding food away from workers.
The two miners who made their way to the surface in December are now on bail after being charged with illegal mining and possession of gold. They described Tshoaeli as “brutal”, and alleged he meted out punishment to workers.
Tshoaeli is said to have made it to the surface earlier this month, before mysteriously vanishing from custody while in a police vehicle en route to detention. Police have blamed corrupt officers and admitted his disappearance is an embarrassment.
When asked if they are investigating allegations of cannibalism, police have only said their investigation would take in the full scope of what went on underground.
Police say they will investigate if the miners were denied safe exit from the shaft, resulting in mass deaths underground – Ihsaan Haffejee/Anadolu
Ian Cameron, chairman of parliament’s police select committee, said it was too early to blame the police for the deaths, as it was not yet clear what had happened underground.
He said: “If the police did deny them exiting the shaft and they then starved to death, then there’s a need for a serious investigation, not only investigation, but consequences that need to be upheld from the police officers involved.”
The escape of Tshoaeli had also raised many questions, he added.
“The fact that he got away, and the police admitted to it, clearly showed that the police were complicit in something and that raises a lot of eyebrows in a broader context.
“What else were the police complicit or involved in with regard to this whole thing?”