“The worst massacre engineered by the State in the post-apartheid era” – GIWUSA

NORTH WEST – The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa is demanding the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to investigate what it describes as the Stilfontein massacre. Authorities began trying to remove the bodies and bring up survivors on Monday after residents voiced fears that more than 100 people may have died in the mine in Stilfontein.

At least 246 people have emerged alive in the first three days of the operation, with the rescuers expecting to wrap up their efforts on Thursday. South African authorities have been locked in a months-long standoff with the holed-up miners, having at one point tried cutting off food and water supplies to force them out.

GIWUSA’s president Mametlwe Sebei says there needs to be accountability:

“The reports from the rescue team at the end of the third day of rescue, which shows 78 bodies of miners retrieved, and the horrific state of the surviving miners who are completely emaciated, dehydrated and in dire physical condition, has decisively earned Stilfontein a permanent infamy- of being a site of the worst massacre engineered by the state in the post-apartheid era.

“The fact that the dehumanisation and criminalisation of these poor, desperate miners have succeeded to a point that they will not enjoy the same solidarity shown to miners at Marikana and other victims of state violence does not determine nor change the objective historical fact: These miners died en masse due to a series of decisions and brutal crackdown by the operational management of the police, with the approval, and cheering of the political establishment and top echelons of the state.”