“These miners, many of them undocumented and desperate workers from Mozambique and other Southern African countries, were left to die in one of the most horrific displays of state wilful negligence in recent history,” the South African Federation of Trade Unions said in a statement on Tuesday.
The bodies of illegal miners continue to be removed from a gold mine in South Africa here police blocked food and water supplies for months.
Police had stopped food and water supplies from being taken into the mine since August until a court ruled in December that volunteers could send down essential aid for the miners, known locally as “zama zamas”.
The death toll makes the crackdown on the Stilfontein mine one of the deadliest on miners in recent South African history.
“By providing food, water and necessities to these illegal miners it would be the police entertaining and allowing criminality to thrive,” she said.
