South African police are hunting an alleged “kingpin” of illegal mining after he escaped from custody following a rescue operation last week in which 78 bodies were brought out of an illicit goldmine.
James Neo Tshoaeli, a Lesotho national known as Tiger, has been accused by other illegal miners of being a ringleader who was allegedly responsible for assaults, tortures and deaths underground, as well as keeping food from others, the South African Police Service said.
Tshoaeli was neither booked into custody nor admitted at any local hospitals for medical care, police said, describing his escape as an “embarrassment”. “Heads will roll once they find those officials that aided the kingpin to escape from police custody,” they said. “Tiger is a fugitive of justice and is considered dangerous.”
In late 2023, police launched Operation Vala Umgodi (Plug the Hole) to try to stamp out illegal mines across South Africa’s north-eastern mining belt. Officers blocked supplies of food, water and medicine from being sent to workers underground in attempt to force them to the surface so they could be arrested.
After reports of dead bodies at an illegal goldmining site near Stilfontein earlier this month, the government launched a rescue operation. Over four days last week, a crane winch lifted 246 survivors and 78 bodies from the 1.2-mile-deep shaft. Local volunteers said they had previously hauled out nine dead miners using a hand-operated rope pulley system.
Activists and relatives of the miners blamed South African authorities for what they called a “massacre” of starving people unable to resurface. Officials said the men, known as zama zamas (those who try), could have exited via a different mineshaft but stayed underground to avoid arrest.
In recent years, illegal miners have flocked to sites in South Africa that mining companies have abandoned as no longer commercially viable. Analysts estimate there could be 30,000 zama zamas producing 10% of South Africa’s gold output from 6,000 abandoned mines, often controlled by violent criminal syndicates.
Since 18 August, 1,907 illegal miners have come out of the abandoned goldmines around Stilfontein, according to police. Most were from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, with just 26 from South Africa. Police have blamed Lesotho nationals for leading the operations.
“You have got people who voluntarily entered mines and did some illegal activities and in the process died inside those mines,” South Africa’s finance minister, Enoch Godongwana, told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. “To then come back and say the state is going to take the blame for that, in my view, is misplaced.”
Reuters contributed to this report
