South Africa arrests 1,000 illegal miners with more feared still underground

South African police said Friday they have arrested some 1,000 undocumented migrants working in gold mines in the northeast of the country.

A police spokesman for the Mpumalanga province, where the week-long sweep took place, told AFP there could be more arrests because there are still illegal miners underground.

"As they are coming out, they have been taken," said the spokesman, Donald Mdhluli.

The police operation, which started on Monday, targeted clandestine mining near the village of Barberton, close to the borders of Eswatini and Mozambique.

‘Thriving underground’

The Sheba Mine is owned by Barberton Mines who said in a statement: "Earlier this year there was outcry from the community and employees when Barberton Mines retrenched workers as the mine was unprofitable and facing closure. Now we know the reason why!

"Food and supplies have been getting to a thriving illegal mining world underground, which had to be stopped, hence this intervention with the police and mine security. This message needs to be spread and illegal mining will not be tolerated," it added.

"About 1,000 illegal miners who are also illegal immigrants have been arrested," Mdhluli said, calling it a joint operation between mine security and the police.

He said that "there are no fatalities recorded so far".

Clandestine miners

The arrests come less than a year after a similar operation conducted near the town of Stilfontein, west of Johannesburg, where at least 90 clandestine miners lost their lives before their mines were definitively shut in January.

As in the Stilfontein operation, police near Barberton surrounded the illegal mine to prevent supplies entering, forcing those inside to come to the surface.