The dirt road to Christopher Mazibuko’s house in Louieville, in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, is rocky, quiet and roamed by skinny goats.
Mazibuko lives in a single room, made of mud, in Louieville, 20 minutes from Lily Mine that took the life of his wife.
On this bright Sunday afternoon, Mazibuko is wearing casual clothes. He sits on his doorstep; with friends sharing a beer – maybe alcohol eases the pain.
It has been a year since the fatal accident at the Vantage Goldfields-owned Lily Mine, near Barberton, where three people – Mazibuko’s wife Pretty Nkambule, Yvonne Mnisi and Solomon Nyarende – were buried in rubble.
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Lily Mine began as an oxide open pit operation, in 2000, and became a shallow, underground operation.
It has been a year since we last saw Mazibuko. On that day, soon after the tragedy, he was sitting on a small bench, cradling his seven-month-old daughter and five-year-old son. There was the agony of both hope and despair in their eyes.
Mazibuko will never forget his last day with his wife, one of the three entombed in a steel container, 80 meters underground, after a crown pillar collapsed at the open pit gold mine, on February 5, 2016. He shakes his head and sheds a tear.
On that fateful day, Mazibuko, who also works at the mine, was on leave.
He woke up early to prepare a lunchbox for Nkambule and walked her to the bus station. Little did he know that it would be their last walk together.
“She didn’t want me to make her a bigger lunchbox because she thought she’d return home in the afternoon,” he says.
At 7:30AM the bus came to fetch her and the two waved goodbye for the last time.
Around 8AM Mazibuko received a phone call from Nkambule, telling him that she had arrived safely.
“She asked me if I had seen the R200 ($15) she left for me under the mattress to buy the baby food,” he says.
Ten minutes later, before Mazibuko could go to the shop, a neighbor came rushing to his house telling him that he heard that the mine had collapsed.
Mazibuko didn’t believe it and accompanied the neighbor to the mine with the baby strapped on his back.
What makes it more tragic is that Nkambule was supposed to be on leave, but a colleague asked her to stand in for her.
It was a normal day, around 8AM, 115 people had clocked in. Ten minutes later, to the sounds of machinery grinding into life, Nkambule and the lamp room operators had just handed workers lamps.
“I was in the last container; we were having a casual conversation. Then we heard a loud sound, almost like a tyre bursting,” says Henry Sono, an eyewitness, who worked at the mine for 16 years.
“Everything happened so fast. We saw the ground shaking and sinking before swallowing the container with the three trapped. We watched in fear as there was nothing anyone could have done. I left my glasses, my wallet and everything because I had to run for my life,” says Sono.
“I’m confused because everybody who was underground got out but a container that was on the surface sank, why?… And I think they died the same day and same time. There’s absolutely no way you can be trapped underground for a year and still come out alive.”
Rob Devereux, a business rescue practitioner, says it might still take up to a year to retrieve the container. Rescue operations can’t start until enough money is raised.
“We need R130 million ($9.7 million) to develop a decline shaft and then we’ll assess the situation and decide the best way to retrieve it. We sent cameras down and it is extremely dangerous, especially for the rescuers. So, it might take us about more than eight months to get to the container,” says Devereux.
The three missing workers were all breadwinners. Mazibuko will have to raise the children alone.
“At the moment the children are with their aunt because I can’t take care of them, I can’t even buy myself food. The kids have even forgotten about their mother,” he says.
About 600 workers have been left without jobs since the mine collapsed.
In March last year, Mineral Resources Minister, Mosebenzi Zwane, promised families of the trapped a R200,000 ($15,000) compensation and workers who survived R50,000 ($3,750) each. They claim they’ve seen nothing.
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Workers and families are hungry and confused.
“The mine and unions don’t communicate with us. They should tell us what’s happening. I’m slowly losing hope of ever getting my wife out,” says Mazibuko.
The mineworkers last got paid in March last year. Sono has 12 children, he says it’s tough.
“The mine says it doesn’t have money to pay us. We are hungry; we can’t even support our families. They sometimes give us food parcels but it doesn’t happen every month,” says Sono.
At the mine, a young strapping man in a khaki uniform, black boots and a rifle slung over his shoulder, guards the locked gate at the entrance. All the families want is the return of the bodies so they can mourn.

The anguish Of Those left behind

Anger Over This Mine   That Became A Tomb

The road to the mining misery, in Louieville, Mpumalanga, is a picture of poverty; roads are crumbling and children roam the streets barefoot.
It has been five months since the fatal accident at the Vantage Goldfields, Lily Mine, near Barberton, Mpumalanga, and three people are buried in the rubble.
Yvonne Mnisi, Pretty Nkambule and Solomon Nyarende were buried, 80 meters underground on February 5, in a steel container where a crown pillar collapsed at the open pit gold mine.
Everyday Nkambule’s husband, 39-year-old December Mazibuko, wakes up to what he calls another day in hell.
We meet Mazibuko at his house made of mud, in Louieville, 20 minutes away from Lily Mine. He is on his way to apply for a child support grant at the clinic for his 10-month-old baby. Mazibuko says he had his last meal two days ago. With an empty fridge and electricity on zero units, Mazibuko lives on handouts.
“It’s tough,” says Mazibuko.
“I haven’t eaten. I sometimes get help from my family and neighbors, if they don’t come, it gets hard. I don’t know what to do and where to go to. The shops don’t give us food anymore because they know we don’t get paid anymore,” says Mazibuko, who worked at Lily Mine for nine years.
About 600 workers have been left without jobs since the mine collapsed.
In March, Mineral Resources Minister, Mosebenzi Zwane, promised families of the trapped a R200,000 (around $13,800) compensation and workers who survived R50,000 (around $3,500) each. The workers claim they’ve seen nothing.
“We didn’t get any money. They’ve been promising to pay us the money, ‘til now we haven’t received it,” says Mazibuko.
“We are very hungry. From now until December, the situation is going to get worse. How are we going to send our children to school? Already most of them are no longer going to school. I just want the bosses to pay us, if they can’t, then they should tell us. This is unfair,” says a Lily Mine worker, who didn’t want to be named.
On the day of the tragedy, 115 people clocked in for work and nearly all were rescued. The three missing were working in a steel container, used as a lamp room, which crashed down a sinkhole.
Rob Devereux, a business rescue practitioner, says they needed to raise R200 million (around $13.8 million) to dig a declined shaft 500 meters away from the sinkhole.
“We are in the process of raising the money. We offered all workers voluntary severance packages. Once we receive the funding, we’ll settle the workers’ salaries and rehire them,” says Devereux.
He says it might take up to a year for the mine to reopen.
“It will take about eight months to develop the rescue operation and the mine will open three months after that.”
Joseph Montisetsi, Deputy President of the National Union of Mineworkers, says they are planning to march to the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) in Johannesburg.
“We are calling on the DMR, as the regulator, that it must be in the forefront to make sure that the three employees trapped underground are rescued,” says Montisetsi.
The three missing workers were all breadwinners.
Dead or alive, the families say they want to find closure.
“We just want the mine to get Solomon out from the ground so that we as the Nyarendes can bury him,” says Wanda Nyarende, a cousin.
Through it all, Mazibuko hopes that his wife is still alive. Like most at this mine he feels abandoned.

A Despairing Demand From The Desperate

The people here call it Mpumalanga – the place where the sun rises. Every morning when the light grips Louisville, 40 kilometers from Barberton, December Mazibuko and Jabulile Nyarende, wake up to another day in hell.
For weeks, they prayed for Yvonne Mnisi, Pretty Nkambule and Solomon Nyarende – three of their family trapped in a steel container, 80 meters underground after a crown pillar collapsed at the open pit gold mine, Lily Mine, on February 5.
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Nkambule’s family lives in a house made of mud in Louisville, 20 minutes away from Lily Mine. Her husband, Mazibuko, sits on a small bench, cradling their seven-month-old daughter and five-year-old son. There is the agony of hope and despair in their eyes.
“This haunts me every day, I can’t even begin to explain the pain I’m feeling right now. If they come out alive I would be grateful, but at this point we are ready to accept any news. Even if they are dead we want their bodies, because we want closure,” says Mazibuko, who also works at Lily Mine.
The three missing workers are all breadwinners. Mazibuko will have to raise four children alone.
“I am so heartbroken, if I could go down and rescue them myself, I would. Whenever I look at my sister’s husband and children my heart tears into pieces. Everything has been done, but still nothing,” says Nkambule’s older sister, Phindile Nkambule.
As the drills bore away at the mine, families of the trapped believed more could be done.
“The situation is painful, because they are taking a long time to get those people out. I believe that the management is not doing enough to rescue them. They should look at other means of getting the three out,” says Mazibuko.
“A ritual is done at all mines, but it has never been done here. There were signs that something like this would happen. People have been hurt countless times in that mine and we’ve been telling the managers to do a ritual, but they keep refusing… all they care about is making money.”
On the day of the tragedy, 115 people clocked in for work and nearly all were rescued.
The three missing were working in a steel container, used as a lamp room, which crashed down a sink hole.
Jabulile Nyarende, Solomon’s aunt, remains hopeful that her nephew will come out alive.
“What is frustrating me the most is that Solomon used to take care of his mother who is mentally ill. Who is going to take care of her now? But, I serve a living God and I believe that in this situation, he would never forsake us,” she says.
Three collapses delayed the rescue. One saw a large part of a hill fall into the hole where the container was. The rescue team suffered another setback when a drill broke.
“A rescue mission has begun, and the plan is to drill a hole 800 meters away from the sinkhole,” says Mike Begg, Operations Director at Lily Mine, at the gates of the mine on February 23.
The drilling will take three weeks to be completed.
This disaster came days after the South African Chamber of Mines celebrated the lowest fatalities in the history of mining.
In 2015, it was reported that 77 mineworkers died underground, the lowest number on record.
“South African mines are failing dismally to comply with the safety rules and regulations of mines… It’s a really sad situation,” says Jeff Mphahlele, Secretary General of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu).
“We are concerned about the safety of mines in this country because this is the third incident to happen in three months,” says Sahlulele Luzipho, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources.
“We need to find a way to tighten up the rules where safety compliance is concerned.”
So do the families of the three missing mineworkers of Lily Mine.

Tag: Lily Mine

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Anger Over This Mine That Became A Tomb

A Despairing Demand From The Desperate

The anguish Of Those left behind