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[File Image]: Community members watch as Senzo Mchunu, South African police minister, inspects outside the mineshaft where it is estimated that hundreds of illegal miners are believed to be hiding underground, after police cut off food and water as part of police operations against illegal miners, in Stilfontein, South Africa, November 15, 2024.
The community of Stilfontein near Klerksdorp in the North West is holding a cleansing memorial ceremony to honour illegal miners who died underground. They express disappointment in the government for burying the deceased without informing them.
On Tuesday, the provincial Health Department buried 30 unclaimed bodies in a pauper funeral in Jouberton and Kanana. Seventy-eight bodies were retrieved by a government led operation from mineshafts around Stilfontein last year. The remaining 23 unclaimed bodies will be buried once all necessary administration has been completed.
Community leader Johannes Qankase says they condemn the department of health for not informing them about the burials.
“We are very angry and disappointed because whether they like it or not those people were helped by us. We are the ones who helped bring them to surface. So, learning that the government decided to bury those people without informing us is disrespectful because we wanted to be a part of it. We understand that their biological families did not come to identify them hence the decision of the pauper’s funeral. However, we deserved to be at their burial on the basis that we fought to have them brought to surface and saved them when the police had decided otherwise.”
