Skip to footer

Search continues for missing workers in South African mine collapse

The collapse of a South African gold mine caused a sinkhole that swallowed a mobile office container. All 87 miners working in the shafts were rescued, but the three workers in the office container are still missing.

|
AP
Concerned family members and friends of three missing persons wait outside the Vantage Goldfields Limited's Lily Mine's entrance near Barberton, South Africa, Friday Feb. 5, 2016. The Makonjwaan Lily gold mine collapsed on Friday morning after an underground pillar caved in, trapping 87 miners in the shafts below. On the surface, the collapse caused a sinkhole that swallowed a mobile office container, trapping three more people inside it, said Mike Begg, the mine's general manager.
  • By Lynsey Chutel and Nqobile Ntshangase Associated Press

| BARBERTON, South Africa

The families of three missing mineworkers sang and prayed at the scene of a collapsed mine in South Africa as rescuers continued their search on Saturday.

The Makonjwaan Lily gold mine collapsed on Friday morning after an underground pillar caved in, trapping 87 miners in the shafts below. On the surface, the collapse caused a sinkhole that swallowed a mobile office container, trapping three more people inside it, said Mike Begg, the mine's general manager.

Two women and one man were working inside the container, distributing headlamps and safety gear to miners. Teams of rescuers have not yet found the mobile office after a 36-hour search, he said.

"The news is not positive at the moment," Begg told reporters at the mine in the eastern province of Mpumalanga. "I don't want to lose anybody so we're going to find those three people and bring them to the surface so that families can have closure today."

"It's a very emotional time," he added, his eyes filled with tears, his voice cracking as he spoke to reporters. Some relatives only left the scene of the collapse to pray in their cars nearby.

"We want Yvonne to come out to surface," said Rachel Dlamini, an aunt of one the trapped women, adding that the family will stay at the mine throughout the search. "We are also camping out here, crying to God with all our might for her safe return."

All the miners were rescued and brought to the surface, Begg said. Paramedics said the rescued miners had no serious injuries and were taken to a local hospital for treatment.

This is the second accident in a South African mine in the past two weeks, said Manzini Zungu, spokesman for the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.

___

Chutel reported from Johannesburg.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Search continues for missing workers in South African mine collapse
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2016/0206/Search-continues-for-missing-workers-in-South-African-mine-collapse
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe