Some 250 miners were still underground at Gold One mine on the East Rand yesterday, allegedly being held as ‘hostages’, after 200 had managed to make it to the surface.
The mining company, which BusinessLIVE reported ‘counts the China-Africa Development Fund as an investor’, said it was ‘extremely concerned about the health and wellbeing of those still underground’.
Negotiations were under way with the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the police ‘to work out the best route to release the remaining employees’.
According to reports, more than 500 National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) members were being held underground against their will by AMCU ‘captors’.
However, AMCU General Secretary Jeff Mphahlele denied the allegation and said that NUM members who wanted to join AMCU were taking part in a sit-in. This was in protest at the exclusion of AMCU from labour relations at the mine.
AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa said that about 1 700 of the total of 1 800 employees at the mine ‘have completed membership forms to join AMCU, so it is completely nonsensical to claim that anybody is being held hostage when it is clear that AMCU is the outright majority’.
However, the mineworkers who returned to the surface yesterday morning said they had managed to do so after fighting and overpowering their captors, who had held them hostage underground for more than 48 hours.
In an earlier report, NUM spokesman Livhuwani Mammburu said nine NUM workers had been injured by people that he alleged were the hostage-takers.
‘It’s now a crime scene. The police must arrest the perpetrators, the mine cannot ensure their safety. Our members have been kidnapped against their will’, Mammburu told Daily Maverick.
[Image: FIFTY, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63030760]