ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba continues to fight to force the government to retrieve three mineworkers who sank in a container at the Lily Mine in Barberton, Mpumalanga, in February 2016. Picture: Jacques Naude / Independent Newspapers
HERMAN Mashaba, ActionSA leader, plans to take the government to court next week to grant him permission to retrieve the container that is thought to contain the remains of three Mpumalanga mineworkers.
This was revealed by one of the party’s leaders in Mpumalanga, Harry Mazibuko – former colleague of Pretty Nkambule, Yvonne Mnisi, and Solomon Nyirenda – who were swallowed by the earth in February 2016 at Lily Mine in Barberton.
According to Mazibuko, last year, Mashaba wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa requesting that his government grant him permission and for the state to recommend an accredited company to retrieve the container and he (Mashaba) would pay.
However, he said the government never acknowledged Mashaba’s offer or even responded to him.
That is why they (Mashaba and ActionSA) are going to file to the High Court to compel the business rescue practitioners and the government to grant him (Mashaba) permission; then they will monitor and do everything,” Mazibuko explained.
He said Mashaba committed to pay for everything and offered to fund the operation.
”Our interest is the retrieval of the container, here is money. Give us just authority. Bring a company that is recommended by you (the government) as the custodian and they are not responding. That is why (the government) is not willing for Yvonne, Pretty, and Solomon to be found,” Mazibuko recalled his party’s leader saying in 2024.
Mazibuko added: “The government is willing to spend thousands if not millions of rand to attend to people or criminals who went to engage themselves in illegal acts voluntarily, but our government is quick to intervene (but) not in this case whereby people went to work legally and they are South African citizens.”
He was referring to the government committing to spending millions of rand under oath to bankroll the retrieval of bodies of illegal mineworkers (zama zamas) in Stilfontein in the North West.
Mazibuko expressed his and the families’ displeasure at the government’s handling of the aftermath of the Lily Mine collapse.
”Our government is able to award the perpetrators, the mine owners, our former employers, because in 2017, our government conducted an inquiry to find out what caused the incident.
“The findings were that the incident was caused by the negligence of mine management because they were warned by rock engineers that they must consider shifting the entrance of the mine to the other side because the other one had been designed temporarily. They didn’t comply,” he complained.
Since the events that have happened over the past few months after the police launched Operation Vala Umgodi last year against illegal miners across the country, many have raised questions over the resources poured into the rescue operations, but Mazibuko was not keen on making comparisons.
”Our position is not much into how much the government has spent on retrieving the bodies on zama zamas. It’s their own right, strategy, and the government knows why they spent on the zama zama operation and not on Lily Mine,” he explained.
Mazibuko said Mnisi had two children and Nkambule had five, including one who was five-months-old, when the incident happened.
”She never came to know her mother or to talk to her,” he added.
Nyirenda did not have a child.
The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources did not respond to questions on Friday.
loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za
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