4 found dead in abandoned South Africa mine
JOHANNESBURG. August 13. KAZINFORM Four bodies have been found deep in an abandoned mine shaft, police said Thursday, after a Johannesburg newspaper reported that guards shot and killed illegal miners at the site owned by relatives of Nelson Mandela and President Jacob Zuma; Kazinform refers to China Daily.
Police spokeswoman Colonel Noxolo Kweza said rescuers recovered one corpse and were trying to bring three others to the surface Thursday. Kweza said police could not yet confirm the four had been shot and were investigating reports in The Sowetan newspaper that they were shot Monday by guards.
The mine east of Johannesburg is owned by Zuma's nephew Khulubuse Zuma and Mandela's grandson Zondwa Mandela. The two are embroiled in a pay dispute with mineworkers they inherited from several mines they bought from an insolvent company.
In its Thursday editions, The Sowetan quoted one man, 25-year-old Sam Sithole, as saying he went down a shaft Monday with a group of miners that included two of his brothers and encountered three guards.
He said he heard one of the three giving an order to "shoot everyone."
"People started running all over when the first men fell," Sithole told The Sowetan. "I jumped over the body of one of my brothers as I fled."
He said he later pretended to be dead.
"The killers left me only because they thought I was dead," he said.
The Sowetan reported the toll could be much higher, but that its reporters found only four bodies.
South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers called for an investigation and said "anyone guilty of unprovoked shooting should be charged, tried and punished."
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