First responders pulled dozens of bodies and hundreds of emaciated survivors from the abandoned gold mine this week, but Zinzi’s brother Tom was not among them.

South African police say the mine is empty after removing 78 bodies and 246 survivors in the past two days.

They declared the court-ordered rescue operation over on Wednesday, ending what was supposed to be a 10-day operation, ending months of conflict with the illegal miners and their families.

“I don’t want to pronounce him dead,” said Tom As it happens presenter Nil Köksal shortly after leaving the scene of the operation. “I hope and pray to God that he will come back.”

Illegal mining attracts desperate workers

Tom has not heard from her brother Ayanda since July 2024, when he first told her he was going to the abandoned Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein for illegal mining.

At first, says Tom, she didn’t approve of his choice. But he had no other job, she said, and had to look for a living to take care of his children.

“(He) risked his life by going underground and saying he was going to try to make ends meet,” she said. “This is a very sad time for us as a family.”

Illegal mining is a common practice in South Africawhere more than 30 percent of people are unemployed.

Migrants and others desperate to make ends meet scour the country’s thousands of abandoned mines for mineral deposits, often exploited by organized crime networks.

In an effort to crack down on illegal mining, police cut off most of the exits at the Stilfontein mine in August, with hundreds of men still working inside.

The goal, said a government minister at the time, was to “drive them out with smoke”.

The community says the miners were starving

Police and government officials have maintained since the start of the conflict that the miners were never captured but were unwilling to come out and face charges.

But friends, families and supporters of the miners claimed many of them were too weak, hungry and dehydrated to get out after police removed the pulley system used to deliver food and water.

A court ruled in December that volunteers should be allowed to send basic supplies to the miners, and a separate ruling last week ordered the state to launch a rescue.

Mining Affected Communities United in Action, which launched the court case, said some miners were trapped deep in different parts of the mine, which is 2.5 kilometers deep with multiple shafts, many levels and a maze of tunnels.

The South African Federation of Trade Unions accused the state on Tuesday of allowing men “to starve to death in the depths of the Earth”.

“These miners, many of them undocumented and desperate workers from Mozambique and other southern African countries, were left to die in one of the most horrific displays of state willful negligence in recent history,” the statement said.

Athlenda Mathe, the national spokeswoman for the South African police, defended the operation.

“Our mandate was to fight crime and that’s exactly what we did,” Mathe said at the scene on Wednesday.

“By providing food, water and supplies to these illegal miners, the police would be entertained and allow crime to thrive.”

‘Please pray for us’

All the survivors recovered this week, many visibly weak, have been taken into police custody.

Police said 1,576 miners had pulled out with their own resources between August and the start of the rescue operation. They have all been arrested, and 121 of them have already been deported, they said.

“If you come out and can walk, they take you straight to the cells,” he said Mzukisi Jam, a civil society activist who was on site throughout the rescue operation.

In the meantime, Tom says that she heard that some miners went out on their own through another shaft. She says she hopes and prays that her brother is on his way there now.

When she spoke to the CBC, she still hadn’t told her family that the rescue operation was over.

– I’m afraid – she said. – Today I am afraid to look my mother in the eye and tell her the news.

She asked people around the world who are following the news to keep her and her family in their prayers.

“I need my brother out alive,” she said. “Please pray for us.”