THE CLOCK had just struck midnight on Saturday when Zonwabele Ntsime got a call alerting him to a potentially deadly situation at level 39 of Gold Fields’ Kloof and Driefontein Complex mine in Carletonville.
A fire had broken out but there was no compressed air in the area where mineworkers were mud-loading and, in a panic, Ntsime turned on water pipes to try to alleviate the problem. But nothing came out. Water is also used to help combat smoke.
Rushing from level 38 to help the trapped miners, Ntsime found himself suffocating, unable to walk. Crawling to an area where he hoped to get some air, he collapsed.
“I put on a mask and the rescue pack. I saw one man lying face down in mud and I tried to turn him around… But I started getting dizzy,” said Ntsime, a health and safety officer at the mine. My legs got heavy and I couldn’t walk. I crawled to a safer area, held on to some mesh. I then crawled to a place with water and put my head under the tap. I lay there in a dizzy state, hoping someone will come help me. I don’t know how I survived, but eventually rescue teams came and put me on oxygen.”
Ntsime was sent to the mine hospital where he was released a few hours later.
But Bavuyise Mbola and four other mineworkers were not so lucky. The five died while working overtime on mud-loading – clearing debris from backfilling. Another 14 workers were hospitalised.
Mine Rescue Services firefighters battled the fire around the clock and all 13 shafts were closed, said mine management.
Yesterday, neighbours, relatives and church members trickled into Mbola’s house at the mine to pay their respects. His distraught wife Vuyiswa said she last saw her husband on Saturday night when she dropped him off at work.
“My husband doesn’t work nights. He worked during the day on Saturday but when he got back home in the evening, he told me he was going to work night shift. I didn’t ask a lot of questions and dropped him off as usual,” she said.
When her husband didn’t call her to come fetch him in the morning, Vuyiswa got a bit worried. That was until some of her husband’s colleagues came into their home to tell her there’d been an accident at the mine.
“All they told me was that some miners were trapped. I only got to hear the full story later on,” she said.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Ntsime put the blame squarely on mine management. Ntsime said the shift manager should not have allowed workers to work in an area with no ventilation.
“It was definitely human error. They shouldn’t have sent workers down in such a situation. I nearly died.”
Another mineworker, who asked not to be named, said the company focused more on saving money than people’s lives.
“I don’t understand why they closed the water pipe. They did that to save money, but this has cost five families their breadwinners. The law says if there’s no water you don’t go in the mine,” he said.
“The five miners died as a result of smoke inhalation… while they were working overtime doing mud-loading,” said NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka, adding that early indications were that there was no compressed air in that section.
“We strongly condemn the company for sending workers on overtime night shift when there is no ventilation,” said NUM general secretary Frans Baleni.
The NUM was yesterday locked in meetings with mine management, and security personnel tried to block media from going onto mine premises. Police could not confirm the deaths but mine management did.
Fourteen other workers were in a stable condition yesterday morning.
The NUM called on the Department of Mineral Resources to launch an investigation. – Additional reporting by Sapa
- IOL
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