The death toll of criminal miners in a single incident at one of Harmony Gold's Free State shafts has risen to 61, enough, finally, for a nation to take notice of a crime with decades of evil legacy behind it.
Statements have flown in every direction since
Harmony Gold
announced on Monday that it had brought to surface 294 "criminal miners" at its Eland shaft in South Africa's Free State province; the debacle extended also to the bodies of 36 (to later rise to at least 61) criminal miners, recovered from the same shaft.
Just as a big aircraft disappearing over the Atlantic will always attract more headlines that individual automobile accidents around the world, violent crime in South Africa apparently needs big numbers before capturing the public's imagination. In this case, there is a cruel and horrible twist: the miners, known as "zama-zamas", who died were victims of an accident of their own would-be enterprise, in the form of an underground fire.
