S. African government estimates up to 14,000 take part in deadly illegal mining

Smoke rises from a derelict mine shaft 25 miles east of Johannesburg, where illegal miners cook, work and sleep below ground for weeks at a time.

They have broken through a slab of concrete covering the entrance to the shaft, one of 6,000 abandoned mines, many around Johannesburg, known as “eGoli,” or “City of Gold” in Zulu. At least 40 unlawful prospectors have died in South Africa this year as mines collapse, workers succumb to poisonous gases and gangs wage turf wars underground.

“Any mistake and you feel you’re going to be killed,” said Joseph Sithole, 23, an undocumented Mozambican migrant, as he stood among corrugated-iron shacks and rubbish-strewn paths near the mine. He recounted how last year he dashed to one side of a shaft after hearing a crack, narrowly avoiding being buried by falling rocks. He felt his way to the surface through clouds of dust.

Sithole is one of 14,000 people the government estimates are now involved in illegal mining, which comes as a drop in gold prices and aging ore bodies shut South African shafts. The practice has grown to create a complex criminal industry valued at 6 billion rand ($566 million) a year, Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu said in February.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-23/deadly-illegal-mining-booms-below-south-africa-s-city-of-gold.html

Might be me, but was under the impression this has being on for years..........

Why now on Bloomberg ?

gerber wrote:Might be me, but was under the impression this has being on for years..........

Why now on Bloomberg ?

Ah ... didn't copy over the actual news part of the news:

"The government now plans to block up entrances to abandoned mines, compel owners to heighten security and increase convictions for illegal mining."

Thanks.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

gerber wrote:Might be me, but was under the impression this has being on for years..........

Why now on Bloomberg ?

Ah ... didn't copy over the actual news part of the news:

"The government now plans to block up entrances to abandoned mines, compel owners to heighten security and increase convictions for illegal mining."

Thanks.

They cannot possibly block all entrances to all disused mines.............. They are having a Giraffe and the convictions, who is going to pay the fines...... SA is becoming more IMO destitute day by day....

The guys are risking life and limb to get a living........and Zuma spends

" Anger was surging on Monday over the 238m rand (£16.62m) renovations of Zuma's rural home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal province, after it was revealed that Nelson Mandela and other former presidents' homes had received substantially less from the state. This followed controversy over proposals for a 2bn rand town, the first to be built since the end of apartheid, two miles (3.2km) from the Zuma homestead.

"Nkandlagate" could not come at a worse time with violent strikes threatening to spread from mining to other industries and focusing attention on the gap between haves and have-nots. Zuma, 70, faces a tense re-election battle within the governing African National Congress in December.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/08/jacob-zuma-investigation-plans-home

That was two years ago.......

at least they are no longer employed and being fed under the jackboot of the white man

maybe they can eat their freedom instead??

smelly_bandit wrote:at least they are no longer employed and being fed under the jackboot of the white man

maybe they can eat their freedom instead??

Hey smelly,

May I introduce you to a Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy? Y'all will get along great.   

smelly_bandit wrote:at least they are no longer employed and being fed under the jackboot of the white man

maybe they can eat their freedom instead??

These are people who are risking everything to try to make their pitiful lives a little better. I can't see how anybody could condemn that.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:at least they are no longer employed and being fed under the jackboot of the white man

maybe they can eat their freedom instead??

These are people who are risking everything to try to make their pitiful lives a little better. I can't see how anybody could condemn that.

shouldn't have overthrown apartheid then should they??

smelly_bandit wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:at least they are no longer employed and being fed under the jackboot of the white man

maybe they can eat their freedom instead??

These are people who are risking everything to try to make their pitiful lives a little better. I can't see how anybody could condemn that.

shouldn't have overthrown apartheid then should they??

Are you fucking insane?

Test

Ben_Reilly wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:

shouldn't have overthrown apartheid then should they??

Are you fucking insane?

He thinks people value being  enslaved over wealth, mainly because he was advantaged growing up not experiencing what Blacks endured under apartheid, and believing after indoctrination, that they were inferior. 
The best way to describe this is he being a farmer raising animals to be slaughtered, claiming they are his pets and they are better off being fattened up to slaughter, than living free in the wild, where at least they have the choice to face their own dangers in life

Ben_Reilly wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:

shouldn't have overthrown apartheid then should they??

Are you fucking insane?

i lived before, during the transition and after apartheid

and i know this, that blacks were treated appallingly under apartheid, but even so they were still better off back then than they are now.

you may not like it, you want to not believe it, but it IS true

the devil they knew was better than the devil they know

i find it amazing how peoples perspectives change reality

IRAQ

Iraq is considered a failure because it is, under saddam people were oppressed but still had ok....ish lives (for the ME) since his removal the country has got to shit but who gives a fuck because they have freedom and democracy right??. How iraqis in retrospect would choose Saddam over what they have gone through and the continued violence??

SOUTH AFRICA

SA is considered a success because the western governments wants it to be so, the myth of Mandela was fabricated,whitewashed and airbrushed so much that i doubt even Mandela would recognize himself but since his release and the subsequent ANC governments SA has slipped down the slippery slope into the sewer at the bottom. oppression was replaced violent crime of the like never before seen in SA, the amount of whites killed in the years following the "liberation" of the blacks left a daily body count that officially rivaled a country at civil war

Syria is having a civil war and yet its body count was rivaled by SA following its "liberation"

the apartheid regime left a country fulling functioning, manned by professionals at all levels from the army to the navy to the doctors and nurses to the teachers and other civil servants and private industries    

Mandelas legacy is one of regression, corruption, racism,violent crime, crumbling infrastructure, "white flight" and "brain drain" that has left the country barely clinging to civilization

so am i insane?? no im a realist

you're the fucking insane one if you think what they have is better that what they had

See what I mean, he thinks freedom is being worse off, showing he has no comprehension of what it means to be free.

Mandela he knows very well left a legacy of reconciliation, a man who if it had been many others after receiving such oppression and abuse would if filled with hate like smelly, take retribution, something smelly hates the reality of. That in fact Mandela did the opposite and wanted a future without hate and all humans know mater the colour of their skin living side by side.
There is years to come before South Africa recovers from Apartheid, what smelly fails to understand is that it is in living memory of people still alive today, where all are not like Mandela, seeking reconciliation, where they have grown up without knowing what it is actually like to be free.


This eludes him at every moment understanding why it would leave for years a country where many of the blacks were not treated as equals given good education, denied having to start over. There is wrongs in Africa still today , but it was apartheid that has created that where it will takes years to mend

it is irrelevant what Mandela wanted since he was too old to make it happen

he left the country in the hands of mbeki and zuma

two individuals who had significantly more interest in self advancement than in reconciliation

how many more years are needed didge??

its been 20 years, not 5 minutes

how much longer is needed??

10?? 15?? 1000?? 100000000??

how many more years until the blacks take charge of their future and stop cowering under the shadow of apartheid hoping it will protect them from growing up???

smelly_bandit wrote:it is irrelevant what Mandela wanted since he was too old to make it happen

he left the country in the hands of mbeki and zuma

two individuals who had significantly more interest in self advancement than in  reconciliation

how many more years are needed didge??

its been 20 years, not 5 minutes

how much longer is needed??

10?? 15?? 1000?? 100000000??

how many more years until the blacks take charge of their future and stop cowering under the shadow of apartheid hoping it will protect them from growing up???

He did make it happen, he reconciled a nation, when it was on the brink of civil war.


I would say 50 years plus before people of living memory have passed on, even then there will still be resentment, from again people fueled by hate. It is not about any skin colour in regards to taking charge, but people no matter their ethnic root being able to move on from the past living side by side together.
Again you cannot refute my point what a damaging affect and still is ongoing apartheid had on South Africa and you would not know or understand this being as you were born free

On the brink of civil war   

Don't remember that but ok

Didge the bottom line that you can never ignore is I lived it

You watched it on bbc

Everything you think you know is edited by the bbc to make you believe what they want you to believe

I finding amazing that I never try to tell you about how things were when you were growing up but after watching the bbc you somehow feel an expert on how life was for me growing up

I Never once saw a bbc camera crew

Do yourself a favour and stop pretending that you are speaking from experience because we all know you are not

I am

And you are simply wrong about many of the things you "think" you "know" about life on the ground for the average man during that period

I lived it

You watched it

Get over it and stop embarrassing yourself

smelly_bandit wrote:it is irrelevant what Mandela wanted since he was too old to make it happen

he left the country in the hands of mbeki and zuma

two individuals who had significantly more interest in self advancement than in  reconciliation

how many more years are needed didge??

its been 20 years, not 5 minutes

how much longer is needed??

10?? 15?? 1000?? 100000000??

how many more years until the blacks take charge of their future and stop cowering under the shadow of apartheid hoping it will protect them from growing up???

Jesus man, black people in SA were held back and oppressed until the early 90s and you expect them to have recovered from that sort of generational oppression by now?

You think most rich white people descended from Europeans built up their wealth and power in a few decades? Hell no. It accumulates over centuries, if they're lucky.

There's a reason rags-to-riches stories are so celebrated -- they're very rare.

smelly_bandit wrote:On the brink of civil war   

Don't remember that but ok

Didge the bottom line that you can never ignore is I lived it

You watched it on bbc

Everything you think you know is edited by the bbc to make you believe what they want you to believe

I finding amazing that I never try to tell you about how things were when you were  growing up but after watching the bbc you somehow feel an expert on how life was for me growing up  

I Never once saw a bbc camera crew

Do yourself a favour and stop pretending that you are speaking from experience because we all know you are not

I am

And you are simply wrong about many of the things you "think" you "know" about life on the ground for the average man during that period

I lived it

You watched it

Get over it and stop embarrassing yourself

Sorry but I actually read and study real History, not the history invented that you were indoctrinated with.





How Nelson Mandela Saved South Africa From Sinking Into Civil War 20 Years Ago

Aside from Walus’ immediate arrest after the murder (which was facilitated by a white Afrikaner woman and neighbor of Hani who called police), Mandela delivered a speech to the nation on television that may have soothed the jagged nerves of many in South Africa by calling for peace, unity and a rejection of violence.

“Tonight I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being,” Mandela said. “A white man [Walus], full of prejudice and hate, came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster.”

Mandela added: “The cold-blooded murder of Chris Hani has sent shock waves throughout the country and the world. Our grief and anger is tearing us apart. What has happened is a national tragedy that has touched millions of people, across the political and colour divide.”

But Mandela offered some words of hope and reconciliation. “Now is the time for all South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for - the freedom of all of us,” he noted. “Now is the time for our white compatriots, from whom messages of condolence continue to pour in, to reach out with an understanding of the grievous loss to our nation… Now is the time for the police to act with sensitivity and restraint, to be real community policemen and women who serve the population as a whole. There must be no further loss of life at this tragic time. This is a watershed moment for all of us… We must not let the men who worship war, and who lust after blood, precipitate actions that will plunge our country into another Angola.”

Less than two months after the killing of Hani, negotiations between the ANC and the white government led to an agreement, setting the date (April 1994) of South Africa’s first ever free election – or, in other words, the collapse of the apartheid system and the emergence of Mandela as president.

http://www.ibtimes.com/how-nelson-mandela-saved-south-africa-sinking-civil-war-20-years-ago-1322771



To be honest maybe you were not old enough to remember this  but it shows how utterly biased you are in your views and sorry but I do not even watch the BBC, again I read various different views and accounts with historical books, knowing many people who did actually live and understand the oppression of aprtheid and research myself events from history, thus using the BBC is nothing short of a copout answer to the reality I have given you in my replies.
The sad fact is and Ben has stated the same, that apartheid left the nation in such a disparity in equality it will takes decades to resolve and sorry you did not live it, because you were white, born free from oppression, I think it is disgusting for you to even claim you lived it, all you lived was to watch apartheid end, not what and how it affected the many blacks of SA.

I love how some people seem to think that because they lived near a thing during a thing, they're experts on that thing.

I know plenty of people who lived through the Vietnam War and don't know the first fucking thing about it. Including people who fought in it. There's no substitute for an engaged mind that seeks out the accounts from as many sources as possible and weighs as many perspectives as possible.

There's a hell of a lot more to understanding something than being on-site with your eyes open and your confirmation biases in full-throttle. I guess you have to be something other than self-deluded to realize that, though ...

Ben_Reilly wrote:I love how some people seem to think that because they lived near a thing during a thing, they're experts on that thing.

I know plenty of people who lived through the Vietnam War and don't know the first fucking thing about it. Including people who fought in it. There's no substitute for an engaged mind that seeks out the accounts from as many sources as possible and weighs as many perspectives as possible.

There's a hell of a lot more to understanding something than being on-site with your eyes open and your confirmation biases in full-throttle. I guess you have to be something other than self-deluded to realize that, though ...

Amen to that Ben.


 ::D:: 

Ben_Reilly wrote:I love how some people seem to think that because they lived near a thing during a thing, they're experts on that thing.

I know plenty of people who lived through the Vietnam War and don't know the first fucking thing about it. Including people who fought in it. There's no substitute for an engaged mind that seeks out the accounts from as many sources as possible and weighs as many perspectives as possible.

There's a hell of a lot more to understanding something than being on-site with your eyes open and your confirmation biases in full-throttle. I guess you have to be something other than self-deluded to realize that, though ...

Tell me Ben

Do you tell those vets how things were for them on the ground??

Do you climb up your tower and tell them that the fighting wasn't that bad??

I'd like to be there when you tell them that you know more about fighting in Vietnam because you once watched a Vietnam documentary

 ://?roflmao?/: 

Ben_Reilly wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:it is irrelevant what Mandela wanted since he was too old to make it happen

he left the country in the hands of mbeki and zuma

two individuals who had significantly more interest in self advancement than in  reconciliation

how many more years are needed didge??

its been 20 years, not 5 minutes

how much longer is needed??

10?? 15?? 1000?? 100000000??

how many more years until the blacks take charge of their future and stop cowering under the shadow of apartheid hoping it will protect them from growing up???

Jesus man, black people in SA were held back and oppressed until the early 90s and you expect them to have recovered from that sort of generational oppression by now?

You think most rich white people descended from Europeans built up their wealth and power in a few decades? Hell no. It accumulates over centuries, if they're lucky.

There's a reason rags-to-riches stories are so celebrated -- they're very rare.

What's been holding them back for the last 20 years??

What's the excuse for sliding backwards??

Is being black enough of an excuse,luck them 3014 we will still be blaming apartheid for holding them back

smelly_bandit wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:I love how some people seem to think that because they lived near a thing during a thing, they're experts on that thing.

I know plenty of people who lived through the Vietnam War and don't know the first fucking thing about it. Including people who fought in it. There's no substitute for an engaged mind that seeks out the accounts from as many sources as possible and weighs as many perspectives as possible.

There's a hell of a lot more to understanding something than being on-site with your eyes open and your confirmation biases in full-throttle. I guess you have to be something other than self-deluded to realize that, though ...

Tell me Ben

Do you tell those vets how things were for them on the ground??

Do you climb up your tower and tell them that the fighting wasn't that bad??

I'd like to be there when you tell them that you know more about fighting in Vietnam because you once watched a Vietnam documentary

 ://?roflmao?/: 

Did not grasp his point did you, lets see if you can figure out what he meant, because many fighting men only know what they were involved in. 


DOH


Another classic fuck up by smelly


Dear me also the other point on now holding back black people, hmmmm lets see, many not educated or trained in many aspects of life, thus trying to play catch up for millions, who were denied this under Apartheid. Of course this shows more than anything that smelly has no clue or concept how things can affect nations for decades after, even though this was already explained.


DOH

Yes I know what Ben meant

He once watched a docu or read a book about Vietnam written retrospectively when the fog of war had dissipated and the facts laid bare

What a legend,he googles Vietnam and becomes an expert on life for the average grunt

Sounds a lot like you

You read the long walk to freedom and think you know how things were for the average man

Bottom line is everything you know is hearsay since you were not there to witness it or experience it

I was


Everything you think you know is wrong

Get over it.

smelly_bandit wrote:Yes I know what Ben meant

He once watched a docu or read a book about Vietnam written retrospectively when the fog of war had dissipated and the facts laid bare

What a legend,he googles Vietnam and becomes an expert on life for the average grunt

Sounds a lot like you

You read the long walk to freedom and think you know how things were for the average man

Bottom line is everything you know is hearsay since you were not there to witness it or experience it

I was


Everything you think you know is wrong

Get over it.

Smelly, it is possible to know what the big picture was AND to know what conditions were like for the average person going through it, if you study both subjects with some diligence.

That, however, forces you to take a nuanced view in which you sometimes have to concede that people who were basically decent did some horrible things at times, and that it happened regardless of what color their skin was or what their religious beliefs were. It's complicated, which is probably why you avoid it -- your poor little brain just can't cope.

smelly_bandit wrote:Yes I know what Ben meant

He once watched a docu or read a book about Vietnam written retrospectively when the fog of war had dissipated and the facts laid bare

What a legend,he googles Vietnam and becomes an expert on life for the average grunt

Sounds a lot like you

You read the long walk to freedom and think you know how things were for the average man

Bottom line is everything you know is hearsay since you were not there to witness it or experience it

I was


Everything you think you know is wrong

Get over it.

Dear me, so everybody is wrong according to the logic of smelly and we cannot deduce anything historically now.


Oh my, what an intelligent answer again from smelly, no point in studying history then, as to smelly it is all wrong and we cannot deduce facts from countless evidence.

Epic fail

Ben_Reilly wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:Yes I know what Ben meant

He once watched a docu or read a book about Vietnam written retrospectively when the fog of war had dissipated and the facts laid bare

What a legend,he googles Vietnam and becomes an expert on life for the average grunt

Sounds a lot like you

You read the long walk to freedom and think you know how things were for the average man

Bottom line is everything you know is hearsay since you were not there to witness it or experience it

I was


Everything you think you know is wrong

Get over it.

Smelly, it is possible to know what the big picture was AND to know what conditions were like for the average person going through it, if you study both subjects with some diligence.

That, however, forces you to take a nuanced view in which you sometimes have to concede that people who were basically decent did some horrible things at times, and that it happened regardless of what color their skin was or what their religious beliefs were. It's complicated, which is probably why you avoid it -- your poor little brain just can't cope.

no ben it is not possible to "know" its only possible to imagine what the conditions were like for the person on the ground

do you KNOW what its like to be in syria right now??

do you KNOW what its like to be bombarded??

no you don't

the thing is what you don't like and what didge doesn't like is that your imagined views are just that - imagined

they do not reflect what life was actually like

and for you to be telling me that you know more about life and how things were for people in SA than the saffas themselves who actually lived it because you read it in a book once, is the most mind boggling display of stupidity i have seen in a long while

you are wrong

Let them get on with it best they can.

If I lived there I would be forced to look after my family by hook or by crook.