Relatives have expressed frustration with the lack of action from police and the department of mineral and petroleum resources, saying they have not shown “firm commitment” to rescue efforts.

The families and other locals have tried to locate and rescue the miners, but have faced numerous difficulties in the past three weeks, including rising water levels in the shaft. 

Earlier this month, the Mail & Guardian reported that a large group were trapped in the abandoned shaft in Luipaardsvlei. 

Witnesses reported hearing tapping and knocking sounds from the 10 miners, indicating that they may still be alive.

“I understand that there were 17 who went underground and then from the 17, 10 tried to dig themselves out and went to another tunnel to find an exit, but somehow they can’t get back,” a relative of one of the trapped men, who declined to be named, said on Monday.

“They are still trying to dig their way out.”

From the seven who remained, two swam through the flooded shaft and resurfaced early last week. 

“Four of them drowned and the one who remained was waiting for the water level to go down. Then, late last week, he came out and then he gave the information that there are 10 other guys and they are still stuck.” 

On Sunday, Gauteng police said they had been called to a scene where five decomposed bodies “that seem to be of zama zamas” were recovered at the old abandoned mine, situated at the corner of the N14 and R28 in Krugersdorp/Kagiso.

The police said they were notified by a member of the public who noticed the bodies as he was walking past.

“The scene where these bodies were recovered is the boundary of Krugersdorp and Kagiso precinct area. It appears that the bodies were taken out from underground and dumped at the scene to be discovered,” the statement said, adding that two inquest cases would be registered in Kagiso for two bodies and Krugersdorp for three bodies.

The relative said three of those bodies were of four of the trapped illegal artisanal miners, who had drowned underground and whose bodies were retrieved by other illegal miners last week. A fourth body is missing.

“Not far from that shaft, there is a dumping site, two other guys went inside a tunnel there and rocks and rubble fell down on them and they died instantly,” the relative said.

A resident, who requested anonymity, said relatives did not want the bodies of the drowned men to be dropped off at the roadside because they would “not be connected” to the other men that needed to be rescued. 

“They drowned in that shaft and we need to remind everyone that there are still men alive down there. How can we get more help if there is no proof that people lost their lives down there.

The relative said he had gone into the shaft last week as the water level subsided. “These guys who are used to underground, they wanted to check the water level. We saw some dead bodies inside the water and then they said they would report it [to the authorities].

“We were crawling, we were walking inside water, it was very tough and it took me almost three hours going inside and coming back. Now the water level has risen again. 

He said the police were “just arresting people, instead of helping us”.

He said his nephew is probably among the group of 10 men who remain trapped. “He’s still stuck on the other side, because I understand that they were trying to dig to find another exit to go up, but that guy who came out on Thursday, he was saying he last heard their hammer three days back, which means by [last] Monday they were still alive.

“We are stuck as a family, there’s nothing we can do. For three weeks nothing has been done. If there is something that can be done, maybe we can get them back … if that guy came out on Thursday, then it might be possible, they are still alive.”

The resident added: “We’ve now got three people who know exactly where these [10] guys are. They feel that if the water level drops again, they could dig them out. These guys have been tapping and knocking with a hammer or a rock to indicate that they are alive.

“Now, I’m sitting with the knowledge that there are people down there and to the world, there is nothing happening there.”

Residents living near the lagoon say the stench, which has emanated from the lagoon in the past is “eye-watering” and nauseating since late last month.

Asked about the source of the sewage pollution in the lagoon, mayco member for water and sanitation Zahid Badroodien referred GroundUp to a letter sent to Milnerton residents and councillors setting out sewerage infrastructure failures since July, and the City’s interventions to address the resultant pollution.

The letter, dated 29 November, states that the City had been receiving complaints about the “foul odour” at Milnerton for the “past few weeks”. This was due to “a series of events” having “compromised the integrity of the sewer system”, which were being addressed.

The letter describes sewer line collapses in July, August, and September, all of which contributed to sewage flowing into the lagoon via stormwater channels.

Rehabilitation work in October also resulted in sewage overflows into stormwater channels flowing to the lagoon.

The City described the repairs being undertaken and efforts to contain the sewage flows, while apologising for the “extended inconvenience”, and stating that it was “working tirelessly to address the root causes of the pollution and prevent future occurrences”.

Sewage treatment failures

The Potsdam wastewater treatment works (WWTW) releases more than 40-million litres of sewage effluent per day into the Diep River, just 5km upstream of the lagoon. This is the main flow of freshwater into the lagoon in summer. It would not result in pollution if the Potsdam WWTW was properly treating the sewage it receives before releasing it into the river.

Among other pollutants, sewage contains E. coli and enterococcus, which are bacteria known as faecal coliforms, found in the human gut. National guidelines state treated effluent should have fewer than 1,000 colony forming units (cfu) of faecal coliforms per 100ml. This is the same at the City’s “target” range for intermediate contact in its rivers, vleis, and estuaries. In other words, one should be able to canoe and kite surf in properly treated effluent released from a sewage treatment plant, without any ill effects.

Badroodien said the pollution was not caused by the the Potsdam WWTW.

But the Department of Water and Sanitation’s (DWS) regulatory information system shows that Potsdam WWTW has met the minimum effluent quality guideline for just 3% of its monthly effluent quality tests over the past year.

Additionally, Potsdam achieved chemical compliance in only 48% of effluent quality tests so far this year. This is a measurement of elements such as nitrogen, phosphates, and ammonia. It also achieved just 31% for physical compliance, which measures aspects such as suspended solids, pH, and electrical conductivity. Currently, the DWS system lists Potsdam’s effluent quality as ‘bad’.

The City has been conducting a R5.2-billion upgrade of the Potsdam WWTW for the past 20 months, with completion set for the end of 2027.

Asked about the poor effluent quality, Badroodien said the final results of upgrade would only be evident “once all components have been constructed”.

“To address current challenges, some infrastructure components have been fast-tracked and are expected to be completed by approximately mid-2025, leading to a marked improvement in treated effluent quality,” he said.

He said the effluent compliance had “already improved to 75%”.

Yet the DWS information system reveals nine “high level failures” this year, the most recent being on 29 October.

Water quality results

To the City’s credit, it makes its inland water quality test results publicly available through the Public Inland Quality Dashboard. The results also point to the main source of sewage pollution in the lagoon coming from the Potsdam WWTW.

According to the City’s water quality data, the results at the testing point immediately downstream of the Potsdam WWTW have on average been worse than the water quality results upstream of the sewage works. The latest water quality test results (19 November) show an E. coli count of 29,100cfu/100ml above the Potsdam WWTW, which is more than 11 times the acceptable limit for intermediate contact. But the count downstream of Potsdam WWTW was 7.3-million cfu/100ml. This indicates a serious pollution source most likely emanating from the sewage treatment works.

Environmental activist and Milnerton resident Caroline Marx, who is included on the mayoral advisory committee for inland water quality, said the results show that significant sewage pollution either comes from Potsdam WWTW or a sewerage pipe that runs to Potsdam.

Marx said on 27 November the stench from the lagoon was so bad it made her eyes burn. When GroundUp spoke to her on 3 December, she said the lagoon still stank.

She said at this time of year, when there was little to no rain, most of the flow into the lagoon came from the sewage works.

Compared to the 40-million litres a day of effluent released from Potsdam, there would need to be “an enormous volume” of sewage coming from other sources for it to pollute the lagoon to this extent.

But whatever the source, she said whatever measures the City was taking to prevent pollution of the lagoon seemed to be insufficient.

Green Scorpions directive

Following warnings to stop pollution of the Milnerton Lagoon – which a study found was an important nursery area for fish on the west coast, including Cape stumpnose and white steenbras – provincial environmental compliance officials, known as the Green Scorpions, issued a directive to the City in September 2020 ordering it to clean up the lagoon.

A directive is an enforceable notice issued in terms of the National Environmental Management Act.

The City’s Inland Water Quality Dashboard shows significant pollution in the lagoon in 2019, with improvement in late 2020 and 2021, but worsening from 2022 to the present. The 2024 results are worse on average than those of 2019, which led to the directive being issued.

Western Cape Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning spokesperson Rudolf van Jaarsveldt said the directive was being enforced, and the City was engaging with the provincial government on several conditions in the directive.

“Some of the conditions [of the directive] are subject to future-dated timeframes as well as lengthy procurement processes, and the City has communicated this to the Western Cape government,” stated van Jaarsveldt.

He said the upgrades of the Potsdam WWTW and the Koeberg pump station would “prevent further pollution from these facilities”.

He said compliance with the directive, and the City’s reports on the matter continued to be monitored.

But chairperson of the Milnerton Canoe Club, Richard Allen, said the state of the lagoon seems to have deteriorated. While more experienced canoe club members used to paddle on the lagoon four years ago when the provincial department issued its directive, Allen said they have since halted all paddling on the lagoon. He said the club members now paddle along the canals at Century City about 5km away. He said they are battling to keep the canoe club alive.

He said the water quality in the lagoon had gotten “progressively worse”.

“It’s toxic and stinks to hell,” he said.

He said the smell from the water had been “ghastly” at the end of November.

Some functions had been organised at the clubhouse on the bank of the lagoon but the water was “really foul”. “I was almost hurling.”

Speaking to GroundUp on 10 December, Marx said the stench had reduced due to higher tides flushing the lagoon and “everyone suddenly jumping to fix the problems”.

This article was first published on GroundUp

The day in early September when Coert Steynberg became severely ill after accidentally ingesting water from the sewage-polluted Hennops River had started out like any other.

He enjoyed his usual full breakfast that his wife, Ria, had cooked. The couple danced a little in their farm home in the scenic Hennops River Valley, as they did most mornings. They shared a few laughs.

Then Coert — who, at 76, was still active and in good health — drove with one of his employees to a friend’s farm to fill bottles with water from the nearby Hennops River, about a kilometre away, to flush their toilets.

Their water troubles had begun in August when their borehole ran dry during a heatwave. For drinking water, Coert filled bottles of clean water from a neighbour’s borehole. 

“He didn’t want to waste their clean water so he and one of our workers filled up several bottles full of water from the Hennops River for the toilets so that we don’t waste the good borehole water in this severe drought,” Ria said. 

They also ordered water every five days from Rand Water and from another water supply company, forking out R1 800 for 10 000 litres each time. This was used to fill several of the farm’s water tanks for their tenants and their livestock and to irrigate the fruits and vegetables Coert grew.

The Steynberg family had lived and farmed in the Hennops River Valley, a provincial nature reserve, for many generations. 

Coera, the name Coert was called by his community, had lived in the area all his life, mainly growing vegetables next to the river.

 “On that day [when they both fell ill], I wanted to make us some tea,” said Ria, who broke into tears as she recalled the sequence of events that led to her husband’s untimely death. 

“I asked Coert to please pick up one of the bottles, which are very heavy, so that I can make us some tea, which he did right away. He poured it into the kettle and I boiled it. 

“And when I tasted the tea, I said to him, ‘But it smells bad.’ I just took one sip. It didn’t taste good. I asked him if there is something wrong with the [neighbours’] borehole water but he said that the borehole has fresh water and it’s very good. He said that it is okay to drink, because he thought it was the water from the borehole.” 

Coert took one sip and then another. Ria saw him grimace. 

“He looked into the cup and he said: ‘Ja, there’s something wrong with it,’ and he picked up the bottle from which he poured the water into the kettle. I said that there’s something black at the bottom of the bottle and he looked at it, and as he poured it out into the sink, he said, ‘There’s something wrong with the water.’”

The couple determined that somehow one of the bottles filled with the polluted river water to flush their toilets was accidentally switched. Unwittingly, Ria had used this contaminated water to make them tea. 

“I got sick and Coert got sick,” she said. “My stomach started running as well as Coert’s. 

“We had two bottles of water for the toilet in our bathroom downstairs and we could not keep up with the water for the toilets as his stomach was running completely, as was mine. It just kept on running for more than a week; it was terrible.”

Coert had taken only two sips of the tea; Ria a single sip. 

“You can’t imagine the whole outcome of that,” she said. 

“That shows you the terrible condition of that water [in the Hennops River].”

After a week of severe stomach problems, Coert spent a weekend in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, with his daughter and her husband. 

Ria, who was also still sick, had travelled to Kleinmond in the Western Cape for her son’s birthday. 

“During the night [in Kleinmond] — and it’s sad and bad to say it as I’m a very proud kind of person, like Coert was — I woke up and found that my stomach just flooded onto all the bedding.

“It was terrible, it was just pouring from my body.”

But, in the few days that she was there, her son medicated her and gradually, she started to feel better. 

But Coert remained severely ill, so his daughter took him to the Groenkloof Hospital in Pretoria when he returned from Middelburg. 

He was isolated in a ward and put on an intravenous drip and released after three days. 

Ria said: “While I was in Cape Town, I had this call from one of our sons. ‘Ma, I think you must rather come home, Dad is not feeling so well.’”

She flew home immediately, and fetched Coert, who was “so happy” to be discharged from the hospital. They returned to the farm. 

“He was well for a day after being on the drip but his stomach was not cured. It started all over again. And when we got home, for another week or two his stomach carried on running.

“It was so terrible. We had no water, only the bottles that we had to fill up,” said Ria. “I had a couple of full bottles for the kitchen just to make us some food for the stuff that we could keep inside us.”

But then Ria soon fell ill again. 

“My stomach started running again in the 10 days I looked after Coert at the farm after he was discharged from Groenkloof. I lost 15kg during this whole ordeal.”

Ria, who described herself as a “very young” 72-year-old, had medicine to stop the watery diarrhoea but it served only as a temporary relief for them both. They also took medicine to counter dehydration.

Coert could only eat a fresh beef broth that Ria cooked for him. 

“Our bedroom was on the top storey and we have our bathroom there and he would go to the toilet during the night, up to five times, it was just pouring out of his body. 

“As he walked to the bed, I had to wash the floors with that water.

Ria said she could not clean his clothes because the washing machine could not work without water. All that she could do was to stuff all of his soiled clothes into plastic bags. 

And because there was no water to properly bathe or shower, Ria could only give them both “bird baths” after heating a little water in the kettle or on the gas stove. 

On 23 September, their children intervened and Coert was admitted to the Netcare Unitas Hospital in Pretoria early the following day.

After inserting a catheter, doctors were stunned to see that Coert’s urine was black. He was immediately transferred to the multi-intensive care unit, where he was kept in a ward separately from the other patients. 

“It took the doctors a couple of days with Ampath [the private pathology laboratory] to decide whether it was a bacterial infection or a virus,” said Ria. 

Coert was eventually diagnosed with clostridium difficile infection (CDI), a virulent toxin-producing bacterial infection that is highly infectious. His organs were failing and he was put on a dialysis machine to try to help his kidneys. 

Ria recalled how she would sit at Coert’s bedside showing him photographs of the young peaches, pomegranates and the crystal grapes that he had grown for them on their farm.

“I said to him, ‘Look, you are going to come back to the farm this year and you are going to enjoy all the fruit of your hard work.’ He just smiled.”

His condition took a turn for the worse after a gastroscopy was performed to treat swelling in his stomach on 4 October. 

“My husband only managed to say to me, ‘I want to speak to you about us.’ I said to him: ‘My dear, what is it you mean to tell me?’ 

“He kept quiet but just kept looking at my face with his pure blue eyes. I said to him, ‘Why are you looking at me in such a strange way?’” 

Those were the last words that they would say to one another. 

“He turned his head around and he died. It was so sad. I never realised that Coert was dying,” said Ria. 

“I still cannot take this inside me and it’s all due to that filthy stupid water in the Hennops. All that water is so polluted and my husband died of that polluted waterr that people are using as a toilet. I will tell you that and I will stick to that.”

Coert was buried in the large family graveyard on the farm. 

“My husband should have been here with me, because he was a completely healthy person,” Ria said. “He was 76 but he was so strong and energetic.”

The couple walked daily, danced often and were planning a sea cruise with friends. 

“We still climbed that mountain [in the Hennops River Valley] — part of the mountain belonged to him and he regularly checked the fences and the wire — and also just for the sheer pleasure of having a wonderful view from there and checking for the wild kudus.”

As a qualified builder, Coert had also built many houses for people living along the Hennops River. 

“He would crunch the biscuits for the tarts I made and cut up vegetables for me when I was cooking. We did everything together. We never even went to town without each other,” said Ria. 

“He was my best friend. I’m not the Lord, but I know it was not his time to go. He was not sick, there was nothing on this Earth wrong with my husband.” 

Water activist Willem Snyman said the tragedy of the Hennops River — which is one of the few and largest waterways in Gauteng and which crosses Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni — is reflected in the “death of Coert Steynberg, going from a river that is supporting so much life to a river of death”.

“It’s ironic that Coert was farming vegetables on the river for so long, getting that life out of it and the water was actually the cause of his death.”

Snyman runs the Fountain River Environmental Sanctuary Hennops (Fresh), a nonprofit organisation working to restore the Hennops ecosystem. 

“It’s crazy that in the last 10 years, the river has gone from such a vast life-giving force to something that is taking lives now. And I think Coert’s death is one of the few that we do know about.”

He wonders if more people have become ill and lives have been lost because “it is difficult to trace the symptoms back to the sewage pollution”. 

Less than a decade ago, the Hennops was still crystal clear and many households used this water, said Snyman. 

“The pollution has now become so heavy that most aquatic life has been wiped out and contact with the water is avoided. 

“In the Mooiplaas area, groundwater has already been polluted by the sewage in the river. 

“The E. coli levels in the Hennops are in their millions. The pollution is of such a magnitude that it’s really threatening all life. If you think of how dependent we all are on our freshwater to give us life, I don’t really think that we’ve got much of a future.”

Snyman said the water poses a severe health hazard and flows straight into the Hartbeespoort Dam, from where it is used for the irrigation of edible crops feeding millions of people.

Large volumes of raw sewage are also dumped straight into the Hennops from illegal housing along its banks.

The river is also a repository for “massive plastic pollution”, which is being washed downstream. 

“This is what Gauteng is doing as the largest industrial centre — we’re just sending our waste down to the rest of the country, into the sea, without really seeing or caring about the consequences,” said Snyman. 

“It’s mostly the councils that are to blame; the sewage farms are run by the municipalities and the plastic is supposed to be collected by the municipalities.” 

These services have collapsed and “we’re sitting with these problems that won’t go away. This absolutely callous pollution will stay in the aquatic environment.”

Snyman said the bigger tragedy is that it’s not only the Hennops River that is contaminated. 

“Probably all the rivers in Gauteng are in this state,” he added. 

The Hennops River Valley is a provincial nature reserve for critical biodiversity. “Now we’ve got this river of death running through here. All of the animals are drinking this water and are also getting affected, so it’s actually a massive ecological impact. The river is about 100km long coming from Tembisa; it’s literally killing everything along that route.”

Pieter Nel, an ecologist at the North West Parks and Tourism Board, said its database showed that 80 elephants had died from starvation since August.

The drought and the uncontrolled growth of the elephant population were the main drivers of deaths in Madikwe, said the Madikwe Futures Company, a nonprofit contracted in to assist the parks and tourism board.

A longer-term plan for the next four months also involves the potential culling of some of the estimated 1 600 elephants in the reserve.

Nel said protocols were in place for identifying starving animals in bad shape. “As the field guides and the rangers go along, the animals are identified and then we’ve got a set of criteria that we’re going to use to determine whether an elephant needs to be put down or not.”

He said that at the instruction of the minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment, a task team had been formed to deal with the situation at Madikwe and the Pilanesberg National Park in the short and long terms.

Managing the increase in the elephant population is difficult “because in terms of park expansion and translocation, there’s very limited options”, Nel said. “One of the issues that we may have to consider is culling.”

Having too many elephants in a reserve harms the entire ecosystem, Nel said. “I think Madikwe has shown what can happen if you pass that threshold.”

He noted that earlier in the year there were no signs of any stress among the elephants. “Then in August and September things escalated and we had these mortalities. It shows you that there’s a very fine balance and the moment you pass that threshold, everything collapses.”

The NSPCA said elephant deaths had increased exponentially since August, and “with an estimated 1600 elephants on the reserve, the situation is dire and urgent”.

The wildlife protection unit of the National Council of SPCAs visited the reserve and described the situation as a “wildlife tragedy”.

The NSPCA said its team observed signs of overgrazing and poor veld management. “Outside Madikwe’s fence line is an abundance of nutritional vegetation, a stark comparison to what Madikwe has to offer the animals within the confines of the reserve.”

“This is not ‘nature’ or ‘nature’s way’ as this is a man-made disaster, with years of inaction addressing the overpopulation and lack of vegetation, and increasing bush encroachment,” said NSPCA wildlife protection unit manager and chief inspector Douglas Wolhuter.

The NSPCA team encountered an elephant calf in such a weakened state that it was unable to move from the presence of humans. The calf was euthanised. 

During another inspection on 3 December, two more elephants were euthanised by the NSPCA’s veterinarian. A flight over the reserve showed more dead animals, including a giraffe lying in water. Two white rhinos in poor condition were also seen, it said.

“It is a travesty that this reserve cannot ensure the welfare and well-being of the animals,” said Wolhuter, adding that the reserve management “observed the suffering unfold before them and did nothing”.

Nel said it was expected that there would be ecological impacts from Madikwe’s elephants because there have never been elephants in or around the areas bordering the reserve. 

“Obviously, we drastically need to reduce the numbers to bring us back to a situation where the system can properly recover and we can have those big trees, all of those things, coming back,” he said.

He pointed out that there had been a conscious decision to use non-lethal methods of managing the elephant population, but “we have to admit it didn’t yield the desired results”. 

“There were real opportunities of expanding the park, there were some opportunities for translocation, which unfortunately never materialised and that brought us to the situation where we are now here. Now, we will have to look at other ways, including lethal options.”

He said the necessary documents had been completed and were on their way to the minister. “We’ll see how the process unfolds.”

The game reserve was created 30 years ago as a partnership between the government, private sector and local communities. The parks and tourism board manages the reserve and its conservation work. The lodge owners and the Madikwe Futures Company are not responsible for managing the elephant population. 

For the local communities, the reserve sustains more than 1 000 jobs.

The Madikwe Futures Company, which is contracted to assist with anti-poaching, roadwork, bush-clearing and community projects, said the reserve’s vegetation, like the vegetation of other reserves in Southern Africa, has been put under pressure by a growing elephant overpopulation. 

“Especially with the current drought, other reserves with elephants, including reserves in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Malawi and Zimbabwe, are in a similar situation,” said Hector Magome, the director of the Madikwe Futures Company. 

In recent weeks, Madikwe has received some rain and the vegetation is growing again, but “we are still waiting for substantial rains,” Magome said. “Despite the harsh conditions, nearly all wildlife, including elephants, are surviving … but that still does not resolve the underlying problem.”

Koos Potgieter, the managing director of the Madikwe Futures Company and a lodge owner, said: “This is the first time in the 30 years of the reserve’s existence that this has happened. It is a tipping point and urgent intervention is needed. However, we are extremely concerned that the way the issue is positioned in the press is too broadly condemning and will destroy the good that Madikwe has done and continues to do.”

Southern Africa faces a problem of too many elephants, he said. “Everybody is looking for an answer to this problem not [only] at the Madikwe level … This is a thing that has to be addressed and talked about” in Southern Africa and all the way to East Africa. 

“Everybody is finding little ways of trying to deal with the [elephant] population growth and there’s no clear answer except the one which is emotionally very charged.”