Rights groups are criticizing South Africa’s government for failing to prevent what they call a “massacre” at the ...

A map of a gold mine in Buffelsfontein, South Africa: Illegal mining is common in parts of gold-rich South Africa where companies close down mines that are no longer profitable, leaving groups of ...

South African authorities have come under intense scrutiny for their response after civic groups said hundreds of miners have been trapped deep in an abandoned gold mine for months.

Efforts to bring miners to the surface were hampered by the complex structure of Buffelsfontein, one of South Africa's deepest mines, with workers scattered across different levels and shafts.

Last week, rescuers recovered 78 bodies and 246 survivors — many of them weak and emaciated — from the Buffelsfontein mine in Stilfontein, in South Africa’s North West province, where police ...

Illegal mining is a longstanding issue in South Africa, especially in abandoned mines where jobless former miners, like those at Buffelsfontein, search for gold deposits to survive. While zama ...

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. Mine rescue workers host up a cage that was used to rescue trapped ...

The saga of illegal miners reportedly trapped underground at the Buffelsfontein mine in North ... That is not how a democratic South Africa, subscribing to human rights, should behave.