JOHANNESBURG — A Zimbabwean illegal miner who was crushed to death in a rockfall at a disused mine was a father of sextuplets – although one of them died shortly after birth.
The Star
A mission by search-and-rescue teams to retrieve the body of 33-year-old Thandazani Dlamini was called off late on Wednesday night due to fears that any attempt to move the rock under which he was trapped could endanger more lives.
Dlamini was left entombed underground with part of his lower body protruding from under a boulder.
His partner, Simangaliso Dlodlo, said she left Zimbabwe together with Dlamini in search for jobs in Jo’burg so that they could support their children.
“After job-hunting for some time, he was introduced to illegal mining and although he didn’t really like it, he had no choice.
“He was making around R700 a week and we could live on it and still send money home for the children,” Dlodlo said on Thursday.
She is now facing the daunting task of having to find ways to raise their six children — five from the set of sextuplets, now six years old, and the older one born in 1997.
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She could handle the news that Dlamini was dead, but was not yet ready to accept that he will never be given a proper burial because it was too dangerous to retrieve his body.
Speaking to The Star from a shack she shared with Dlamini in Durban Deep near Roodepoort, Dlodlo related a similar incident when one of the illegal miners was crushed to death in a rockfall and his body left trapped under a huge rock.
“They said they could not move the rock to remove his body because that would have led to more dangerous rockfalls.
“(His colleagues) then decided to slice whatever of the body parts that were protruding from the rock, which were put together and taken home for a burial,” Dlodlo said.
“I would not mind taking even his toe to Zimbabwe so that he can have a proper grave. It’s also hard to believe that he died because I cannot see his remains even in a picture.”
Dlodlo said fellow illegal miners had approached her, volunteering to go and retrieve whatever they could of Dlamini’s body.
“They are ready to risk their lives, but they are afraid they will be arrested, or that the entry tunnel will be sealed while they’re still inside,” she said.
Dlodlo said they had planned to travel to Zimbabwe to see their children in August.
“He was looking forward to it as he loved our children very much and worked hard to provide for them.
“I last saw Thandazani on Tuesday morning when he left to go to the mine and expected him on Wednesday morning, but I received the bad news instead,” she said.
“I’m now sitting helplessly thinking of his body being abandoned there and how I’m going to provide for the children when I have not been able to secure a job in over a year now.
“The only work I can do is domestic. Right now I can’t do anything. I will have to go to the streets and beg if I have to, just so that my children back in Zimbabwe won’t go to bed on empty stomachs.”
Dlodlo said she did not have parents, and her children were staying with her sister in Zimbabwe.
“Going back to Zimbabwe is not an option because things are too bad there. I will stay and look for a job and ask for any help I can get,” she said.
“Right now I am in the dark. I don’t know where to begin and what to do or who to turn to. I feel lost and too dependent on my neighbours.”
