Harmony Gold mines

The 2009 Harmony Gold mine deaths occurred in late May and early June 2009 in Free State province, South Africa. At least 82 miners, many from Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, died from inhalation of poisonous gasses created by a May 18 fire in the mineshaft.

Critically, the ranks of unemployed, independent and redundant miners are unofficially tolerated within unsecured, less-profitable mines. Consequently, in reports from Africa the dead are being officially defined as "illegal miners" — or "trespassers" — onto the mineral-claims of the larger corporate mining operators and market consortiums which traditionally depend on government-supported mineral-extraction concessions and export rights granted in areas such as Free State. A former police officer with 12 years' experience in cases of "illegal mining" said he feared that hundreds more bodies of "illegals" could still be underground in mines in the city of Welkom, according to a report in the leading Afrikaans daily, Beeld. He estimated that about 3,000 illegal miners work underground in the mines in Welkom alone.

The affected mine (the Eland shaft) is owned by Harmony Gold.Africa's third-largest gold producer and the fifth-largest in the world, Harmony is especially exposed to trespassers because the company followed a strategy of buying up old, abandoned or marginally productive mines (alongside controversial, environmentally expensive extraction techniques), which fell into disuse when gold prices were lower.

The deaths were initially thought to have been caused by a fire. One miner who escaped had reported seeing smoke and running. Harmony states that the dead were members of an illegal mining syndicate commonly referred to as Zama-Zamas. The syndicate allegedly raid Harmony's mines regularly, 'armed' with explosives. However explosives are historically a necessary technology of mining; and Harmony has not related the deaths to an attack or explosion. Harmony did initially propose a theory that mercury used to coagulate gold combined with Zama-Zamas' explosives, and led to the fire. But the dead were not found in a burnt condition, indicating their deaths may be from gas or smoke inhalation, also common effects of fire.

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