At least 14 illegal miners were killed and eight others injured in a collapse at an abandoned mine in Nkaneng, Rustenburg, North West Province, South Africa. Rescue operations are ongoing as more people may be trapped, police said on Tuesday.
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The incident occurred late Monday when a group of miners were manually excavating in an open area and the walls collapsed, burying them, according to a statement from Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Arthur Adams.
One miner who managed to escape alerted private security personnel at a nearby mine before fleeing. Law enforcement has launched a judicial investigation and indicated that most of the deceased were citizens of the Kingdom of Lesotho.
The eight survivors were taken to a nearby hospital. Three were discharged from the hospital and immediately detained for illegal stay under the Immigration Act, while the other five remain hospitalized in police custody.
“The immediate priority remains the rescue and recovery of anyone who may still be underground,” Adams emphasized.
North West SAPS confirms 14 illegal miners dead after tunnel collapse near Rustenburg
Fourteen suspected illegal miners (zama-zamas), most of them Basotho nationals, died when the walls of an excavated area caved in at the Nkaneng dumping site in Bojanala Sub-District 2… pic.twitter.com/CFGu0ayYoq
— MDN NEWS (@MDNnewss) August 11, 2026
Mining accidents are frequent in South Africa. One of the worst occurred in January 2025, when 78 bodies of illegal miners were recovered from the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine (BGM) in the north of the country, after spending months underground.
In that operation, 246 illegal miners, known locally as zama-zamas (a Zulu expression meaning “to risk” or “to try again”), were rescued alive, and 78 bodies were recovered, along with nine more bodies and one miner who died in the hospital. The Buffelsfontein case shook South African public opinion after the Pretoria High Court ordered the rescue following months of police pressure on the miners, who were reluctant to go underground for fear of arrest or being held captive by criminal gangs.
Following the accident, the Federation of South African Trade Unions denounced the country for allowing its thousands of abandoned, dilapidated mines with inadequate safety measures to become death traps, environmental hazards, and breeding grounds for organized criminal networks.
According to their statement, there are approximately 6,000 abandoned and unowned mines and mining sites in South Africa.
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