South African Minister in the Presidency Khumbuzo Ntshavheni says the government will not be sending any help for scores of illegal miners trapped underground.

Ntshavheni said the government is not sending help for criminals, because criminals are not to be helped out but to be persecuted.

In her own words, ‘We are not going to send help down there, we are going to smoke them out. They will come out. They did not go down there for the benefit of the Republic, so we cannot help them. Those who want to help them can go down and take the food there. They will come out and we will arrest them’.

This after close to 5000 illegal miners have been trapped in a closed Stelfontein mine and are unable to come out due to hunger and dehydration.

According to Phatela Phooko, a man who reportedly went down the mine shaft, the illegal miners that include Lesotho citizens seem to be wasted due to dehydration and hunger, and cannot get out of the mine.

He said there are also dead bodies on the ground, but he could not go through to where they are, as he learned through the odour that the bodies have already decomposed.

Section 11 of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 states that ‘’Everyone has a right to life”’.

Thousands of Basotho men have left the country to work as illegal miners in SA as a result of poverty and unemployment.