The death toll in South Africa's latest mining disaster rose to 18 yesterday as rescue teams, acutely conscious of the explosion which reverberated through parts of the goldmine late on Thursday, continued their search for survivors.
The disaster at the Mponeng mine south-west of Johannesburg, thought to have been the result of methane gas igniting, occurred in the midst of turmoil in the mining industry caused primarily by the falling price of gold. The mineworkers' union accused the owners of negligence.
Rescue teams lifted 20 miners to safety within hours of the blast. The body of the last of the 18 dead miners was found at about dawn yesterday.
Anglogold, which owns the mine, calculated from its records that only one miner was unaccounted for by late yesterday. "We will keep on going flat out until we are satisfied everyone is accounted for," Anglogold spokesman Mr James Duncan pledged yesterday.
The 20 rescued miners had undergone medical examinations but none was found to be suffering from serious injuries, Mr Duncan said. "They have gone home for some rest," he added.
President Thabo Mbeki expressed shock and sadness at the deaths of the 18 miners but was convinced that the rescuers would do all in their power to bring the men still trapped underground to the surface.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) took a more hostile line. It accused Anglogold, the world's largest gold mining company, of negligence.
"Preliminary information we have is that there has been great negligence on management's part," NUM spokesman Mr Archie Palane said. His accusation was labelled "unhelpful" by Mr Duncan.
The last major disaster in an Anglogold mine took place in 1995, when a lift taking miners underground at the Vaal Reefs mine plummeted to the bottom of a shaft, killing 104 miners. A commission of inquiry, headed by Judge Ramon Leon, was appointed. He found that the disaster was the result of a series of events caused by negligence. He recommended that two mine officials and three employees be prosecuted for culpable homicide.
Judge Leon's finding was welcomed by Mr James Motlatsi, the NUM president, who noted that it was the first time "management has been rightly held responsible for its failure to provide decent health and safety conditions on the mines".
Faced with recurring allegations of negligence or indifference to their employees, the mining companies have riposted that gold mining in South African conditions - gold is found in thin reefs at deep levels - is inherently dangerous. But they maintain that they do their best to reduce the risks.
Mining officials pointed out yesterday that the number of fatalities had declined markedly during the 1990s, with the number of deaths falling by 20 per cent between 1990 and 1995.
The simmering dispute over the disaster at Mponeng mine seemed set to aggravate existing tensions between mine companies and mine workers on the retrenchments in the industry. The companies, responding to the falling price of gold and the consequent decline in their profits, have given notice of their intention to lay off miners at marginal mines. The NUM has fiercely resisted these redundancy proposals.
The schoolteacher who ran amok with a gun in a Soweto school and killed three of his colleagues on Thursday was deranged and haunted by suspicions that they were conspiring against him, remarks made by his surviving colleagues suggest.