ActionSA president Herman Mashaba said the Mbombela Magistrate’s court found that the NPA should consider criminal prosecution against individuals, including the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, but the NPA has yet to announce a decision. Picture: Armand Hough/Independent Newspapers
ActionSA on Monday held a picket in front of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) offices in Pretoria with the families of those killed in the Lily Mine tragedy of 2016.
They were protesting over the body’s failure to decide over possible prosecution of those involved.
On February 5, 2016, Solomon Nyirenda, Yvonne Mnisi and Pretty Nkambule were trapped underground after Lily mine collapsed in Mpumalanga.
The three were in a container that plunged 60m during the collapse. They were killed and their unrecovered remains remain at the site to date.
ActionSA president Herman Mashaba said the Mbombela Magistrate’s court found, in mid-October last year, that the NPA should consider criminal prosecution against individuals, including the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, but the NPA has yet to announce a decision.
“ActionSA has repeatedly consulted the NPA on whether a decision on criminal prosecutions has been made. After being promised in December that a decision would be made in January, the NPA has yet to make any decision about possible criminal prosecutions.
“Instead, the NPA gives excuse after excuse as to why a decision on possible prosecutions has not taken place while the families of Nyirenda, Nkambule and Mnisi, who were engulfed in a sinkhole at the mine more than eight years ago, await closure and justice for the tragedy.”
Mashaba said the party’s objective remains to see the mine shaft reopened to retrieve the container in which the three victims were entombed.
This would allow relatives to provide a proper burial for their loved ones, as well as securing compensation for the families of the affected miners, and ensuring that those who are liable for the tragedy are criminally prosecuted.
“Since I became involved in the matter, we received power of attorney from the families to pursue, if necessary, civil and criminal litigation against the parties found liable. It is therefore imperative that the NPA makes a decision on whether to prosecute so as to allow ActionSA to consider its options, legal or otherwise,” Mashaba said.
Earlier this year, Mashaba said it was “heartbreaking that the remains of the three employees who died at Lily Mine have not been retrieved eight years later”.
He said his party's legal team would continue to pursue the matter until the bodies were retrieved.
In December, in written correspondence to ActionSA, it was stated that a panel of advocates who had been tasked to study the Mbombela Magistrate’s Court inquest report into the tragedy, would only return to office in the “new year” and would only make a determination whether to prosecute then.
The Mercury