For weeks, police have been stationed at the opening of an abandoned gold mine in South Africa, trying to smoke out the people illegally working deep inside.

Since the standoff began, more than 1,000 miners have emerged to face arrest, one decomposing body has been recovered, and community members have gone to court to ensure their loved ones underground continue to get food and water.

It's not clear how many miners are still underground in Stilfontein, in the country's North West province. Police say they number in the hundreds. But community members say there are thousands of people below, either unwilling to come out and face arrest, or too frail to get out on their own.

"It's a waiting game at this point," Busi Thabane, an expert on South African mining, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

Thabane is the general manager of the Bench Marks Foundation, a corporate watchdog that researches the impacts of mining on communities in South Africa.

She says the standoff is just the latest culmination of decades-long tensions around illegal mining in South Africa, a dangerous industry run mostly by criminal syndicates who employ people who are desperate for work.

It's a "very, very complicated problem," she said, and one that can't be fixed by a police crackdown alone. 

Why are people working in closed mines?

Large-scale mines were once the biggest source of employment in South Africa, Thabane says — not just for locals, but also migrants from nearby Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

"The economies in those countries have survived basically on mining salaries of the people that have come to work in South Africa," she said. 

But over the last 20 years or so, mining companies have been closing up shop, often packing up and leaving the mines behind. The government estimates that there are about 6,000 unused or abandoned mines in South Africa.

That's where the illegal miners come in. Known as zama-zamas — or "hustlers" in the Zulu language — they search for gold and other precious metal deposits at abandoned sites.

"These workers, they find themselves unemployed. They are very low-level skilled workers. They have never done anything except working underground in a mine mostly all of their lives," Thabane said.

The operations are mostly run by criminal kingpins, she says, who sell the wares to pawn shops or scrap metal buyers, taking the majority of profits for themselves, and often charging "protection fees" to the miners they employ.

"In that way, this business then becomes very lucrative. The miners themselves don't make much money out of it, but the people that trade and sell this gold really make money," she said.

Christopher Rutledge, executive director of the non-governmental organization Mining Affected Communities In Action, says the mining companies themselves are complicit in these operations.

"In some instances, corporate mines would close down the operation and then allow the zama-zamas to go into the mine, and they would buy the gold from the zama-zamas  … because it's cheaper for them," he told CBC News.

Authorities have not said who owns the mine in Stilfontein.

How are authorities responding?

Zama-zamas typically remain in the mines for extended periods of time, relying on those on the surface to provide them with food, water, cigarettes and other items. 

So in December, South Africa launched a joint police, government and military operation called "Close the Hole" or "Vala Umgodi" in Zulu.

The idea is to crack down on illegal mining by cutting off supplies and starving the miners out. So far, police say 14,000 illegal miners have been arrested and $277,000 US in cash and $1.8 million US worth of uncut diamonds have been seized.

Police say the illegal miners are dangerous because they are often armed, and are known to fight violent turf battles between rival criminal networks.

Because of that, they say it's unsafe for officers to enter the mines themselves to make arrests. 

What's happening in Stilfontein?

Authorities sealed off most exits to the Stilfontein mine months ago, and more recently cut off the supply of food and water to the miners some 2,500 meters below ground.

"We are not sending help to criminals there. We're going to smoke them out," Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, a minister in the president's office, said last week.

Those comments drew the ire of community members, many of whom have loved ones in the mine.

A group of citizens and civil society groups called the Society for the Protection of Our Constitution challenged the blockade in court. 

In an interim order on Saturday, the High Court in Pretoria ordered police to allow the flow of food and water to the miners.

"We don't have an idea at this point that how many are healthy, how many are sick, how many need medical attention down there," Thebane said. "But the food supply and water supply has now started again. So that is a bit of a relief."

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa defended the crackdown at Stilfontein, calling the mine "a crime scene." But also urged police to bring the miners out safely.

Some of have been underground for months, and news reports describe those who have been pulled out as frail and weak. 

Rescuers have been using rope to bring some miners up, while police say they are looking into setting up some kind of cage to lower into the shaft. 

Miners who appear healthy and unharmed are being taken into custody, Thabane said. Those who are not are being taken to hospital.  

"But the end goal is for them to be arrested, according to the government," she said.

One decomposing body, believed to belong to a miner, has been recovered. Police said they are still trying to determine the person's identity and cause of death.

What's next?

Thabane says the operation doesn't address the root of the problem. 

"We might get them out now, but we do fear that it will be a temporary solution," she said. 

She called on the government to heed the recommendations of a 2022 auditor general's report into abandoned mines.

That means cleaning up the existing abandoned sites, holding mining companies to their duty to properly and safely seal off their operations when they shut down, and enacting regulations for small-scale mining, so people can do this kind of work safely and legally.

"As far as the criminal part of it, government also needs to find a way to curb this crime at the level where they find the kingpins and the heads of these syndicates," she said.