South Africa's government says it won't help a group of illegal miners inside a closed mine

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa's government says it won't help a group of illegal miners inside a closed mine in the country's North West province who have been denied access to basic supplies as part of an official strategy against illegal mining.

The miners in the mineshaft in Stilfontein are believed to be suffering from a lack of food, water and other basic necessities after police closed off the entrances used to transport their supplies underground.

It is part of the police’s Vala Umgodi, or Close the Hole, operation, which includes cutting off miners’ supplies to force them to return to the surface and be arrested.

Police had earlier indicated that information received from those who recently helped bring three miners to the surface indicated that up to 4,000 miners may be underground.

However, on Thursday afternoon police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said that they believed the number was exaggerated and maybe be far less than that, estimating a figure of between 350 and 400 miners.

"We feel that the numbers are being exaggerated. We have deployed maximum resources to this case including our intelligence operative who are on the ground who have engaged with all stakeholders.

“We have managed to estimate the numbers to be between 350 and 400,” Mathe said.

South African ministers of police and defence are on Thursday expected to visit the mine to engage with officials and community members on the ground, Mathe said.

Stilfontein is one of the mines that were targeted by police as they intensified their operation in the North West province from Oct. 18.

It's unclear how long the current group of miners have been underground as the groups are reported to often stay underground for months, depending on supplies of basic necessities like food and water from the outside.

“We have taken a decision that no police officer, no soldier or government official will go down to an abandoned mine. There is a high risk of loss of life,” she said.

Mathe said they had information that the miners may be heavily armed, adding that since embarking on operations against illegal miners since last December, police had seized more than 369 high caliber firearms, 10,000 rounds of ammunition, 5 million rand ($275,000) in cash and 32 million rand ($1.75 million) worth of uncut diamonds.

In the past few weeks, more than 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in North West province, with many reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.

Police continue on Thursday to guard areas around the mine to catch all those appearing from underground.

Cabinet Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government wouldn't send any help to the illegal miners, because they are involved in a criminal act.

“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped. We didn’t send them there," Ntshavheni said.

Illegal mining remains common in South Africa's old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.

The illegal miners are often from neighboring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.

Their presence in closed mines have also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.

Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed, and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.

Relatives of miners and community members wait at a mine shaft where illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Relatives of miners and community members wait at a mine shaft where illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Volunteer rescue workers and community members leave a mine shaft where illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Relatives of miners and community members wait at a mine shaft where illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov.14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Rescue workers, bottom left, remove a body from a reformed mineshaft where illegal miners are trapped inside a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov.14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Rescue workers, left, remove a body from a reformed mineshaft where illegal miners are trapped inside a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov.14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Police patrol at a mine shaft where an estimated 4000 illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Wednesday, Nov.13, 2024. (AP Photo)

Relatives of miners and community members wait at a mine shaft where an estimated 4000 illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Wednesday, Nov.13, 2024. (AP Photo)

An aerial view of a mine shaft where an estimated 4000 illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Wednesday, Nov.13, 2024. (AP Photo)

ATLANTA (AP) — After losing the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats are grappling with how to handle transgender politics and policy following a campaign that featured withering and often misleading GOP attacks on the issue.

There is plenty of second-guessing after President-elect Donald Trump anchored his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris with sweeping promises on the economy and immigration. But Democrats also will not soon forget the punchline in anti-transgender Trump ads that became ubiquitous by Election Day: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”

“Week by week when that ad hit and stuck and we didn’t respond, I think that was the beginning of the end,” former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said of the 30-second spot that was part of $215 million in anti-transgender advertising by Trump and Republicans, according to tracking firm AdImpact.

“They painted her as something I don’t think she is," Rendell said. “They painted her as a far-left liberal.”

The fallout leaves some progressive and moderate Democrats struggling between the party’s modern identity as a champion of civil rights and its electoral fortunes across swaths of America with whom those attacks resonated.

“There are just a number of issues where we’re out of touch,” Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview, days after he set off recriminations within his party for saying he didn't want his daughters playing in sports against biological males. Critics said Moulton echoed Trump’s talking points about liberals allowing “men to compete in women’s sports.”

“I think that Republicans have a hateful position on trans issues,” Moulton told The Associated Press, but insisted that Democrats still lose voters because of the party’s “attitude.”

“Rather than talk down to you and tell you what to believe,” he argued, Democrats should “listen to hard-working Americans.”

LGBTQ+ advocates, meanwhile, are arguing that the 2024 election turned more on economic issues than Trump’s transgender rhetoric. They're urging political leaders to counter misinformation that they say threatens the health and safety of transgender Americans, who make up less than 1% U.S. population.

“Trans people have been existing and co-existing,” receiving health care and participating in society for years, said Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group. “Nothing new happened,” Ellis said, other than Republicans singling them out in a presidential campaign year.

“It didn’t change one vote,” Ellis argued. “But it did make the world way more dangerous for trans people.”

Another Democratic Massachusetts lawmaker, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, didn't name Moulton, but said some reactions to the election “scapegoated and dehumanized” transgender people. “This Congresswoman sees you and loves you,” Pressley wrote on the social media platform X.

Certainly it’s difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint single issues that can tip a national election, and there are mixed findings on what voters think about transgender rights.

According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 people who cast ballots this fall, more than half of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 2 in 10 said support has not gone far enough and another 2 in 10 said it’s about right. But among Trump voters, 85% said transgender support had gone too far.

Still, slightly more than half of all voters oppose banning gender affirming medical treatment such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers, while slightly less than half support such proposals.

About one-quarter of Harris voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 4 in 10 said it’s been about right and about 4 in 10 said it hasn’t gone far enough.

Trump and Republicans were relentless in trying to capitalize on the issue. They piled on transgender athletes, with Trump falsely labeling two Olympic boxers as transgender women. They used Harris' comments as a presidential candidate in 2019 — before she became vice president — effectively to blame her for laws granting transgender health care to federal prisoners and detainees.

And Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that “your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation” changing their sex.

In reality, the Biden administration has held that Title IX bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — but Education Department rules do not explicitly address transgender athletes. Federal law that Trump ads cited does require people in U.S. government custody to have access to gender-affirming medical treatments. Those policies were in place throughout Trump’s 2017-21 term; they are not something Biden’s administration instituted specifically.

And it is not legal in any state for a school to determine and carry out surgical treatment for minor students.

“You gotta fight back” with those explanations, Moulton said, adding that the silence compounds the negative effects for transgender people. “What did we show about our willingness to stand up for trans people by just being silent and ignoring the issue and ignoring the attack?”

Still, Moulton said Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in statehouses should give individual elected officials and voters the space to take more conservative positions, and he defended his own comments that he doesn't want his daughters competing in athletics against men.

“I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” Moulton told The New York Times last week.

Before he resigned his post as Texas Democratic chairman, Gilberto Hinojosa said supporting transgender rights doesn’t necessarily have to include public funding for gender reassignment surgery.

“We can say, ’OK, we respect people’s right to say, we don’t want my taxpayer money to be used for that,'" Hinojosa told Texas Public Radio. Hinojosa later apologized via social media, saying LGBTQ Americans “deserve to feel seen, valued and safe in our state and our party.”

Ellis, the CEO of GLAAD, pointed to Delaware voters choosing to make state Sen. Sarah McBride the first transgender member of Congress as evidence that Americans “don’t hate trans people.”

For her part, McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, noted that she did not run on her identity – though it was not a secret – and instead talked to voters about “affordable health care, housing and child care” for everyone.

“The party that was focused on culture wars, the party that was focused on trans people was the Republican Party,” McBride told reporters on Capitol Hill after her victory. “It was Donald Trump,” she added, who “was trying to divide and distract from the fact that he has absolutely no policy solutions for the issues that are actually keeping voters up at night.”

Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.

Sarah McBride, Democratic candidate for Delaware's at-large congressional district, speaks during an election night watch party Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump stands on stage with former first lady Melania Trump, as Lara Trump watches, at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

FILE - Protesters advocating for transgender rights and healthcare stand outside of the Ohio Statehouse, Jan. 24, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Orsagost, File)