The police have cut off food and water to miners for weeks in a bid to force them out of an abandoned mine. Human rights advocates and community leaders call the tactics inhumane.

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.

South Africa's government says it will let thousands of illegal miners starve until they accept their fate and emerge from an abandoned shaft to face arrest.