As a new government commission prepares to examine mine safety, Vuyo Mvoko speaks to a victim of a mining disaster
A WARD at the Rand Mutual mine hospital in Johannesburg has, for nearly a quarter of a century, been “home” to paralysed migrant miner Marcelino Kangombe.
In 1971, he had been employed for only seven months when an underground rockburst at the Roodepoort Durban Deep mine left him paralysed from the neck down, sentencing him to life in an electric wheelchair.
In all the years he has been in hospital, he has not seen his wife or his son, who is now 29 years old. Kangombe left them at home in Owambo, Angola, and came to look for work in South African mines. He doesn’t even know whether they are alive or dead; he has heard of the civil war ravaging Angola.
“I pray to God to save at least those two souls, so I can see them when I return.”
Kangombe persistently wrote numerous letters to his family. All were returned undelivered, as letters were not delivered in the war-torn areas.
The hospital feeds him, and with the R500 disability grant he gets from the mine each month he has bought himself a hi-fi, mbube music cassettes and clothes.
Speaking in fanagalo, the mineworkers’ lingo, he said: “I can wear these clothes but women don’t see me. My son will never be able to inherit them either.”
To add to Kangombe’s troubles, he has heard Durban Deep is going to close, and he does not know what is going to happen to him then. He said doctors at the hospital were concerned about sending him home because of the uncertainty in Angola: “Otherwise, me, I want to go now.”
There are thousands of mine accident victims like Kangombe. Several hundred of them are to march on the Mineral and Energy Affairs’ offices in Johannesburg tomorrow. They aim to highlight their plight ahead of the opening on Monday of a government- appointed commission of inquiry into health and safety standards in South African mines.
It will mark the start of the 300 000-strong National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) mine safety campaign. Last year alone, of the 600 000 workers employed in the mining industry, 578 died and 8 532 were seriously injured in mine accidents.
Since the turn of the century, more than 69 000 mineworkers have died and more than a million have been seriously injured, according to NUM figures.
The commission of inquiry, chaired by retired judge Raymond Leon, consists of the United Kingdom’s ex-chief inspector of mines and quarries, Albert Davies; the United States’s Colorado School of Mines’ Miklos Salamon and South African occupational diseases specialist Anthony Davies.
After investigating the legal regulation of health and safety in mines the commission will make recommendations to the state president on the implementation and enforcement of improvements.
After barring journalists from going underground only two weeks ago, the Chamber of Mines this week laid on a two-day programme for them, to explain the “extremely complicated nature of the NUM’s recommendations”.
The NUM wants mine safety to override all economic arguments put forward by the mine managements, the union said in a statement this week.
In gold mines _ which employ 400 000 mainly unskilled workers _ most deaths are caused by rockfalls and rockbursts. The union says underground support techniques are inadequate. Some miners work at depths of between 3 000 and 3 500 metres; more than 30 have died in each of the six major disasters that have occurred in the past 10 years.
The NUM says workers have declared war on mine managements’ attitude of “work now, complain later”.
The union wants workers to have the right to refuse to do work or use equipment they believe is a threat to their safety. This includes exposure to chemicals, radiation, dust, noise and fumes.
Mine safety reform could mean considerable cost for the mining industry. But the NUM’s position is strengthened by a more labour-sensitive government now in power.
And with the recent readmission of South Africa to the International Labour Organisation, the government itself must now adhere to the ILO’s convention on mine health and safety, which the NUM helped formulate.