Eddie Koch
BLAST, lash, haul and crush. The words that describe the essential stages of gold production on South African mines are drawn from the imagery of battle. When Sotho miners go underground to do these tasks, they sometimes sing a song with a chorus line that says liphoro tsa mali, liphoro — floods of blood, floods.
The Vaal Reefs disaster and the publication this week of a new report on health and safety in South Africa’s mines are grim reminders of the truth of this mineworkers’ lexicon. Each of the 600-odd tons of gold they produce a year costs, on average, one corpse and 12 seriously injured men.
The report from a commission of inquiry into health on the mines, chaired by Justice Ramon Leon, says more than 69 000 miners have been killed and more than a million seriously injured in the first 93 years of this century. In the last ten years, the average annual number of deaths on all mines was 680.
Judge Leon’s inquiry, the most extensive ever conducted on health and safety on the mines, was released on Monday. Its hard-hitting findings have been welcomed by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which represents most black mineworkers, and also the mainly white Mine Workers’ Union. The commission’s report, and its far-reaching proposals, are likely to have a revolutionary impact on the industry.
“At current accident levels it is estimated that a worker who spends 20 years underground faces a one in 30 chance of being injured or killed on gold mines. In 1993, 578 mineworkers died in accidents — more than one per 1 000 of the workforce. In the same year, 8 532 mineworkers were seriously injured, that is more than 15 per 1 000,” it
On top of this come the dangers of contracting fatal lung diseases. The report notes 4 000 miners develop tuberculosis every year and quotes a survey from the 1930s that indicates 60 percent of these people may die in two years. “An 18-year-old man who starts a career in mining at the stope face will have a one in two to one in three chance of being disabled from accident or disease,” it
“Tuberculosis rates were about 58 per thousand after 15 years of exposure. After 10 years’ exposure, between 40 and 80 percent of workers involved in drilling operations would have hearing problems … A study of shaft sinkers, developers, stopers and shift bosses had shown that if a man were to work 8 000 shifts, the probability of developing silicosis was over 30 percent.” Silicosis can develop into a fatal form of lung fibrosis.
Statistics obtained from the International Labour Organisation, and published in the report, suggest South African mines have among the highest global fatality rates — and the worst safety conditions in the developed world. Only Turkey, the former Yugoslavia, Papua New Guinea and Pakistan appear to have worse rates. “Unquestionably, a similar number of deaths and serious injuries would be unacceptable today in most advanced mining countries.”
The report says there is a combination of three geographic features which make mining in South Africa such a deadly industry: great mining depth, brittle and abrasive rocks, and the often narrow width of the ore-bearing rock underground.
South African gold mines are the deepest in the world — some reach depths of 3km, where the pressure is the same as that of a submarine 8km under water — and their subterranean shafts are subject to sudden and unpredictable
“Frequent, sudden rock failures, as with underground explosions, are the most insidious hazards that miners have to face. There is an obvious correlation between the great depth of mining and the shockingly high accident rate in gold mines.” Six out of every 10 deaths underground are caused by rockbursts and rock falls.
The problem of rock fractures is compounded by the hard and brittle nature of the quartzite that surrounds gold-bearing ore. This kind of ground demands that heavy explosives be used in mining operations and contributes greatly to the violent nature of underground seismic shocks.
The extremely narrow gold-bearing reefs compound the problem. Shafts that lead to the rockface are extremely narrow, sometimes less than a metre high, making it impossible to use machines that have helped make mining safer in other countries.
The low grade nature of the ore often requires that massive amounts of rock need to blasted and hauled to the surface. In order to produce an average of 600 tons of gold each year, an underground reef covering between 20 and 30 square kilometres has to be physically moved from under the
“Each mine is forced to maintain excessively long stope faces, and long, often tortuous, communication lines. It is difficult to control, supervise and inspect such widespread operations. In short, men working in such mines tend to be in a perilous situation.” And the report notes that mines are going deeper into the earth every year — without having devised measures that are capable of effectively predicting and preventing rockbursts.
On the notice board of the Vaal Reefs Gold Mine, there is a yellowing piece of paper which highlights another feature of death underground, one that tends to be obscured by the dramatic and grisly nature of big disasters like that which happened last week. The note says: “On 17 June 1994, the deceased (a development team leader) was operating a mechanical loader. The loader tilted and pinned him against the wall.”
These are everyday events on the mines and they account for by far the greatest number of deaths. Most fatal accidents involve less than 10 workers. They go unreported in the media. Many do not even make a mention on the mine’s notice board.
Disasters only account for between five and 15 percent of annual deaths, says sociologist Jean Leger in a recent edition of Labour, Capital and Society. “They are merely the tip of the iceberg, grim punctuations of the on-going accident toll on South African mines”.
‘The status quo cannot continue’
All indications are that the history of death on the mines will refer to the times before and after this month’s disaster at Gold Reefs. The 104 men plunged to their deaths at a time when a number of factors have coalesced to place the industry under unprecedented pressure to clean up its act.
It is a macabre irony that the disaster happened just days before the Leon Commission’s report was to be published and it will now add urgency to sweeping changes suggested in the document.
“The status quo cannot continue,” wrote the judge. “The claim of special difficulties, which undoubtedly exist in some instances (in mining), does not absolve the boards of companies, the shareholders and the management from the responsibility of caring, and the need to make a special effort to overcome these problems.”
The commission recommends that a new Health and Safety Act be drafted as a matter of urgency. And, in a break from previous traditions, it stresses this should be done in a spirit of “tripartism” by a committee consisting of representatives from the state, industry and the unions.
It also suggest that comprehensive codes of practice, a blueprint for safety on each individual mine, should be drafted as part of the new legal framework. Judge Leon urges that high-powered tripartite committees with wide powers to advise the state, commission and facilitate research into health and safety and to promote improved training in the industry.
His report endorses long-held union demands that health and safety officials be elected at every mine and that every mine should have a joint health and safety committee to discuss policy regarding prevention of disease and
The commission also accepts that any worker has the right to “withdraw his labour and remove himself from any place where there is reasonable cause to think that his health and safety is in danger”.
It says a new law and a system to implement these changes should be negotiated voluntarily by management and organised labour before being submitted for ratification to parliament — which is where the industry will find a second sea-change in conditions that affect its operations.
Unlike its predecessor, this parliament is now made up of numerous men and women who have a background in struggles for improved worker rights, especially on the mines. This shift in the class make-up of the state was symbolised when President Nelson Mandela and a high-powered coterie of cabinet ministers and political heavyweights gathered under a patch of bluegum trees to address 5000 workers at Vaal Reefs and pay tribute to their fallen colleagues.
At his side was Cyril Ramaphosa, chair of the Constitutional Assembly and general secretary of the African National Congress; Tito Mboweni, minister of labour; Cheryl Carolus, assistant general secretary of the ANC; Charles Ngqakula, general secretary of the Communist Party; James Motlatsi, president of the NUM; and Clem Sunter, executive director of Anglo American’s Gold and Uranium Division, who looked decidedly out of place in this company of labour stalwarts.
Mandela, himself an honorary president of the NUM, could have been speaking to Sunter when he told the rally, to great applause: “There is a widespread perception among Africans, Indians and coloureds that whites do not care very much about the lives of black people in this country. That I may not believe that perception myself is not relevant … it is only going to be reviewed by what the country as a whole, including the white minority, do on this occasion.”