Justin Pearce
Among the ornaments crowding every shelf in Johanna Claasens’s living room in Welkom is a mug with the inscription “Harmony Gold Mine – — 5 000 accident-free shifts”. It was given to her by a friend after Harmony’s worst accident ever — the Merriespruit mudslide in February 1994, which killed 17 people, including the 14-year-old Claasens daughter, also called Johanna.
Two years after the accident, the family’s son, Marius (13), lies on his back in the bedroom next door, encased in plaster from his chest to his thighs.
Marius was found, crushed and semi-conscious, in the mud which wiped out the family’s Merriespruit home and everything in it. The lounge suite, the flower paintings, the ruched curtains, the china dogs that now fill the small sitting room, were all acquired from scratch after the family moved to Welkom to escape the lingering fear of another disaster. “If Harmony can’t look after one of their mines how can they look after others? I saw the chance of other lives being lost.”
Last week, the Virginia Magistrate’s Court imposed fines totalling R151 000 on Harmony Gold Mine and three of its employees. “In my opinion that fine was very little,” Claasens says. “They might as well not have had the case.”
The family’s material losses, and Marius’s medical bills, have been paid by personal insurance. The family saw the R10 000 in compensation offered by Harmony as an insult: “I’ve lost a child, I must look after Marius, and they won’t reach into their pockets to help.”
The family intends bringing civil action against Harmony for compensation for their pain and suffering from the loss of their daughter and their home, and from Marius’s injuries.
At the moment she won’t put a figure on the claim, but says “one is looking for a reasonable settlement. Until Marius is fully healed, we will always have the memory that Harmony was responsible.”
Claasens’s husband Fred drives trains at another mine in Welkom; she has given up her own job with her uncle’s company to look after Marius.
Her own lost income is the least of her concerns: “I don’t think of it that way — if it’s your child, you have to do it.”
Marius spent three continuous months in hospital after the mudslide crushed the bones and internal organs of his lower body. Since then he has repeatedly gone back for further treatment. He has been immobile since his last spell in hospital two weeks ago, where shattered bones were reset, and the colostomy bag which doctors had fitted to cope with massive internal injury was removed.
He is glad to be rid of the bag, but will be bedridden for at least another five weeks before returning to school. After that, he faces another four operations, culminating in a hip replacement when he is 18. Until then, he will have to wear a built-up shoe to compensate for his legs being different lengths.
Like so many trauma survivors, Marius has blanked out all memory of the disaster and is stoically optimistic about his prospects of recovery. But he is still undergoing psychological counselling, as is his mother as she comes to terms with the loss of her daughter. He is unlikely to be very active until after the hip replacement five years hence.
In Merriespruit, 25km away, the slimes dam broods over the town like a mountain, the gap which released the fatal avalanche of mud still clearly visible. Below the gap, the mud is gone and the grass has grown again, but the path of the disaster is marked out in uprooted trees, in the foundations of houses reduced to a single layer of bricks, in the shorn-off outbuildings that were once attached to houses.
Somewhere amid this belt of destruction were the homes of two pensioner couples, Louw and Sannie Koch, and Paul and Magrieta Jerling. Sannie and Magrieta both died in the mud that swept away their houses.
All that remains of Jerling’s possessions is a Pekingese dog yapping in the garden of the new house where, aged 75, he has set up home alone.
“You know what is ironic,” says the retired shift boss as he sits in his armchair staring at the afternoon’s television programmes, a box of tissues fixed to a bracket on the wall next to him. “They say a wife is not a breadwinner. In my opinion a wife is more of a breadwinner than a husband. She was my taxi driver, my bank. I didn’t even know how to use my own bank card. I had to learn to do things myself.”
Koch, whose sombre living room is dominated by a large photo of himself and his wife, presents a courageous face, but talks frankly about his loss.
“A young man could maybe outgrow the pain. I cannot,” says Koch, who retired in 1989 from his job as Merriespruit’s fire chief.
His loneliness is exacerbated by his difficulties in holding a conversation after the toxic mud destroyed the hearing in his right ear.
Jerling and Koch agree that money cannot ease the pain of loss, but both are bitter that the law provides for financial conpensation only for breadwinners, and not for the loss of support suffered by someone who was completely dependent on a spouse.
About the fine imposed on the mining company, Koch is typically philosophical: “It makes no difference how big the fine was. If they were fined R10 or R1-million, they will carry it on their conscience for as long as they live.”