Mungo Soggot
SASOL has won an extraordinary case against a magistrate who ordered the synthetic fuel company to disclose documents relating to a devastating mining accident which killed 53 workers.
A commission of inquiry into the explosion — which took place at the company’s Middelbult colliery in 1993 — was suspended last year when the magistrate chairing it, Mike Jungbluth, demanded Sasol hand over documents which included interviews about the accident.
Sasol hit back saying the documents were confidential — as they had been prepared for its lawyers — and took the magistrate and the Chemical Workers’ Industrial Union (CWIU), which also wanted the papers, to court.
Lawyers acting for the union this week expressed great disappointment at the result, but said the CWIU wanted to see Pretoria Supreme Court Judge Pierre Roux’s written argument before considering an appeal.
The union’s legal team fears Sasol is using legal privilege to cover up the cause of the accident, claiming the company has yet to say what triggered the explosion.
The judge rejected the union’s argument that Sasol had waived its privilege by showing the papers to the legal team representing the shift bosses who had been in charge at the time of the accident. The union reasoned that there were three separate sides at the inquest — the company, the shift bosses and the workers. Sasol, however, argued the shift boss lawyers were working for Sasol so there was no breach of privilege.
The inquest has so far examined whether the accident was caused by a methane explosion, or a coal-dust explosion which would imply Sasol was negligent. The CWIU says some of the international experts who spoke at the inquest said there had been a coal-dust explosion and blamed Sasol.
Sasol had a similar victory in the Supreme Court in 1989, when it succeeded in barring the attorney general from gaining access to secret documents relating to an explosion at a synthol plant in Secunda which left 13 workers dead.
Sasol said this week it would like to see the speedy resumption of the commission. “We are, however, not in a position to say when this will happen, as the matter is in the hands of the public prosecutor.”