The Apartheid Claims Task Force (ACT), an international legal team, started consolidating evidence in the Eastern Cape on Friday in preparation for jurisdictional hearings scheduled for May 19 in New York.
The team is led by renowned law practitioner and former Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner (TRC) Dumisa Ntsebeza.
He represents former Gold Fields labourers and their family members who have been suing the company in the New York State Court for billions of rands that were earned from alleged systematic patterns of unsafe working conditions and exposure to toxic substances at the mines.
The class action lawsuit has demanded $2,4-billion (about R17-billion) in compensatory damages and $5-billion (about R37-billion) in punitive damages.
The team consists of Ntsebeza and various attorneys from Umtata, Johannesburg, and Pretoria. The team is to work closely with its US counterparts including Fagan and Associates.
According to one lawyer, there were about 500 000 plaintiffs in the Transkei region alone. The team would go to other provinces while the case proceeds in New York.
The team was welcomed at the Ngqeleni Community centre on Friday by more than 1 000 ex-mine workers who were injured, retrenched or became ill, as well as relatives of deceased mine workers.
Ntsebeza said the judge in the New York court had allowed the TRC report, handed to President Thabo Mbeki on March 21, to be incorporated into the current lawsuits.
The judge also allowed motions to preserve evidence against defendants, including Anglo American and De Beers.
”This is not intsomi (myth),” Ntsebeza emphasised.
Another lawyer said the class action lawsuit brought by labourers against Gold Fields was the latest action by former employees against international companies that have engaged in unlawful practices dating back to the apartheid era and ”continuing to the present”.
The lawsuit demands that Gold Fields produce ”secret” reports it has concealed from workers about the dangerous conditions in the mines, including uranium-contaminated water.
It seeks billions of rands in damages for Gold Fields labourers who were allegedly knowingly subjected to labour abuses, discrimination, unsafe working conditions and toxic substances.
The lawsuit alleges that Gold Fields was more concerned about profits than working conditions or safety in their mines.
The company is accused of engaging in modern-day slavery and earning billions of dollars from profits earned as a direct result of dangerous working conditions to which black labourers were and continue to be subjected.
It further alleged that the company failed to disclose its labour practices when it expanded operations into the US and solicited institutional and private investors through the listing and sale of their stock on the New York Stock Exchange.
The plaintiffs demand that a ”constructive trust” for the benefit of the company’s hundreds of thousands of abused and sick labourers be imposed on any and all monies that Gold Fields earns from sales of stock in the US.
Ntsebeza said they would not charge the plaintiffs at this stage and suggested that communities should elect people who would liaise with ACT to monitor the progress of the case.
He said this was an attempt to reclaim what was due to the ex-mine workers so that future generations would not suffer as they had.
”This will enable them to send their children to tertiary institutions, get proper treatment and proper housing,” Ntsebeza said.
To achieve this, Ntsebeza said a humanitarian fund would be established to assist the victims if the case succeeds.
The team handed out forms to be completed by the victims and relatives of the deceased mine workers. – Sapa