Johannesburg - Each stack of old documents that arrives by post at Richard Spoor’s law firm tells a story: a goldmine worker, the years he spent toiling underground and living in a bleak mine hostel. And whether there was a break in his service to get married or attend to other family affairs.
Too often, death certificates accompany the stories – which tell how the mineworker died of exposure to silica dust.
“I’ve got thousands of these kinds of profiles,” says Spoor, a public interest lawyer who is leading a precedent-setting class-action lawsuit against the gold mining industry.
“We estimate there are just fewer than a million former gold miners alive today. Of those, around 20 percent – or 200 000 people – contracted silicosis.”
The degenerative lung disease arises from exposure to and the inhalation of silica dust – and it can appear decades after exposure.
Spoor’s firm represents nearly 30 000 mineworkers in the class action – Bongani Nkala and others v Harmony Gold and others, against 32 gold mining companies, collectively the entire gold mining industry – claiming compensation for their illnesses.
Yet Spoor knows his firm’s work is barely scratching the surface. Among the miners, there’s a 4 percent death rate. “That’s consistent with what we’re finding with our clients – a lot of them have died since our litigation started in 2006.”
If the class action succeeds, it will have widespread ramifications for mineworkers, their families and the industry.
In their affidavits, workers describe not having been given protective gear to prevent them from inhaling the dust.
In October, the South Gauteng High Court will hear argument about whether the class should be “certified”, permitting to proceed as a class action. “It’s a big case. There’s never been anything like that.”
On Monday, the same division will hear argument in the application by Sonke Gender Justice and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) to intervene as friends of the court.
Sonke says it is arguing on the “gendered impact of occupational lung disease in mine-sending communities”. The TAC is presenting arguments pertaining to the “devastation caused” to these communities.
“Should the court decline to certify the class action it would leave thousands of people without access to justice,” they say.
In the class-action lawsuit, Spoor’s firm, Abrahams Kiewitz Inc, and the Legal Resources Centre represent current and former gold mine- workers with silicosis and the dependants, and serving and former gold mineworkers who contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and the dependants. More than 25 000 individuals are involved.
In March 2011, the Constitutional Court ruled that current and former mineworkers could institute damages claims for occupational diseases.
The number of individuals who stand to benefit is conservatively estimated to be about 200 000.
Spoor says most of the affected mineworkers are from Lesotho, Eastern Cape and Mozambique. “In Lesotho and Mozambique, there are no services for them, and in the Eastern Cape, what services there are are barely functioning.
The system established to compensate former mineworkers with silicosis-related diseases is 100 years old and collapsed 20 years ago.
“These people are not getting the follow-up they require. Former mineworkers are at significant risk of silicosis and TB and should be monitored. They are entitled to free medical examinations for this purpose and entitled to compensation if they develop silicosis, but that’s not happening either.”
Saturday Star