HISTORY was made on Friday as the Johannesburg High Court ratified a R5 billion class-action settlement between five gold mining companies, thousands of miners and the dependants of dead miners. The deceased had contracted either silicosis or pulmonary TB from
1965 onwards.
It is an incredible moment that will bring recognition and some financial relief to the sufferers of the industry that gave rise to Johannesburg and elevated the country into the front ranks of the global mining industry.
South Africa is no longer a mining colossus, far from it, but
we are left with the legacy, good and bad.
Up on the Highveld, the legendary City of Gold is literally being eaten away from below by acid mine water from disused mines.
People living within the ambit of the misleadingly golden tailings dumps along the length of the once-fabled Witwatersrand run the risk of their lungs being turned to stone or developing incurable cancers from the dust. Many of the mining companies that created the problem no longer exist.
Further afield the time bomb of a lifetime of work underground continues to tick as former migrant workers struggle to breathe back home in KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, eSwatini and Mozambique, their lungs compromised by years of exposure to the microscopic dust.
Many of the original claimants have died, but there are plenty who will benefit - thanks to the mining companies who agreed to the settlement.
It’s an important precedent that should guide all other companies working in hazardous occupations to safeguard their employees’ health well beyond the tenure of their employment.
The next frontier has to be the urgent rehabilitation of the environment and an intervention into the abandoned mines that are home to an underworld of iniquity and crime among the zama-zamas and a grand reservoir of toxic liquid, eating into our foundations and seeping into the water table.
All our futures depend on it.