Human rights attorney and activist Richard Spoor. Picture: Paballo Thekiso African News Agency (ANA)
Human rights lawyer Richard Spoor has scoffed at the feasibility of the state administrating a R10 billion fund to compensate mineworkers from South Africa and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) who contracted tuberculosis and silicosis while in the employ of local mines.
According to media reports this week, the government has said the R10bn would be disbursed by the departments of health, labour, and mineral resources and energy. It encouraged former mineworkers and their dependants to approach state offices to apply for compensation.
This is as the Tshiamiso Trust, set up after a class action case was won in 2019, after a seven-year legal battle, has previously reported that it has dispersed more than R1bn to more than 10 000 beneficiaries to date.
Business Report yesterday was unable to get comment from the Tshiamiso Trust to clarify the government’s involvement after Tshiamiso last year said in a statement it had had 54 operational sites across the SADC with the target of 150 sites an estimate at the inception of the trust.
Spoor, who was instrumental in the silicosis case, in an interview yesterday it was out of sync for government to handle the dispersements.
“That is not going to happen. The government cannot be involved in the processing of claims. Yes, there is a collaboration. I know the deputy minister of health has been driving collaboration with the Thsiamiso Trust, there is co-operation but there is no way government can handle this. I do not doubt that they want to play a larger role in this, but there is no record of government doing this,” Spoor said.
The trust is responsible for carrying out the terms of the R5 billion settlement between six mining companies and thousands of gold mine workers who contracted silicosis and tuberculosis in South African mines.
At the conclusion of the matter in 2019, Judge Leoni Windell found that all parties made an effort to ensure that the R5bn settlement was “reasonable, adequate and fair”. It is reported each claimant will receive between R70 000 and R500 000.
The companies that are party to the agreement are African Rainbow Minerals, Anglo American SA, AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Harmony and Sibanye-Stillwater.
Deputy Health Minister Sibongiseni Dhlomo said this week to Newsroom Afrika and Eyewitness News more than half a million former mineworkers would benefit.
"The biggest number is in the Eastern Cape. We've got about 250 000 beneficiaries, another 200000 is in Lesotho and another 150 000 is in Mozambique,“ he said.
He said a team of deputy ministers was working hard on mobilising the beneficiaries to make claims and that government had made efforts to reach the miners at their homes and help them to claim.
“You cannot ask a 65-year-old man who is probably sick to come to Johannesburg. We have been to beneficiaries in the KZN province, we have gone as far as Shaishai in Mozambique. We are even able to have them examined where they are,” Dhlomo said.
He said there was also communication with the Department of Labour in Zimbabwe and that the task team was looking to expedite the payments.
The team is soon to do a roadshow in areas of KwaZulu-Natal to sensitise communities and then make follow up visits with medical and banking personnel to facilitate the payments.
Dhlomo said that family members, who were infected with chronic diseases after their loved ones returned from the mines, would also be compensated individually.
The government said that it would also be launching an outreach programme to spread awareness about the compensation in rural areas.
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