Ngidi

Ngidi’s widow is one of 10 claimants in a landmark test case commenced against mining multinational Anglo American in the Johannesburg High Court in September. Anglo filed papers responding to the claims on Monday. They have indicated they will defend the action.

If the claimants are successful, Anglo American stand to lose millions and the mining industry could face an onslaught of claims for compensation.

Ngidi, who worked on the mine for close to 19 years, began complaining of chest pains in 1998. Doctors told him his “lungs had been poisoned by foreign objects”. He developed a paralysing cough that often left him doubled up and gasping for air.

The Department of Health’s Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases, which receives contributions from the mining industry to a compensation fund, paid him R28882.

In the final month of his life he was bedridden. He became “rake-like and skeletal”. Calesia watched him waste away. She had to feed him, carry him and help him relieve himself.

The day he died, February 5, 2001, a local hospital refused to admit him on the grounds that they did not have space for terminally ill patients.

Silicosis is a ghastly, debilitating illness that corrodes the lungs. On its own it is rarely fatal but in association with other pulmonary diseases, tuberculosis and the HIV/Aids epidemic, the effect is devastating.

Estimates suggest there could be at least 480000 former miners with silicosis in Southern Africa. Many have become the forgotten victims of the disease, dying in remote villages far from proper medical facilities. The Department of Health receives only 15000 to 20000 claims a year for compensation.

Lawyers acting for claimants say the mines were aware of the risks to which miners were exposed but did little or nothing to protect them. Anglo American has dismissed the allegations, saying it does not believe it is liable.

Richard Meeran, the British lawyer who successfully took on Thor Chemicals and asbestos giant Cape PLC in similar lawsuits, says the court case against Anglo aims to secure adequate compensation for silicosis sufferers and establish a fund to treat occupational respiratory diseases in former miners.

The paucity of research into the subject has only been corrected to some degree in the last decade. A shocking report completed in May last year by the Safety in Mines Research Advisory Group, found that one in five of the older, long-serving black mineworkers surveyed on a mine in the Free State town of Orkney had developed silicosis.

It warned of a “significant epidemic” in the industry and called for urgent steps to be taken to reduce dust levels.

This year, possibly spurred on by the impending lawsuit and pressure from the World Health Organisation — which is spearheading a global campaign to wipe out silicosis — both the government and the mining houses set targets for the elimination of the disease.

The Department of Labour has embarked on a programme to reduce the prevalence of the disease “significantly” by 2015 and eradicate it by 2030.

The mining industry is funnelling money into a R26-million project looking at ways to stop the scourge.