Riddle of miners’ missing billions
created awareness and assisted potential claimants to access unclaimed benefits.
Many of the ex-mineworkers who spoke to the Saturday Dispatch blamed labour recruitment agency TEBA Ltd and the privately-run Mineworkers Provident Fund for failing to assist them.
Daily calls for a week to the fund’s offices in Queenstown and Mthatha rang unanswered.
Questions were sent to these entities and numerous attempts were made to get a comment, but there was no response at the time of writing.
Saturday Dispatch put out the word in the rural areas and scores of mineworkers came out to tell their story about how they felt cheated and discarded.
In Willowvale, a miner who took part in a strike in 1985, Peter Ndyambothi, 72, said: “I got nothing, I returned home with R10 in my pocket. I had to sell my cattle to survive these years.”
Nosipho Thunzana from Willowvale, whose father died in 1987 in the mines, said she has knocked at every office but could not get any help.
“When my father died, after 30 years in the mines, we only received his body in a cheap coffin and not more than R7 000 in cash.”
All showed documentary proof that they worked in mines in the Free State, Carltonville and Rustenburg. Most are gold and platinum mines. — bonganif@dispatch.co.za
More reports and pages 6 and 7 pictures,