Family's joy over silicosis payout
Mine companies to pay out R1.4bn
Blind and wracked by the lung disease silicosis, 64-year-old Mthuthuzeli Ngcawa has one hope – that the compensation he won for working on the mines from 1974 is paid while he is still alive.
“He wishes they can pay him soon so when he dies he can leave something,” said his daughter Amanda Ngcawa after the first-ever class-action settlement in South Africa was reached on Thursday.
The family, who live in a rural area in King William’s Town in Eastern Cape, were jubilant when they heard Mthuthuzeli had won compensation. “We were glued to the radio as it was announced,” his wife and carer, Nonkoliseko Ngcawa, said.
The ravages of the disease weigh heavily on the family – not least financially. Amanda had to drop out of university in 2007 and her father didn’t even receive his provident fund when he left work.
“If he dies we will suffer because we depend on his old-age grant,” Amanda said.
The settlement was reached between law firms Abrahams Kiewitz Inc, Richard Spoor Inc and the Legal Resources Centre – which represented tens of thousands of mineworkers who developed silicosis or TB from mining from 1965 – and the Occupational Lung Disease Working Group.
The group represented African Rainbow Minerals‚ Anglo American SA‚ AngloGold Ashanti‚ Gold Fields‚ Harmony‚ Sibanye Stillwater and Pan African Resources.
The companies will make an initial contribution for benefit payments of R1.4-billion for the first two years of benefit payments‚ the Legal Resources Centre said. The South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg must confirm the draft settlement, which is expected around September.
The settlement took more than two years to negotiate but had been more than 15 years in the making.
In 2003, the Legal Resources Centre started the lawsuit after gold miners from the Free State’s President Steyn Gold Mine approached it.
Legal Resources Centre director Janet Love said: “Our clients hailed from the Free State, Lesotho and remote areas in the Eastern Cape. The litigation was delayed for over six years, primarily as a result of procedural objections raised by the mining company.”
This wasn’t the only case that laid the groundwork.
‘ ‘ He wishes they pay soon so he can leave something
In 2006, lawyers Richard Spoor and Charles Abrahams took the test case of a single miner, Thembekile Mankayi, to court asking for compensation from Anglo Gold Ashanti.
The mining firm argued that the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act states that no employee may sue an employer for occupational injury, Spoor said.
Anglo Gold Ashanti won in the high and supreme courts but Spoor and Abrahams won in the Constitutional Court in March 2011, arguing that miners fall under a different law as they are regulated by the Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act. This act doesn’t specify that mineworkers cannot sue employers for damages.
That ConCourt victory laid the groundwork for the later case, said Abrahams.
There are 10 classes of complainants who will be paid between R70 000 and up to half a million rand in cases of severe illness. The families of mineworkers who died from TB or silicosis will also get paid.
Abrahams said: “The settlement payouts are significantly higher than statutory compensations – about two-and-a-half to three times higher.”
Miners with less than 10% of their lungs damaged by silicosis will receive R70 000 but under current compensation law would get nothing.