Whispers in the deep: Ex-miners� widows speak out

Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Friday April 21, 2017 17:56

 

It used to be assumed that those households lucky enough to have a family member working in the South African mines, had a ticket to riches. After all, the miners returned laden with cash and modern conveniences such as colour televisions and video recorders, then uncommon in the country.

The influx of migrant labour to South Africa’s budding mines began in the early 1900s when that country’s Chamber of Mines founded the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) and the Native Recruiting Corporation (NRC) in 1902 to acquire unskilled labour to work on the South African mines.

The sad reality however, is that many households whose breadwinners went off to the mines, are today steeped in abject poverty because the miners returned sick and broke, diseased by their employers and impoverished by the lack of adequate after care.

The life expectancy of many who returned from the deep continues to be short and the number of widows has been trending upwards for years.Kemmonye Kwena is one of the widows. Her husband, Monti, worked at Driefontein Gold Mine for more than 30 years and returned home sick. “My husband contracted tuberculosis from the mines,” she says.

“We wanted the Mine to compensate him for falling sick whilst on duty. He had been previously diagnosed with TB when he visited us.

“At the time, he was given treatment and healed. Our local doctors wrote his former employers a letter warning them about his situation but they did not care. When he returned home in 1994, he had a reoccurrence.”

She continues: “His employers told him to go back home. At the time he was very sick. I was surprised when he came home empty handed but I grew hopeful when he told me that his employers had promised to send his benefits a few days later.

“At the time, he could not even walk.”

Kemmonye says her husband was not even given a termination letter, something that made her suspicious. A termination letter would have been evidence the family could later use in claims against the Mine.

The mother of four says a year passed with no sign of compensation and she decided to borrow some money and transported him to Driefontein Gold Mine to know when his dues would be paid. Monti, sick at the time, took the trip, but returned empty handed without even any hope of compensation being paid at any time.

The nightmare was not over however and even more horrifying news was on the way.

“In 1996 we received a cheque from the Rural Administration Centre office in Ramotswa indicating that my husband was dead. At the time he was still alive but bedridden.

“As his wife I found it fit to follow up all issues concerning his compensation and payments. I went to Ramotswa Tribal Administration with his relative to write an affidavit that he was still alive. We could not withdraw the money because my husband was alive but bedridden and unable to go to the bank.”

Kemmonye did not know what the cheque was for. The P2,331 slip was addressed to “the late Monti Kwena”. A copy of the cheque shows it is written “payment of pneumoconiosis award” and dated April 4, 1996.

“Poverty drove us to finally withdraw the money even though we did not know what it was for. We could not sit and watch our children die of hunger when there was some money lying at RAC office.

“Monti told me he was deeply hurt by his health status. He said he was afraid that his children would suffer if he died because the Mine had not given the miners any assurance that it would care for their children.”

In 2008, realising that her husband’s health was deteriorating further, Kemmonye wrote to TEBA, a South African organisation which was responsible for recruiting many Batswana to the mines. The organisation’s Molepolole branch was however unable to assist as Monti’s former employers insisted they did not owe him a penny.

The next year, Kemmonye lost her husband. His family scrambled for money to buy him a coffin and arrange his funeral. He left his wife, who was unemployed at the time, and their children in poverty.

The family has had to eke out a hard living and the four children did not go to secondary school due to poverty. They have not been able to find jobs due to their illiteracy and Kemmonye is currently working in Ipelegeng to put food on the table, even though the wages are insufficient.

“After my husband’s death, I suffered from high blood pressure. I asked myself how I was going to take care of my children.”

Kemmonye heard of and joined an organisation, the Botswana Labour Migrants Association (BoLAMA). The organisation groups together other former miners and widows, each of whose stories mirrors Kemmonye’s own.

BoLAMA coordinator, Mosiami Moalifi says widows feel ignored by both Botswana and South Africa, even though their husbands toiled to enrich the two countries, while unwittingly becoming ill from poor work environments.

The organisation’s major fight is for the compensation benefits of ex-miners, which are estimated at P4 billion throughout the region.

“The widows also feel that TEBA which recruited their husbands should be accountable to the widows with regard to their husbands’ benefits. They feel the Botswana TEBA office staff needs capacity training on how to handle widows’ cases and how to respond to their grievances,” she said.

Moalifi says she once “fell victim” to a TEBA administration lapse, which she says demonstrates the need for greater capacitation of the staff.  “Many of these miners returned with illnesses and some even infected their wives with occupational diseases and others. Many were ignorant of their rights due to illiteracy and today they are suffering.”

She adds: “The situation is bad with ex-mine workers and their families in Botswana who cannot access their retirement provident funds. Their widows have been unable to educate their children properly because they didn’t receive any money. You will also find that their husbands were under paid during their years at the mines”.

Within the organisation, at least 21 widows did not receive compensation to bury their husbands and only one received assistance, but only because her husband died during a rock-fall when he was still employed by the mine.

Many widows are not even aware that their husbands were owed dues and have just battled through the years with their children.

“The challenges that these women faced are that they did not know how much their husbands were earning because in the past women were expected to be innocent, obedient and respectful towards their husbands. Their husbands never discussed their remuneration with them.”

Besides BoLAMA, local human rights watchdog, Ditshwanelo is also helping the ex-miners and their families. Ditshwanelo director Alice Mogwe says they have been working with ex-miners, their widows and dependents children of the Silicosis Gold Mining Compensation Project, which began in 2012.

“There has been much research conducted, which has shown that miners who migrated to SA to work in the mines, were classified as labour migrants. It has been shown in a number of studies that migration has been beneficial to the hosting state, especially economically, for example through use of cheap labour, development of infrastructure and others.”

Mogwe adds that consequently, the South African mining industry benefited immensely with about 60% of its labour force at some point being sourced from neighbouring countries such as Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique. According to the veteran human rights activist, it was common practice that upon the termination of their employment, ex-miners returned home with either lump sum of money or at times empty-handed but with an understanding that their accrued employment benefits would be given to them at some time in the future.