Keynote address by Ms S Shabangu, Minister of Mineral Resources at the Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC) Summit at Emperor's Palace, Johannesburg 17-18 November 2011

17 Nov 2011

Programme Director
Leaders of employee and employer organisations
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee Members
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

Good Morning.

This is a truly historic summit. I am pleased to return, once more, to the place that was once the World Trade Centre where our country's democratic dispensation was fashioned - at a historic summit representing the views of nearly every South African. Well, the World Trade Centre is no more. We have moved on. It is now 17 years since we removed the last political vestiges of the cruel system of institutionalised racism that had ravaged this country for many decades. It is 17 years since we gave our people hope.

So it is perhaps fitting that we have convened in this symbolic place - even though it is under different management and with a different name - to tackle the subject of health and safety in a venue that represents what we thought we had buried beneath these grounds almost two decades ago. 

It was on the back of the success of the mining industry that our country's economy and its consequent modernisation emerged. Together with this emerged the appalling conditions under which black and white mineworkers suffered particularly at the beginning of the past century. 

This condition worsened with the onset of apartheid in 1948 where only black workers were subjected to the most inhumane conditions of service such as racially based compensation payouts, inferior housing, poor working conditions as well as the industry's guard being lowered on health and safety.

Let it be said, fatalities are fatalities. They know no race, colour or creed. They affect both black and white workers. In fact, fatalities are not discriminatory, they are totally indiscriminate. It is proper that we should pay tribute to the 112 workers who lost their lives in the mining industry in the current year, including but not limited to the 69 000 who died between 1900 and 1994 and the more than a million who suffered from one form of injury or another. 

The death of almost 75 000 workers in a period spanning a hundred years is not something that should be taken for granted. It is an emergency and should be treated as such. A few weeks ago executives of various mining companies including some CEOs did the unusual thing of joining their workers in a march for safety. 

These commendable actions are spoilt by the rhetoric displayed by some mine executives. They would have us believe that they are still investigating the adoption of leading practices at their respective mines whilst the lives of employees who could be saved through the implementation of existing technology continue to be lost. 

I for one, for instance, do not understand how mining companies that make billions in profits fail even to buy the latest available and proven ground movement monitoring and detection equipment. These can cut down the number of potential fatalities considering the fact that this equipment is widely available and has been used by the civil engineering industry for a number of years.

Is this asking too much? Do mining companies have to wait for us to set the minimum standards that they should adhere to? Are these not the very executives who complain about the regulatory regime and who suggest that we are over-regulating? Are we perhaps not having a situation where profits and margins matter more than human lives?

In this regard I expect the Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC) to play a critical role in the adoption of, among other things, relevant technology transfer to improve safety in this industry.

We need, in all honesty, to realise that even though government welcomes initiatives such as the much talked-about marches, however symbolic and noble, these will not of their own stop the carnage on our mines. We have been reminded of this sad truth by the fact that since that ‘fateful' march we have lost a further fourteen workers. 

So the safety item that has now become standard on the agendas of the mining companies as well as measures that have been put in place will not of their own resolve the problem.

Safety is the responsibility of each and every person who sets his or her foot in the precinct of the mines. This summit has given us an opportunity to put to a stop - once and for all - to the practice where workers blame management, management blames the regulator i.e. the government, and where, in the end, instead of something being done, it is workers who continue to lose their lives. 

Having said that, the primary responsibility for health and safety lies squarely at the door of the employers. They have to work with their employees to fashion a plant-specific safety plan and make sure that proper training and awareness of emergency procedures is done as a matter of course rather than the exception. In this way we will get better and better and we must not give up until we have conquered this elephant. After-all, as they say, the taste of the pudding is in the eating. 

Despite the many strides in regulatory reform made with the promulgation of the Mine Health and Safety Act and the development of outcomes-based regulations, we are still dealing with some of the legacies of South Africa's past.

We need to pause and reflect, as the mining industry, in terms of how far we have gone in implementing the recommendations of the Leon Commission of Inquiry of 1994, the most recent commission to examine occupational health and safety in our country's mining industry. 

In particular, what about its call for emphasis on prevention rather than compensation which effectively gave prominence to the promotion of occupational health? This emphasis dealt a severe blow to what the commission called "the tendency of many senior mining officials to attribute South Africa's poor mine safety record to physical and human factors beyond the industry's control". It is clear from this that we need to ensure that systems are put in place to deal comprehensively with both the health and the safety aspects in our mines. 

In seventeen years significant strides have been made to improve the situation. However, it is unacceptable that accidents and occupational diseases still continue and, worse still, it seems to me, that employees, in the main, are the ones who shoulder the blame for this. This we have to change through the Mine Health and Safety Council's Learning Hub initiative which seeks to ensure that there is an adoption of leading practice to enhance health and safety within the mining sector. 

My Department is currently reviewing the Mine Health and Safety Act to strengthen enforcement. This is in direct response to the outcome of inspections and audits that have been conducted by our inspectors which highlights a worrying culture of non- compliance with minimum standards. In this regard my Department will continue to take action against mines that do not comply with the expected standards. 

We will begin with heightened health and safety audits during the festive season and the first quarter of the New Year, as this is the period that is prone to lapses. 

We have to realise that even though the conditions of service of workers have improved, single sex hostels continue to contribute to the spread of tuberculosis and HIV related diseases which are compounded by the migrant labour system where families are separated.

Before I close, I would also like to urge the MHSC:

• To apply its mind to the unintended consequences of the current bonus incentive scheme. It is time that this industry stops mindless risk taking by both management and employees.
• To focus on long term implementation of preventive programmes on the issue of HIV/AIDS which presents one of the gravest health challenges of our generation to the mining industry in South Africa.
• To focus on research to cater for the needs of women who are joining the mining industry by taking advantage of the provisions of the Mining Charter.

We should at all costs be true to stakeholder commitments already agreed, with timeframes, and press on to develop an integrated policy for the management and reporting of TB, HIV/AIDS and Silicosis in line with Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), Department of Health (DOH), Department of Labour (DoL) and South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) policies, norms and standards. 

We should be, inter alia: exploring policy options to reduce negative impacts of migration on mine workers; ensuring that renewed and new mining licences have strategic and operational plans on TB and HIV/AIDS submitted as part of the application; linking up TB and HIV/AIDS in mining with other sectors including trucking and commercial sex workers; and, converting and upgrading hostels as per the mining charter.

We should be promoting the following: access to prevention services on HIV to immediate communities; implementing a referral system to ensure access to continued treatment beyond employment (nationally and across borders); having appropriate nutritional support programmes for all miners; contributing to the broader development and poverty alleviation programmes in surrounding and labour sending areas; promoting options to cover ART support programmes to spouses, families and communities; and supporting the establishment of a national repository on employee health information.

We also need to conduct periodic surveys in ALL mines on TB, HIV/AIDS and Silicosis and services using the baseline study.

We need also to re-examine things like the return to risk work of miners with TB, HIV/AIDS, and Silicosis, and to investigate the possibility of mine hospitals extending services to the communities; and we should be compiling a national report on TB and HIV/AIDS in the mining industry, as well as doing many other things that we are committed to tackle. We have much to do, and we need a sense of real urgency in undertaking this work. We need also to reaffirm our tripartite commitment to establish the Centre of Excellence, as per the 2008 Tripartite Action Plan, to do research, capacity-building and facilitate research implementation.

The mining industry was the second industry to develop agreements on ensuring that we reflect the promise of democratic South Africa. We may be critical of ourselves and that should not be a surprise. It was Karl Marx's dialectical materialism that taught us that we require non-antagonistic contradictions to move forward. We must only give up when we have antagonistic contradictions because then there will be no room for engagement.

Having worked with this industry since I was deployed to this position - the second time around - I have no doubt that we have the will to work together to build a South Africa that, as reflected in the Freedom Charter, belongs to all its people.

We managed to usher in a historic transition in our country nearly two decades ago. The whole world knows that. Now one of the major goals we still face is transforming our mining industry and changing its whole culture. It is no accident that the theme of transformation runs heavily through our discussions. And so does the two-word goal we seek: Zero Harm. 

Our workers have to be safe from accident or illness. Let us achieve these indispensable ends, working together - government, employees and employers. That is the way, in collegiate spirit, to ensure the general health and wellbeing of the mining industry in South Africa. That is the way ahead. 

I thank you for your participation and wish you well in your deliberations. 

Issued by the Department of Mineral Resources, November 17 2011

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