CHAPTER SEVEN
Village of the sick and the dead … Down the road from Mzikayise and Mzwandile’s homes, Mncedi Alloys Msuthu scans the sky quietly. He knows the two brothers very well. They were all born in this village and like their fathers and older brothers, they all worked on the gold mines after undergoing their rite of passage into manhood in the hills of Ramafole.
Msuthu has an intense look in his eyes. It resembles the look in the eyes of soldiers whose eyes tell of horrors beyond words. His dark skin clings tightly to his lean face. A neatly cropped mat of short silver hair covers his head.
A similarly coloured goatee stands out on his chin. He’s a man of few words and hardly smiles. His eyes, brown with small traces of white around the pupils, have that distant fierce intensity, a look back in time, when men appeared in the dusty tunnels down the gold mines like apparitions, when after a long shift underground, his whole body would be covered in a layer of dust.
In 1976 he too was working on the farms in the Western Cape. There he was lucky to earn even R5 a week. So when an opportunity presented itself for him to go to the mines in 1977, he did not think twice.
After all, many men from his village of Ramafole had for years been making the trip to the mines. At 24 years old, he was even considered somewhat too old to not have already be working on the mines. After all, men in these parts took the train to the mines as soon as they turned 18.
Msuthu was eager to make a decent living to support his family and relatives. “I wanted to make money,” he says from the almost bare reception room at his home, taking a break from herding his flock of sheep. He first worked at West Driefontein Mine where he earned R60 a month between 1977 and 1978.
Then he moved to President Steyn Mine as a rock drill operator from 1978 to 2009. He has difficulty with his hearing and speaks in a deep, soft voice that is sometimes imperceptible and often requires his wife Novuyisile to remind him of dates and events.
He is dressed in a faded T-shirt bearing the logo of his former employer Harmony Gold, which is torn below the neck and faded, patched-up jeans and a worn-out pair of black shoes tightly tied with orange laces. He looks a gloomy shadow of the man in a photograph his wife fetches from one of the rooms in the house. In it, he’s light-skinned, looking a picture of fitness and good health in white miner’s overalls.
The man before me is the broken version of the one in the photograph. Time underground has caused irreparable damage to this man who was once full of life. Although his heart still yearns for the serenity and peace of the great hills, where as a young boy he herded the family cattle and sheep, he is careful not to venture too far from his home these days. In fact, he cannot even do that. He struggles to breathe and has to pause for breath after taking a few steps.
“I heard that people on the mines could make money,” he recalls the day he and other recruits left their hometown and headed for the big city, where they’d heard dreams were realised. “We thought it was nice there. But when we got there we found that life was not as easy as we thought.”
When he arrived at West Driefontein Mine to start work as a timber boy, he was shocked to learn that white supervisors were beating up workers at the slightest irritation without fear of being disciplined.
He also found that hostel life was not easy. “There was lots of conflict because the hostels were segregated according to tribes,” he says. Msuthu, a Hlubi, stayed in a section reserved for Xhosa and Hlubi-speaking miners from the Eastern Cape. One of the first things he noticed down the mineshaft was the excessive amounts of dust. “There was lots of dust, too much. But we were not told that it was dangerous. If the bosses realised you were coughing they would say you were sick from inhaling too much dust while herding cattle in the village,” he says.
In 2005 he started coughing and feeling weak. He was hospitalised for about a month in Welkom. “I was told that I had TB but no one explained to me how I got sick,” he says.
When he returned to work he was given light duties on the surface, but he was not satisfied with what he was being paid. “They paid us about R2 500,” he says.
In the ’90s, recalls Msuthu, the mineworkers were suddenly supplied with safety masks. But the masks, worn in extremely high temperatures where there was little ventilation, made it difficult for the wearers to breathe properly. “The masks would be full of dust and sweat after only a little while,” says Msuthu. “It worked only for a short while, then you had to take it off because you couldn’t breathe.”
In 2009, a sickly Msuthu, having spent 31 years grafting on the mines, was retrenched. “I was feeling dizzy. My body was always in pain and I had no strength,” he says.
He was diagnosed with second-degree silicosis during an exit medical exam in 2009.
He returned home but in 2011 was hospitalised at the SA National Tuberculosis Hospital in Matatiele. He had multidrug-resistant TB.
“He was very bad,” Novuyisile recalls. “He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t eat. He was vomiting. He couldn’t walk. So I had to take him to hospital.”
Novuyisile smiles shyly when she remembers the tough-built, strong man she married. “He had a very nice body,” she says. Novuyisile remembers that Msuthu loved working the land and farming cattle.
“Now he is sickly. If he picks up a spade, he won’t get out of bed the next day,” she says, pausing to stare into the distance, the distance of time.
Their four adult children, aged between 35 and 24 are struggling to find work in Gauteng and the youngest one is studying.
Msuthu doesn’t want them to go anywhere near the mines that have left him a broken man. Novuyisile now looks after their flock of sheep and small herd of cattle. But Msuthu’s pride and work ethic don’t allow him to loiter around the homestead doing nothing. Sometimes he tries to work in the vegetable patch. But Novuyisile is always on hand to ensure he doesn’t overexert himself. She has seen the pain that comes with losing one’s husband to the killer disease of the gold mines…. — extract from Broke and Broken, The Shameful Legacy of Gold Mining in South Africa by Lucas Ledwaba and Leon Sadiki published by Jacana Media
Dust – mining’s deadly disease
Village of the sick and the dead … Down the road from Mzikayise and Mzwandile’s homes, Mncedi Alloys Msuthu scans the sky quietly. He knows the two brothers very well. They were all born in this village and like their fathers and older brothers, they all worked on the gold mines after undergoing their rite of passage into manhood in the hills of Ramafole.
Msuthu has an intense look in his eyes. It resembles the look in the eyes of soldiers whose eyes tell of horrors beyond words. His dark skin clings tightly to his lean face. A neatly cropped mat of short silver hair covers his head.
A similarly coloured goatee stands out on his chin. He’s a man of few words and hardly smiles. His eyes, brown with small traces of white around the pupils, have that distant fierce intensity, a look back in time, when men appeared in the dusty tunnels down the gold mines like apparitions, when after a long shift underground, his whole body would be covered in a layer of dust.
In 1976 he too was working on the farms in the Western Cape. There he was lucky to earn even R5 a week. So when an opportunity presented itself for him to go to the mines in 1977, he did not think twice.
After all, many men from his village of Ramafole had for years been making the trip to the mines. At 24 years old, he was even considered somewhat too old to not have already be working on the mines. After all, men in these parts took the train to the mines as soon as they turned 18.
Msuthu was eager to make a decent living to support his family and relatives. “I wanted to make money,” he says from the almost bare reception room at his home, taking a break from herding his flock of sheep. He first worked at West Driefontein Mine where he earned R60 a month between 1977 and 1978.
Then he moved to President Steyn Mine as a rock drill operator from 1978 to 2009. He has difficulty with his hearing and speaks in a deep, soft voice that is sometimes imperceptible and often requires his wife Novuyisile to remind him of dates and events.
He is dressed in a faded T-shirt bearing the logo of his former employer Harmony Gold, which is torn below the neck and faded, patched-up jeans and a worn-out pair of black shoes tightly tied with orange laces. He looks a gloomy shadow of the man in a photograph his wife fetches from one of the rooms in the house. In it, he’s light-skinned, looking a picture of fitness and good health in white miner’s overalls.
The man before me is the broken version of the one in the photograph. Time underground has caused irreparable damage to this man who was once full of life. Although his heart still yearns for the serenity and peace of the great hills, where as a young boy he herded the family cattle and sheep, he is careful not to venture too far from his home these days. In fact, he cannot even do that. He struggles to breathe and has to pause for breath after taking a few steps.
“I heard that people on the mines could make money,” he recalls the day he and other recruits left their hometown and headed for the big city, where they’d heard dreams were realised. “We thought it was nice there. But when we got there we found that life was not as easy as we thought.”
When he arrived at West Driefontein Mine to start work as a timber boy, he was shocked to learn that white supervisors were beating up workers at the slightest irritation without fear of being disciplined.
He also found that hostel life was not easy. “There was lots of conflict because the hostels were segregated according to tribes,” he says. Msuthu, a Hlubi, stayed in a section reserved for Xhosa and Hlubi-speaking miners from the Eastern Cape. One of the first things he noticed down the mineshaft was the excessive amounts of dust. “There was lots of dust, too much. But we were not told that it was dangerous. If the bosses realised you were coughing they would say you were sick from inhaling too much dust while herding cattle in the village,” he says.
In 2005 he started coughing and feeling weak. He was hospitalised for about a month in Welkom. “I was told that I had TB but no one explained to me how I got sick,” he says.
When he returned to work he was given light duties on the surface, but he was not satisfied with what he was being paid. “They paid us about R2 500,” he says.
In the ’90s, recalls Msuthu, the mineworkers were suddenly supplied with safety masks. But the masks, worn in extremely high temperatures where there was little ventilation, made it difficult for the wearers to breathe properly. “The masks would be full of dust and sweat after only a little while,” says Msuthu. “It worked only for a short while, then you had to take it off because you couldn’t breathe.”
In 2009, a sickly Msuthu, having spent 31 years grafting on the mines, was retrenched. “I was feeling dizzy. My body was always in pain and I had no strength,” he says.
He was diagnosed with second-degree silicosis during an exit medical exam in 2009.
He returned home but in 2011 was hospitalised at the SA National Tuberculosis Hospital in Matatiele. He had multidrug-resistant TB.
“He was very bad,” Novuyisile recalls. “He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t eat. He was vomiting. He couldn’t walk. So I had to take him to hospital.”
Novuyisile smiles shyly when she remembers the tough-built, strong man she married. “He had a very nice body,” she says. Novuyisile remembers that Msuthu loved working the land and farming cattle.
“Now he is sickly. If he picks up a spade, he won’t get out of bed the next day,” she says, pausing to stare into the distance, the distance of time.
Their four adult children, aged between 35 and 24 are struggling to find work in Gauteng and the youngest one is studying.
Msuthu doesn’t want them to go anywhere near the mines that have left him a broken man. Novuyisile now looks after their flock of sheep and small herd of cattle. But Msuthu’s pride and work ethic don’t allow him to loiter around the homestead doing nothing. Sometimes he tries to work in the vegetable patch. But Novuyisile is always on hand to ensure he doesn’t overexert himself. She has seen the pain that comes with losing one’s husband to the killer disease of the gold mines…. — extract from Broke and Broken, The Shameful Legacy of Gold Mining in South Africa by Lucas Ledwaba and Leon Sadiki published by Jacana Media
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