H: $42
L: $29
H: $42
L: $29
H: $39
L: 30
H: $36
L: $29
H: $37
L: $27
H: $37
L: $28
The coal sector accounts for 80% of the South African economy, so even a pandemic gives its staff a break.
I’ve been punched in the eye. Reddened and sunk; skin covered in charcoal dust and sweat; the anthrax darkened through the coal.
I’m in a hurry after I finish a shift. Bread; half loaves for hungry miners; the thick dust embedded in his worn hands was mixed with the scabs.The miners bought the breads because it was less expensive and because it was a simple and hearty meal.It would be related to a classic fermented drink called “amasi”.coal powder.
My non-public history is very similar to mining, my parents brought me from Greece to South Africa when I was only 4 years old, we settled in the city then known as Witbank, 70 miles from Johannesburg, today it is known by its call Nguni, eMalahleni, which literally means “place of coal.”
There’s no escape from coal, even then. As children, we put vaseline in the windows to see how temporarily the charcoal dust ever present accumulated in them.The smell of sulfur permeated the air.
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My mom went to the doctor to check therapy for the chronic respiratory disorders she had, probably because of our proximity to the city’s maximum source of income.What sustained us also weakened us.
In 2013, when an EU study team measured air quality around eMalahleni, the degrees of chromium and barium were so high that their tools could not record accurate measurements.
The half-breads held by those miners were placed there through my father, who had a small general store promoting everything from baked goods to cleaning products on a residential mining property.This is where I spent my weekends and school holidays in the mid-1990s.My parents spoke little English when they arrived in South Africa and, as a child, I translated them.The general store was my connection to a global world that remained with me; the counter that separated me from consumers a physical symbol of the inequalities between their lives and mine.
There I learned my first words in Zulu and learned to perceive a little what it meant to paint in the depths of the subsoil: resistance, power of permanence and resolution; dirt, poverty and risk.
These dangers also affected me personally. In 2014, a close friend, a few months before his wedding, died in a mining accident.As an audiovisual journalist, I even found myself having to break the news on the air at the time.
And yet, until this month, I had never been to a coal mine.Going down two hundred meters underground, at the Impumelelo mine in Sasol in the city of Secunda, he was impatient, but nevertheless excited to grab an additional piece of the puzzle.
But Covid-19 has added a new layer of threat to this already harmful activity.Coal remains surely important to the South African economy; about 80% of the country’s strength still comes from it, so there is no pandemic pause option.
Everyone who works here is essential for the operation of the mine, and Sasol takes its protection seriously. Before we went down, we were informed and provided with special equipment: an emergency breathing apparatus and a sensor in my belt that will prevent heavy machinery if I get too close.”Everyone in the mine is critical,” Sandile Siyaya, general manager of the mine, told me.
Anyone who works in a mine is in their operations
But covid-19 precautions are a total challenge.The company has strict protocols in a position to ensure the protection of its miners and the inconsistency of its mines.Masks are ubiquitous, shift disinfection is mandatory.There’s one on site, clinic to test, monitor and treat employees.Even with those precautions, however, there have been more than a hundred cases alone in this mine.When a minor test is positive, all members of the worker segment are quarantined.has fallen through about 16 consistent with a hundred.
Painting miners is a must in more than one tactic.Pelaelo Mthombeni was the first mining painter to contract the virus.She’s recovered and now she’s grateful to be back underground.”My children go to school for these paintings, “She told me.”I can pay for assistance at home through these pictures.I can do a lot of things. I can my family.”
Davis Cook, executive director of the Research Institute for Innovation and Sustainability, says the coal industry has express disorders because of its scale.The industry employs around 430,000 people in South Africa.Cook says network transmission “has a much greater influence” on coal than on gold and platinum mines, which employ about 300,000 people together.
Mining has also brought the legacy of apartheid and a lack of interest in the well-being of black workers.The question has been whether mining corporations are doing enough for their communities and the fitness of their workers.
Dr. Thuthula Balfour, director of health at Minerals Council South Africa, recognizes that fitness has had less priority than protection for the industry.”It is true that over the decades it has been difficult for others to put fitness at the same point.as protection, and perhaps that’s because protection is much more in your face, when someone dies in the place before your eyes, compared to someone who dies from a fitness-related illness.”
She thinks that Covid-19 can simply replace that balance. “I think what this epidemic has done is show how vital fitness is, to the extent that there are other people dying … Most other people, you know, within two weeks, they would die.
The Miners and Construction Union is less convinced.”Covid-19 will be a revelation for the mining industry at all levels,” says EU Regional President Manzezulu Nkambule.”You can see that the numbers are increasing.They’ve been breathing this dust for years. And when the virus enters, it already discovers a weakened immune system and then attacks ».
Lucky Kgatle, senior vice president of Sasol Mining, said Covid-19 was targeting communities.”We had to recognize that we are part of the communities in which we operate, and we had to focus on the demanding situations and demanding situations they face, the uncertainties that arise,” he says.
“We face a lot of criticism, but I think we do a lot of paintings to keep our staff safe.We’re not there yet, there are still challenges, but a lot of investment.Many of our staff feel safer here on homework than outside.”
This last point is the highest acute component of the problem.While underground hazards are thoroughly mitigated, surface hazards accumulate.
“It’s tough man, running underground is tough,” Sasol miner Percy Simelane told me. In the company-owned housing complex where he lives with his wife and two children, no one from Sasol came here to tell us about Covid -19, he said. “Once we left the mine, they forgot. They say you have to take care of yourself. Fear, he says, is present.” I’m scared for my boys, “he said. Difficult.”
For miners, this has been the case; However, the pandemic has increased the risks for all involved.Simelane will continue to go underground. He owes, like so many others in this industry, he’s an indispensable employee, and his task is everything.His eyes reminded me of the many miners I had met in my youth, this time accentuated through the mask that covered his face.
Eleni Giokos is a correspondent for CNN International and its Marketplace Africa program