New SA mine health and safety targets can be reached, but zero harm will remain elusive

South Africa’s mining sector, the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, and trade unions agreed last week at the tripartite health and safety summit on new goals to be reached over the next decade with the ultimate goal being “Zero Harm”.

Frankly, unless robots completely replace humans underground and on the surface of mining operations, Zero Harm – while a noble target that focuses minds – will almost certainly not be reached.

But the milestones, as they are dubbed, which include goals to eliminate gender-based violence at the mines, can be achieved as they build on the remarkable progress over the past couple of decades.

Let’s start with the new safety milestones for the next 10 years:

• Every mining company must have a target of zero fatalities.


• Reduction of falls of ground-related reportable accidents by 20% a year.


• Reduction of reportable transportation and mining, machinery and conveyance reportable accidents by 20% per year.


• Reduction of reportable general-type accidents by 20% per year.


• The milestones will be assessed every two years and the initiatives to support the efforts will be reviewed.

Given past progress, these can all be achieved and exceeded.

“Since 1994, the number of fatalities on mines has decreased by 88% from 484 to 55 in 2023. Injuries have decreased by 75% to 2,080 from 8,347 in that period. The industry reported a record-low 49 fatalities in 2022,” the Minerals Council South Africa noted in a statement.

As Daily Maverick recently reported, South Africa’s mining sector is on track for a record safety year in 2024.

Read more: South Africa’s mining sector is on track in 2024 for a record safety year

The record year of 2022 still saw almost one miner killed a week on average, which underscores just how dangerous mining still is in South Africa. But progress has undeniably been made and this is a tribute to the industry, the regulator and organised labour.

A range of factors are behind this improved performance. The end of apartheid, when black lives meant little in most white C-suites, was clearly a game changer.

The safety drive has also been driven by growing concerns among investors about safety in an age when ESGs – environmental, social and governance concerns – are all the rage in corporate culture.

This has plugged into technology with far-reaching results.

Mechanisation, where South Africa’s arduous geology allows, has replaced people with machines in dangerous settings, and digitisation, automation and AI will take safety to a new level in coming years.

The milestone to reduce falls of ground accidents – in which rocks literally fall on you from above – by 20% per year is within reach.

Long the leading cause of death in South Africa’s mines, fatalities from such incidents fell to six in 2022 from 33 in 2017, but then worryingly spiked to 15 last year, according to Minerals Council data.

The roll-out of overhead safety netting and bolting over the past decade or so, mechanisation, and a focus on the issue – especially at the rock face where rock-drill operators ply their trade – have greatly reduced fatalities on this front.

Recent initiatives include research into hand-held underground radars that can detect movement in the rock in advance.

Health milestones

The health milestones can also build on the progress that has been made. Since 2014, incidents of occupational diseases in the mining industry have decreased by 72%.

For example, one of the milestones is:

• By December 2034, using current diagnostic techniques, no novice pneumoconiosis cases of: silicosis, coal worker’s pneumoconiosis, and pneumoconiosis as a result of respirable platinum mine dust will occur among previously unexposed individuals.

“Previously unexposed individuals” will be anyone who enters the industry from January 2025.

“As we continue to intensify our efforts towards the elimination of occupational lung diseases, dust management systems such as fogger spray systems, scraper winch covers, footwall and sidewall treatment, multi-stage filtration systems, in-stope atomisation, and various forms of continuous real-time monitors have proven to be effective in reducing dust exposure of employees,” Japie Fullard, the head of the Minerals Council’s Zero Harm Forum, told the summit.

Filtration and real-time monitoring of dust levels are key in this regard and the technology is advancing.

It must also be said that costly legal action can throw an issue into sharp relief. The gold sector in 2018 agreed to a R5-billion class action settlement with miners who contracted the incurable lung disease silicosis. And the coal sector now faces a looming class action over lung disease.

Read more: Application for class action suit over lung disease filed against oxygen-deprived coal sector

The mining sector has also committed to mental health screening and support – mining can be stressful – and agreed to a reduction in gender-based violence incidents. As more women enter the mining workforce, they face a cultural backlash rooted in patriarchy.

Looking at overall health and safety trends, a cynic might note that fewer miners and underground shifts should translate into fewer accidents, and overall South Africa’s mine labour force is about half of what it was in the 1980s.

But more revealing measurements, such as “fatality frequency rates”, measuring deaths per million hours worked, have also fallen sharply in recent years.

A decade from now there will probably be fewer men and women working in South Africa’s mining sector, even if the industry arrests its overall decline by shifting from legacy metals such as gold and platinum to ore bodies such as manganese and copper.

AI, automation and other trends are bound to reduce the number of miners needed to extract the ore. The pace of technological change is so rapid that unheard-of technologies today may be common by 2034.

But the bottom line is that South Africa’s mining sector is becoming safer and that trend will accelerate in the coming years. DM