by
During much of the 20th century many SA mineworkers who died on duty were buried informally, often without appropriate ceremony, on the mine’s properties by their colleagues or hired diggers.
The tendency was to bury mineworkers hastily in unmarked graves and on the most isolated portions of the company’s properties. The human remains of many were never returned to their places of origin and were often buried without the knowledge of their families.
As we celebrate Heritage Day on Tuesday we must confront this troubling legacy of mining and finally give dignity to the deceased mineworkers. Over the past 150 years more than 80,000 mineworkers have died and more than 1-million have been seriously injured at work.
Dangerous working and living conditions contributed significantly to the high mortality rate of miners, especially in the 20th century. Many of these were migrant workers from across Southern Africa. The past failure of the mining industry to identify and provide appropriate burial for deceased miners has left many families without knowledge of where the remains of their loved ones are. This has been a deep source of pain for many families across Southern Africa.
The treatment of human remains following fatalities at mines evolved throughout the 20th century as the SA state and industry developed. What was initially a loosely regulated process became more formalised. Regulations were gazetted in November 1906, permitting the creation of cemeteries on the mines’ properties. These regulations stipulated the separation of burial grounds for African and Chinese workers and mandated the keeping of death registers by each mine. These had to record the deceased’s name, race, nationality, address and cause of death.
The creation of cemeteries on mine properties was already commonplace before the passing of the 1906 regulations. Mine cemeteries were commonplace because of the significant death toll of African mineworkers from diseases and accidents in the early 20th century and the prohibitive cost of transporting bodies back to their places of origin. Therefore, companies created mine cemeteries on their properties to bury African workers at the lowest possible cost. It was also common for mining companies to build and manage mortuaries, where deceased workers were kept before burial.
The practice of burying African mineworkers in unmarked graves, often without following African burial customs, was viewed as undignified by African miners. The mistreatment of deceased African mineworkers by mining companies and the fear of being buried on “foreign” land away from loved ones led to the development of informal funeral-finance associations. These aided in the transportation of the deceased’s body back to their home village. By the mid-1950s most mine cemeteries had ceased to operate, underscoring their lack of popularity among African workers.
Cemeteries established by mining companies for their African workers were poorly kept. Some of these cemeteries, such as the Crown Mines Cemetery, were later revealed to have been intentionally concealed with mine dumps. The Crown Mines Cemetery, located south of Johannesburg, is a historical African mineworkers’ cemetery discovered in 2010. About 650 people are believed to have been buried in the cemetery, and most were probably migrant mineworkers. The assessment of cultural material found near the site linked the cemetery with companies operating in the areas between 1890 and 1920.
By the 1980s these practices had changed, health and safety conditions had improved radically, and fatalities at mine sites had declined equally sharply. However, the vexing issue of existing unmarked miners’ graves remains unresolved, and mining companies cannot address it alone. For one, many mining companies that operated in the 20th century no longer exist, and some unmarked graves are situated near abandoned mines. Moreover, records that could have led to the identification of the deceased miners and their families have been lost.
Even so, the industry has several options to address the legacy of deceased miners, including exhumation and repatriation where identification is possible, memorialisation, and spiritual repatriation. SA has developed significant expertise in the identification of human remains because of our efforts to identify persons who went missing during the apartheid era. Moreover, in this context memorialisation and spiritual repatriation have become commonplace because of the high number of cases where human remains were unrecoverable as a result of the manner in which they were disposed of.
The importance of repatriation (whether spiritual or of the human remains) is linked to the significance placed by many African cultures on returning to one’s ancestors when one dies. May this Heritage Month be the catalyst the industry needs for a conversation about how the country deals with this deeply troubling legacy of mining so the departed can finally receive dignified burials and their families can get closure.
• Mahapa is a senior associate at conflict management and development practice Concentric Alliance.
This article first appeared on Business Live on 23 September 2024.
