“We were just playing with death.” Inside a South African town poisoned by asbestos

The asbestos industry left the South African town of Mafefe over 40 years ago, but its residents continue facing asbestos-related illness and deaths, while the government evades compensating victims’ families and stalls on cleaning up the remaining contamination.

A former mining town

There were once many asbestos mines across South Africa. But when dozens of countries banned the cancer-causing mineral, the market for South African asbestos collapsed. The last mine closed in 2002. South African asbestos mines were known for their blue asbestos (crocidolite) and brown asbestos (amosite). They are rarer than the more commonly used white asbestos (chrysotile), and extremely toxic.

Mafefe is a village in Limpopo, north-east South Africa. It is surrounded by beautiful mountains and large nature reserves. It was the site of several blue and brown asbestos mines owned by multiple companies until the last mine closed in 1983. Mafefe is also home to 59-year-old Amon Sibiya Matlhekoane. It was the village he grew up in, and the place where his mother Khatazile is buried – one of many here who died from exposure to asbestos.

Sibiya’s parents, father Jackson and mother Khatazile, married in 1949. Like many mining families, they moved to Mafefe for work. Jackson was a miner, while Khatazile’s job involved cobbing, which was separating out the asbestos from other stones and grinding it.

Various companies owned asbestos mines across South Africa, including in Mafefe, which was home to several small mines. British and European companies played major roles in much of the asbestos industry’s history, including Cape, which was active in the Mafefe area.

By the time the couple started working on the mines, the asbestos industry – including British company Cape, today owned by Altrad – had long known that exposure to asbestos could cause asbestosis – scarring of the lungs, and since the 1940s that asbestos caused lung cancer. By 1960, it became clear that asbestos also causes mesothelioma, a fatal cancer of the mesothelium, now known to be almost exclusively caused by asbestos, with no known cure.

Yet these warnings about the asbestos dust were not given to the miners in apartheid South Africa, including Sibiya’s parents. Nor were they given protective equipment to minimise their exposure to asbestos dust. “My mom used to tell us that when men were coming out [after work],” Sibiya told Confront, “you could hardly recognise their faces, as they were covered in asbestos.”

Not sharing the dangers of asbestos meant workers would take the dust on their bodies and clothes home, further exposing their families to the carcinogen.

Sibiya was born in 1966, six years after Dr J.C. Wagner’s landmark study in South Africa was published. Wagner highlighted the risk of residents of mining villages developing mesothelioma. Further studies in the early 1960s showed even light exposures to blue asbestos could prove fatal.

“Our first grade in school”, Sibiya said, “there was this block of the back that they were building, and it was done with asbestos. I remember it was dusty everywhere. We were playing football in the fields, packed with asbestos dust. Sometimes we’d go to the mining dumps, roll over them.” It wouldn’t be until 1985 that Sibiya, his family, and those in Mafefe would come to learn that asbestos was toxic.

A blue hue of asbestos

When Dr Marianne Felix, an academic occupational scientist in South Africa, first came to Mafefe in 1985 to conduct research for her PhD, she told Confront she was greeted with a blue hue of asbestos – and a group of children playing on a former asbestos mine. The sight motivated Felix to try and make a difference: “I had seen children playing on asbestos dumps and felt I was behooven to do something about it.”

The residents were never told that asbestos was harmful. After the mines closed, they continued using potentially fatal asbestos for plastering walls, building houses, and planting in the soil of their gardens. Asbestos is in their water supply.

Sibiya remembers his reaction when meeting Dr Felix and learning asbestos is highly toxic. “All those years we thought we were safe, and we were just playing with death.”

Armed with new knowledge and with the support of Felix and others, the community took the lead in organising efforts to clean up some of the asbestos in and around Mafefe. There were several mines and asbestos dumps in the Mafefe area that were rehabilitated. Roads, which were coated in asbestos and identified by Felix in her PhD as a major source of risk, were partly replaced.

Felix’s research found widespread asbestos diseases in Mafefe. Among those over sixty years old who were female cobbers, like Khatazile, 90% of them had asbestosis. Asbestosis has no known cure. In severe cases, it can be fatal, but even in mild or moderate cases, it can severely impact people’s quality of life.

Khatazile’s cough began while Sibiya was in his late teens. As time passed, she lost weight, felt breathless, and increasingly struggled to walk around. A traditional healer, she could no longer source medication to help her clients. “It was terrible for my mother to see her suffering for this long,” said Sibiya.

Her health had been deteriorating for years, but asbestosis would not be the only asbestos-related disease she would suffer from. She would be diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2022 and died a few months later, on 11th October, aged 87. Sibiya is still desolate. His mother lived a long life, but he saw her suffer extensively and needlessly from asbestos exposure. “She was a very calm woman. A very down-to-earth person, soft-spoken, kind-hearted, loving woman,” he said.

Sibiya’s lungs are also in poor health. He’s now dependent on an inhaler and suspects asbestos as the cause. His older brother Diliza has been diagnosed with asbestosis. Diliza continues to work in a platinum mine – he has no choice, but Sibiya says he is struggling.

Many graves

Kgoroba Pienaar Makola also lives in Mafefe. He worked on one of the mines as a clerk for three years, from 1969 to 1972. He says his stepfather and uncle both died from asbestos-related diseases, and he’s seen many more die over the years in Mafefe. “Many graves are here from asbestos,” said Pienaar.

When workers fell sick from asbestos, Pienaar recalls that they were fired and left to fend for themselves. Their chances of finding alternative work were slim, given the debilitating impact that moderate to severe asbestosis can have. On the rare occasions when inspectors came to the mines, Pienaar said management would hide the sickest workers in the mountains.

Pienaar worked on a larger mine; he recalled seeing a small number of the poorest boys in the village working there too, transporting asbestos on donkeys down from the mountain. Felix’s research also showed that three of the smaller mines in Mafefe used child labour. This practice was common across South African asbestos mines. Explaining the rationale, a Cape executive wrote in the 1950s that, “It would be most uneconomical for us to employ fully grown men to do the work done by these minors.” But these weren’t the only children on the mines.

Many women who worked on mines cobbing, like Khatazile, had young children to raise as well. Having not been told how toxic asbestos was, some carried their babies in the asbestos sacks on their backs while they worked.

We asked Cape, who is being asked by campaigners to donate £10 million to mesothelioma research, to comment on this story. They have not responded, as of publication.

Years of waiting

Decades have passed since the mine closed and the initial rehabilitation project finished. Yet children and adults continue to be at risk from asbestos. While visitors are no longer greeted by the same hue of blue asbestos as Dr Felix when she first entered Mafefe, asbestos contamination is still widespread.

Matime Mabiletja, head of the Mafefe Asbestos Group, has grown despondent at how progress has stalled since Dr Felix’s project ended. “I’m approaching more than 30 years now in the same activity, and my people are not getting solutions. I think I am losing hope that I’m ever going to see a solution in my lifetime,” Mabiletja told Confront.

The South African constitution states that ‘everyone has the right to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that prevent pollution and ecological degradation [and] promote conservation.’ However, Mafefe and several other mining towns continue to wait for full rehabilitation of contaminated zones, decades after the asbestos mining industry collapsed.

Mabiletja refuses to endure in silence. “What’s left for us is litigation,” he said, but he acknowledges this is not an easy option. “Who is going to pay the lawyers, who’s organising those lawyers?”.

Dr Felix told Confront she views finishing the clean-up of Mafefe as eminently possible, and that a time when people in Mafefe are no longer burdened by asbestos diseases is within reach – if the authorities step up. Confront contacted the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism about plans to finish cleaning up this asbestos. They did not respond to comment.

“I’m approaching more than 30 years now in the same activity, and my people are not getting solutions.”

Two major legal settlements, one against Cape and one against Gencor and its subsidiary Gefco (South African mining industry companies), brought compensation for thousands of ill and deceased miners. However, those people not covered by these two settlements depend on the government. And the government does not provide any protection to people – like Amon and Diliza – who are exposed to asbestos in the environment, such as from a building, dump, unrehabilitated mine, or other contaminated areas.

“The state hasn’t taken any effective measures to eliminate exposure,” Richard Spoor, the lawyer responsible for overseeing the Gencor settlement, told Confront. “There are a large number of working facilities, schools, and contaminated dump sites. There’s massive contamination in that area, and it’s an ongoing problem.” Spoor added that, “Unless you’re covered by the [Gencor settlement], there is no environmental compensation.”

When asked why there is no compensation for those who fall ill from environmental asbestos, and why Mafefe continues to have some roads still coated in asbestos, South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy declined to comment.

Khatazile was ineligible for either of the major legal settlements against mining companies against Cape and Gencor, and so was unable to obtain even a penny to help her during her illnesses. Her sons face the same challenge today.

During his mother’s final months, Sibiya learned that major asbestos companies knew asbestos was potentially lethal to him at the same time he was playing on asbestos-ridden fields. Upon learning about the industry’s past, he was stunned.

“How can fellow human beings do this to other human beings?” Sibiya said. He wants justice for his mother and his community. “They worked in the asbestos industry. They were never told about the dangers, and the main bosses were aware that they were killing these people. They decided to keep quiet.”

“We grew up playing in the fields that were left without being rehabilitated. The community was never told about the dangers of the stuff. We grew up there in ignorance. Now we are sick as a result of someone intentionally doing that. We just want justice.”

Those who live in contaminated asbestos mining towns today also live with a mental burden – the fear of the same painful deaths from asbestos diseases that they’ve seen befall neighbours or family members.

“Sometimes I just tell myself that there’s nothing that I can change,” said Sibiya. “It has happened. I must live with it. But when sometimes you feel sickly, you just think maybe you’re going to end up having mesothelioma and die terribly. Those thoughts don’t simply go away.”

Read our interview with Professor Lundy Braun to understand more on the impact of the asbestos industry in South Africa.