Negligible compensation for Turner & Newall’s asbestos-exposed African workforce

A trust compensating people who contracted asbestos diseases from British company Turner & Newall has seen less than 0.15% of its compensation go to claimants in Africa, Confront can reveal.

Based in Rochdale, England, Turner & Newall was one of the largest asbestos companies in the world. Its various businesses included asbestos mines and asbestos factories in South Africa, Nigeria, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia.

After the company went into administration in 2001, the T&N Asbestos Trustee Company was established to compensate those who developed an asbestos disease from Turner & Newall.

The T&N Asbestos Trust’s last publicly available annual report showed over £127 million in compensation has been paid out. Yet despite the company’s large footprint in southern Africa, annual reports indicate that only 101 people from the region have received a total of £191,000 in compensation.

An international operation

Southern Africa was vital to Turner & Newall throughout the 20th century.

In Zimbabwe, it owned Shabanie and Mashaba Mines until 1996. In Eswatini, it owned Havelock Mine until 1991. It owned mines in South Africa, including Heuningvlei and Kempville, before selling them in the 1970s. It also owned subsidiaries including TAP Zambia, Turnall, and Ferodo, whose factories produced asbestos-containing products.

In the decades prior to the company closing, several tens of thousands of people in the region had worked for Turner & Newall. Thousands more people lived in close proximity to asbestos mines and factories, or had family members inadvertently bringing home asbestos dust.

Over 200,000 people globally die from asbestos diseases each year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). When inhaled, asbestos fibres can cause multiple diseases, including cancers and asbestosis. There is no safe level of occupational exposure to asbestos according to the WHO.

Not everybody who is heavily exposed to asbestos will develop a disease, and it often takes decades for potentially fatal diseases to develop.

As public awareness about the risks of asbestos grew, and facing large numbers of lawsuits, many asbestos companies went out of business. This included Turner & Newall and its owner, Federal-Mogul, which has a separate fund compensating people in the USA.

The T&N Asbestos Trust noted in its first annual report in 2007 that it might receive claims from people with asbestos diseases in Zimbabwe, Eswatini, South Africa, and Botswana, alongside the United Kingdom and India.

As of 2024, the last year its annual report was published, the trust has paid out £127,590,000 in compensation. Over £10 million more has been paid in legal fees and medical costs, and it has over £26 million in reserve.

Based on the trust’s annual reports, it appears just £191,000 of this was paid to 101 claimants originating from southern Africa.

The 101 claims are believed to originate from Eswatini and Havelock Mine.

In 2000, law firm Leigh Day was preparing to bring a case against Turner & Newall on behalf of several hundred Havelock Mine workers. But shortly afterwards, Turner & Newall went into administration.

Years of waiting ensued. After the T&N Asbestos Trust finally became operational in 2006 and the paperwork was filed, 101 people from Havelock Mine received around £2,000 each. A further £71,000 went to legal fees and medical costs related to these claimants. Another claim was received but seemingly not settled.

Afterwards, the trust’s 2009 annual report said that it doesn’t “anticipate any further claims from southern African countries.” It didn’t mention any payments to claimants in southern Africa in any of the annual reports that followed.

The trust did not respond directly to our questions about any additional claims, nor did it explain the lack of claimants from southern Africa.

Dangerous conditions

It was a Turner & Newall worker in Rochdale, Nellie Kershaw, who was the first person recorded in medical literature as dying from an asbestos disease in 1924. Yet decades later, asbestos exposure remained a significant hazard in Turner & Newall’s workplaces, particularly in Africa.

When a Turner & Newall doctor visited Havelock Mine in Eswatini in 1971, he saw “frightening” conditions. He wrote to the head office, “I was in two minds as to whether I should enter the grading mill without the protection of a positive pressure respirator. Going through the mill to the storage shed and then through the shed, climbing over piles of fibre, was frightening.”

The same doctor visited a Turner & Newall owned asbestos factory in Durban, South Africa, in 1976. He found basic health and safety measures to limit asbestos dust weren’t being employed. X-rays of 600 factory workers revealed around 14% potentially had asbestosis, scarring of the lungs caused by asbestos fibres.

An internal memo in 1980 detailed that all of Turner & Newall’s major asbestos businesses in Africa had some workers exposed to higher levels of asbestos dust than was permitted in the UK. This memo also singled out the Zimbabwean operations as being of particular concern.

At its peak, around 7,000 people worked on Turner & Newall’s Zimbabwe asbestos mines in Zvishavane and Mashava. These asbestos mines produced 8.69 million tonnes of asbestos in the 20th century; over four times more than Havelock Mine in Eswatini. Hundreds more people in Zimbabwe worked for its subsidiary Turnall, producing asbestos-cement products.

A reporter for UK publication Private Eye found safety issues at a Zimbabwe asbestos mine in 1980. Workers said that they were not informed of the health hazards of asbestos exposure, and frequently not provided with respirators to reduce their exposure to asbestos dust, which the company denied at the time. Confront reported in May 2026 that asbestos diseases in the Zimbabwe mines would have been common among some workers.

However, nobody who worked for Turner & Newall in Zimbabwe appears to have been compensated by the trust.

Awareness and diagnosis

A prerequisite for filing a claim with the trust is a diagnosis of an asbestos disease. This is easier to obtain in some countries than in others.

In southern Africa, many people migrated from small towns or villages to work on the asbestos mines. When the mines closed down, many returned home. If they later developed an asbestos disease, they faced significant challenges in receiving an accurate diagnosis.

“In the rural areas of Southern Africa, there is generally little access to health services with diagnostic facilities, in both the public and private sectors,” said Dr Jim teWaterNaude, a Public Health Medicine specialist who works with people afflicted by dust diseases.

“Screening services, especially for dust-diseases of the lung, for those living in rural South Africa are few and far between,” he said. Without additional training, healthcare workers can also struggle to identify asbestosis in chest X-rays.

We have previously reported on similar challenges healthcare systems in Zimbabwe and Eswatini also face in diagnosing asbestos diseases.

The T&N Asbestos Trust does not pay for organising health screenings among potentially under-represented groups. Nor has the trust conducted any outreach work in southern Africa to raise awareness that it exists. This is in contrast to another trust in the region, the Asbestos Relief Trust (ART).

The ART was created to compensate people who develop asbestos diseases from mining company Gencore. It started operating in 2003 and has since compensated thousands of people who contracted asbestos diseases, largely in South Africa.

One of the mines covered by the ART is Havelock Mine, as it was also briefly part-owned by Gencore. Some Havelock workers were eligible for compensation from the ART, depending on when they were exposed. The ART has run awareness campaigns and organised health screenings, including in Eswatini. To date, around 150 former Havelock workers have been diagnosed and then compensated by the ART.

Meanwhile, key stakeholders in the region that Confront spoke to were unaware that the T&N Asbestos Trust even existed.

The Swaziland National Ex-Mine Workers Association in Eswatini had not heard of the T&N Asbestos Trust when we approached them.

“This is quite unfortunate and sad. Swazis are not aware of this,” Thabo Masuku, the Executive Director for the Foundation for Socio-Economic Justice in Eswatini, told Confront. “I don’t think anyone has reached out to them.”

Nor had Justice Chinhema, General Secretary of Zimbabwe Diamond and Allied Minerals Workers Union, heard of the trust. “Globally, we have seen compensation being done, but in Zimbabwe that has not happened and we need something done for our people,” said Chinhema.

When visiting former Turner & Newall mining towns in Zimbabwe and Eswatini, none of the residents Confront spoke to knew that the trust existed.

The terms of the trust say that it would place a small number of advertisements in British papers to raise awareness for those who might wish to file a claim. There was no provision to advertise in southern Africa or India.

The pool of people who contracted asbestos diseases from Turner & Newall and would be eligible to claim is larger than the trust’s ability to compensate. All claimants receive significantly less than they would have if the company had not gone bankrupt. Therefore, a trust director told Confront that the trust wanted to limit “professional services” and non-claim-related costs as much as possible.

It was also suggested that lawyers would act as a medium and channel claimants towards the trust. This has happened in India, with Krishnendu Mukherjee arranging screenings to diagnose people with asbestos diseases. So far he has helped an estimated 5,000 people exposed to asbestos by subsidiaries previously owned by Turner & Newall.

However, this hasn’t happened in southern Africa. The result is that after 20 years of operations, the trust’s operational costs for 2024 of £315,000 surpasses the total compensation received by African claimants.

We approached the trust for comment with our findings and several questions. They issued a statement: “In 2006, the Administrators proposed a series of company voluntary arrangements and schemes of arrangement. These led to the establishment of the Asbestos Trusts.

“The conduct of the Trusts is governed by Trust Deeds and Trust Distribution Procedures (“TDPs”), which were approved by creditors in 2006. The objective of the Trusts, as set out in the TDPs, is to enable claimants with valid claims to receive payments.  There are limited funds available to pay claims, and the main T&N Fund is currently paying 24p for every £1 validly claimed.

“The TDPs set out what advertising the Trusts should undertake in the Law Society Gazette and national newspapers. The Trusts have been and continue to be conducted in accordance with the Trust Deeds and TDPs and any claims received, including from southern Africa, will be considered in accordance with the TDPs.”

Ongoing risks

Asbestos is no longer mined in Africa. Public awareness in the region of the risks of asbestos exposure can vary greatly. While asbestos has been banned in South Africa, production of some asbestos products continues in Zimbabwe.

Even where asbestos is no longer used, there remains a risk of people contracting diseases in years to come, as there is no upper time limit on developing diseases after asbestos exposure. Moreover, asbestos contamination from mines, waste, and degrading products poses an ongoing hazard in several communities.

 

To help people in South Africa who continue to fall sick from asbestos diseases, Tracey Wood founded Enviro Investigations. Enviro helps people navigate various routes to gain compensation.

Most of Wood’s claims relate to Cape, another British asbestos mining company that was active in South Africa. But she also receives enquiries from people who say they’ve contracted asbestos diseases from Turner & Newall’s mines. Some are ex-workers, others are people who were exposed to asbestos tailings the company left behind.

Wood says there are some significant practical challenges people can face in filing claims.

“Legal processes designed for wealthier jurisdictions are entirely out of reach for communities where daily survival takes precedence over pursuing claims against multinational corporations,” she told Confront. “For families surviving on less than £100 a month, access to justice is not simply difficult, it is impossible.”

“The costs of gathering medical evidence, securing legal representation, and navigating complex international trust funds can easily exceed what these families earn in a year.”

Wood also points out that language barriers and access to technology remain significant blockers for people too. The T&N Asbestos Trust website is only in English. Internet connectivity in rural southern Africa was minimal when the trust launched, and can still be patchy today.

“The result is that the very communities bearing the heaviest burden of Turner & Newall’s legacy: the contaminated land, the generational illness and the grief, are the least equipped to hold the company accountable for it,” she said.

“Justice, in any meaningful sense, remains a privilege they cannot afford.”

Additional reporting by Linda Mujuru, Nokukhanya Musi, and Tatenda Chitagu.

If you want to share your story about asbestos exposure, contact Confront at https://confrontpower.org/tips