TSHIAMISO TRUST MOVES TO STRIP THOUSANDS OF SICK AND DYING MINERS OF THEIR ONLY ROUTE TO COMPENSATION

PRESS STATEMENT — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

16 April 2026

No embargo — for immediate use

TSHIAMISO TRUST MOVES TO STRIP THOUSANDS

OF SICK AND DYING MINERS OF THEIR ONLY

ROUTE TO COMPENSATION

Justice for Miners demands the Master of the South Gauteng High Court reject

Amendment No. 9 to the Tshiamiso Trust Deed — and calls on the whole of SADC to

intervene on behalf of its citizens

JOHANNESBURG — Thousands of former gold mineworkers — many of them elderly,

gravely ill, or already dead — face being cut off from the only compensation they were

ever promised, after the trustees of the Tshiamiso Trust quietly resolved to strip a critical

category of medical certificates of their legal standing. Justice for Miners (JFM), the

campaign organisation representing these miners and their dependants, today declared

the proposed change unlawful, immoral, and a betrayal of the very purpose for which the

Trust was created.

The Tshiamiso Trust was established by South Africa's gold mining industry as a legal

settlement to compensate mineworkers who contracted silicosis or tuberculosis as a

direct result of working underground in the country's gold mines. Its beneficiaries are

among the most vulnerable people in Southern Africa — men who gave their lungs, and

in many cases their lives, to an industry that generated enormous wealth while

destroying their health. Many are Basotho citizens who migrated to work on the mines

and returned home with occupational diseases and little else.

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THE ATTACK ON ODMWA CERTIFICATES

At the heart of the dispute is Amendment No. 9 to the Tshiamiso Trust Deed. The

amendment, which the trustees have resolved to adopt and which requires approval

from the Master of the South Gauteng High Court to take effect, would remove the right

of claimants to rely on ODMWA certificates — officially known as Occupational Diseases

in Mines and Works Act certificates, issued by the Medical Bureau for Occupational

Diseases (MBOD) — as valid grounds for a compensation claim.

These are not informal documents. They are statutory certificates issued by the South

African government that formally certify the presence of silicosis or tuberculosis in a

miner. For decades, an MBOD certificate was legally sufficient to have a miner declared

unfit for work and retrenched — often returned to the SADC labour sending areas of the

gold mines with no income and a disease in his lungs. Under the proposed amendment,

that same certificate would no longer be sufficient to secure the compensation he was

owed.

"How can an MBOD certificate be good enough to end a man's livelihood — to send him

home to die — but not good enough to pay him what he is owed?" said Bishop Jo Seoka,

Chairperson of Justice for Miners. "This is not an administrative adjustment. It is a

profound injustice dressed up as a procedural change."

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THE HUMAN COST: LIVING CLAIMANTS

For the miners who are still alive, Amendment No. 9 does not merely change a

procedure. It constructs a wall. Where an ODMWA certificate once served as sufficient,

lawful proof of disease and entitlement, the amendment would force every living

claimant to submit to a new Benefit Medical Examination (BME) — requiring them to

travel, often over long distances, to designated examination centres. For men who are

elderly, seriously ill, and in many cases living in remote villages in South Africa, Lesotho,

Botswana, Malawi, Eswatini, Zimbabwe or Mozambique, this severely compromises

their access to compensation.

The burden does not end there. Experience has shown that BMEs, when conducted

under the Trust's own framework, have repeatedly produced findings which result in

lower awards paid out than what their ODMWA certificates already certify. In other

words, a miner who has been officially certified by the state as having, for example,

second-degree silicosis may, after a new BME, be reclassified downward and paid less

than he is legally owed. The ODMWA certificate is not merely being made redundant, for

living claimants, it is being replaced with a process that has demonstrably been used to

undervalue their suffering.

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THE HUMAN COST: WIDOWS AND DEPENDANTS OF DECEASED MINERS

For the dependants of miners who have already died, the situation is, if anything, even

more catastrophic. A dead man cannot undergo a Benefit Medical Examination. He

cannot present himself at a clinic or answer a call centre's questions. The ODMWA

certificate issued in his name is, in many cases, the only credible evidence that survives

him — evidence that he was examined, certified, and found to have a qualifying disease.

It is the document on which his widow's entire claim depends.

Remove that certificate from the equation, and widows and dependants are left to

reconstruct a medical history from scratch. They are expected to produce a constellation

of documents — unabridged death certificates, mine medical records, employment

histories — that are near impossible to find by people with scarce resources. In addition,

poor record keeping by mines and hospitals have created a situation where these

documents simply do not exist. Death certificates alone are routinely rejected by the

Trust if they do not conform to its specific requirements.

With one amendment, the trustees would sweep away the one document that gave these

women and their families a fighting chance. The ODMWA certificate was never a

loophole. It was the floor. Amendment No. 9 removes that floor entirely, and the people

who fall are the most vulnerable — older women, children of dead miners, families who

have already waited years for justice and who now face the very real prospect of receiving

nothing at all.

The result, if Amendment No. 9 is allowed to stand, is not a procedural adjustment. It is

the quiet mass exclusion of thousands of legitimate claimants from a compensation

scheme that was established specifically for them.

THE LEGAL POSITION

JFM's position is that the proposed amendment is unlawful on its face. The Trust Deed

currently and expressly recognises ODMWA certificates as a valid and operative

mechanism for claims processing across multiple clauses. Section 20.2 of the Trust Deed

explicitly prohibits any amendment that adversely affects the rights of eligible claimants

— which is precisely what Amendment No. 9 does.

JFM has this week written to Ms Beatrice Desiree van Wyk, Master of the South Gauteng

High Court in Johannesburg, requesting that she exercise her supervisory jurisdiction

under the Trust Property Control Act 57 of 1988 to reject Amendment No. 9, call the

trustees to account, and if appropriate investigate potential maladministration of the

Trust.

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A CALL TO THE GOVERNMENTS OF SOUTH AFRICA, LESOTHO,

BOTSWANA, MOZAMBIQUE, MALAWI AND ESWATINI

In a separate but related letters, JFM has formally appealed to the Ministers of Health,

Mining, compensation authorities and provincial governments in South Africa and

Lesotho and Botswana to write to the Master of the High Court and request that

Amendment No. 9 be rejected. A substantial proportion of the Trust's beneficiaries are

citizens from the Eastern Cape, Free State, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and

Eswatini and these governments have both a moral obligation and a direct interest in

ensuring they receive the compensation they are owed.

JFM has requested in-person meetings with government officials in these countries to

present its case and to coordinate a joint intervention before the Master makes any

decision on the amendment.

"The Tshiamiso Trust was established to make right a profound historical

injustice. The men who built South Africa's gold mining industry with

their bodies deserve the compensation they were promised — not new

bureaucratic obstacles designed to frustrate their claims. Justice for

Miners will not stand by and watch that promise be broken."

— Bishop Jo Seoka, Chairperson, Justice for Miners Campaign

ABOUT JUSTICE FOR MINERS

Justice for Miners Campaign NPC (Reg. 2022/345271/08 | NPO: 273-494 | PBO:

930078429) is a South African non-profit organisation representing mineworkers and

their dependants who are beneficiaries of the Tshiamiso Trust. Its board includes Bishop

Jo Seoka (Chairperson), Ziyanda Manjati, Booi Mohapi, Sinegugu Zukulu, and Catherine

Meyburgh.

MEDIA ENQUIRIES

Catherine Meyburgh – JFM advocacy

jfmadvocacy@justiceforminers.org

Web: www.justiceforminers.org

— END OF PRESS STATEMENT —

Editors are invited to contact JFM directly for interviews, background briefings, or supporting documentation.

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