TRENDS AND CAUSES OF FATALITIES IN SOUTH-AFRICAN MINES

The trends and principal causes of occupational fatalities and disasters (defined as six or more fatalities in one incident) in the South African mining industry are analysed. A miner who spends twenty years working underground faces a one in thirty chance of dying in an occupational accident. The gold mine fatality rate has improved only 33% since 1945, whereas in the coal mines it has declined substantially. Fatality rates in the diamond mines remain at levels similar to those of the 1920s. In other mineral mines the rate has increased since the 1930s. The most important cause of fatalities are falls of ground. In gold mines, rockbursts increase the fatality rate to three times the average at depths below 3000 m. Disasters remain a significant contributor to total fatalities, more disasters having occurred in the 1980s than in any other decade this century. In comparison with the accident experience of the United States, New South Wales, West Germany, India and Britain, countries with substantial coal mining industries, the South African underground colliery fatality rate is worse by factors ranging from two to eight times. Recommendations to ameliorate the high rate of fatalities include publication of improved accident statistics; elucidation of the relationship between injury rates and depth; identification of high risk occupations; special attention to be paid to the poor improvements in fatality rate trends for gold, diamond and other mineral mines; the establishment of an independent (government) deep level mining research institute; and more thorough investigations into disasters and analyses of disaster trends.