David Goldblatt (born 1930)

Blue asbestos on the tailings dump of the Owendale Asbestos Mine, Northern Cape. 26 October 2002

Tailings dump after reclamation, Owendale Asbestos Mine, Northern Cape. 24 December 2007

Part of the series of photographs donated by Goldblatt to complement the exhibition held at the Adler Museum of Medicine entitled: Asbestos: wonder fibre ? serial killer

"An asbestos fibre the diameter of a human hair is actually a cluster of two million individual fibres which could fit onto the head of a pin. If inhaled, minute fibrils can work their way deep into the lungs, where they cause asbestosis, lung cancer or mesothelioma, an otherwise unknown cancer of the lining of the lung or the abdominal cavity". All of the three principal types of asbestos, white, brown and blue are carcinogenic, blue being the most deadly. Mesothelioma is invariably fatal and associated with the inhalation of asbestos fibre, usually blue asbestos. Even the most trivial exposure might result in mesothelioma, which can be latent in the body for forty or more years. Once the cancer becomes active, death follows inexorably within about twelve months.

After witnessing the excruciatingly painful death of a friend who contracted mesothelioma I did some exploring of the aftermath of the mining of blue asbestos in Australia and South Africa. These are some of the photographs that resulted. In this introduction I briefly review a few of the factors at work in that aftermath.

Blue asbestos was mined at Wittenoom in Western Australia and in the Northern Cape and North-West Province of South Africa. Circumstances and production methods differed significantly in the two places, but there were two major factors common to the aftermath in both.

The first is that the companies that mined asbestos in Western Australia and in South Africa were utterly contemptuous of the health of those who took the material out of the ground, those who milled, packed and transported it, those who lived anywhere near these operations, and of the land from which they took it. Long after the connections between asbestos and its related diseases were established, some as early as the 1920s, they continued their old methods of production and handling with hardly any change. Furthermore, they kept their workforces in ignorance of the dangers to which they were exposed and they suppressed research that harmed their own interests. When they had either worked out the ore or lost their markets because the world got wise to asbestos, they simply ceased operations and walked away, leaving suffering and death and vast quantities of lethal asbestos tailings and spillage to blow in the wind.

The governments of the day were the other factor. Partly from inertia, partly for political and strategic reasons, the governments of Western Australia and South Africa were neither diligent in applying available knowledge to making asbestos mining safer, nor energetic in enforcing such regulations as they had. Indeed they were complicit in the perpetuation of conditions highly inimical to health and life in the mining of asbestos.

In Western Australia (WA) blue asbestos was mined between 1938 and 1964 in gorges of the Hammersley Range outside the town of Wittenoom in the remote north of the State. About 3% of the world's output came from there. ?Although production levels were modest, Wittenoom has become the site of Australia's worst occupational health disaster. "The epidemic" (of mesothelioma) is not expected to peak until 2023, when most of the 8 000 children who lived at the mine reach their later years.? In claims against them the owners have thus far paid out A$500 million in damages in Australia and A$100 million in the USA.

The government of WA has not escaped legal liability for its negligence at Wittenoom. To pre-empt further claims as much as from a belated display of a duty of care, the government has wiped Wittenoom off the map. All public buildings and many houses have been bulldozed and their rubble buried in an attempt to rid the town of asbestos tailings that had been used in its construction and paving, and all government services, including policing, power and water, have been stopped. All but eight residents have left. However, there is an immense quantity of blue asbestos tailings in the gorges which neither the State nor the company is willing to deal with. It is a slow-release potential for death in centuries to come.

The other 97% of the world output of blue asbestos came from South Africa where it was mined from the 1890s until the 1990s, in a 450 kilometre belt along the Asbestos Mountains and the Kuruman Hills, from Prieska on the Orange River to Pomfret just south of the Botswana border. The number of victims of asbestos related diseases and the extent of environmental damage were vastly greater than those in Australia, not simply because mining had gone on for so much longer and with far greater output, but because production methods differed.

For many years much of the mining in South Africa was by individuals working small claims on tribute to mine owners. It was common then for men to do the mining and for women to do the cobbing, sitting at the opening of the working with their babies on their backs or playing nearby. Children often sorted the fibres. Whole families were thus in intimate contact with the material. After World War II, with a substantial increase in demand, blue asbestos was mined more intensively, on a much larger scale. But the companies continued for a time to use women and even teenage children in their surface operations.

Sickness was endemic and when workers became ill they were simply dismissed. In that remote region with few job opportunities, there were many hands willing to take their places. Workers were not unionised. Enforcement of safety and labour regulations was desultory and intermittent. The milling and bagging of fibres resulted in places like Prieska being enveloped in a miasma of blue dust. Transportation of ore from workings to mills led to widespread spillage of fibres on roads and in villages. Tailings were left where they were dumped with no attempt made to bury or cover them and were extensively used as building material. It will take years and a great deal of taxpayers? money to make the asbestos belt safe.

No one will ever know the extent of the carnage resulting from the mining of blue asbestos in South Africa, nor that of the deaths latent in people still living and others not yet born. They probably number in tens of thousands. We have less than good cause to be Proudly South African about a disaster that need not have been.? David Goldblatt July 2008

Born in Randfontein in 1930. ?After matriculation at Krugersdorp High in 1948, I attempted to become a magazine photographer, a field then almost unknown in South Africa. I failed and went to work for my father who had established a men?s outfitting store in Randfontein. While working in the shop I took a BComm degree at Wits and maintained my interest in photography.

My father died in 1962. I sold the business in 1963 and decided to become a photographer. Gradually I built up a professional practice mainly in the field of photo-journalism, specialising in work outside the studio photographing for magazines, corporations, advertising agencies and institutions. At the same time I worked on personal projects consisting of a series of critical explorations of South African society, a number of which have been exhibited and published in book form.

Recognising the need for a facility to teach visual literacy and photographic skills, particularly to township people, I founded the Market Photo Workshop in 1989.

I regard myself as an unlicenced, self-appointed observer and critic of South African society which I continue to explore with the camera.

Goldblatt has received many prizes and awards, including Camera Austria Prize 1995, Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town 2001, Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography 2006, Honorary Doctorate of Literature, University of the Witwatersrand 2008. His work is represented in numerous public and private collection in South Africa and abroad.

Other photographs by David Goldblatt in the collection:

In the contaminated water of an old mine shaft at the Pomfret Asbestos Mine, Fernando Augusto Luta washes his clothes, while Augusto Mokinda, Ze Jono and Ze Ndala, stop swimming to pose for a photograph. North-West Province, 25 December 2002.

The remains of the mill at the Pomfret Asbestos Mine. Commissioned in 1978 the mill ceased operation when the mine closed in 1986. 20 December 2002.

A meeting of the Asbestos Interest Group at the Moffat Mission, Kuruman, Northern Cape. 17 December 2002.

The Asbestos Mountains and a covered tailings dump of the Cape Blue Asbestos Mine at Koegas, Northern Cape. 1 February 2004.

At the entrance to Wittenoom, Western Australia. August 1999.

In Wittenoom cemetery, Western Australia. August 1999.

Blue asbestos tailings in a creek at the Colonial Mine, Wittenoom, Western Australia. August 1999.

Ben Thorpe, former miner, 64 years old, suffering from mesothelioma. Kuruman. 21 December 2002.

Boesman Kgololo who drove a truck for Gefco and was awarded a certificate for ?15 years? loyal service?. 18 December 2002.

Piet Berry and Sannie Pl tjes, Marydale, Northern Cape. 19 September 2002.

Johanna Phillipus at home with her son, Marydale, Northern Cape. 19 September 2002.

Herman Kabari, 47 years old, suffering from a lung cancer as well as mesothelioma. Kuruman. 18 December 2002.