South Africa – Justice for Miners is another post-apartheid Frontier
A Catholic leader in South Africa, a country where mineral wealth long has been an economic mainstay, says that today the Church in his country often encounters “the suffering face of Christ in sick mine workers.” Former coal mine workers in the country have been suffering from lung diseases, and the Catholic Church has stepped in to help them find legal redress by assisting them in filing a lawsuit seeking compensation.
In an exclusive interview with Crux, Father Stan Muyebe, Director of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Southern Africa Bishops’ Conference, says it is the Church’s business to accompany the sick miners “in their cries for justice.”
The following are excerpts of that interview.
Crux: Why is it the business of the church to be doing this?
Muyebe: South Africa still remains a country which is yet to heal from its enduring and painful legacy of apartheid. What the Church is doing in the case of the sick miners is one of her contributions to the healing of the country from this painful legacy.
During apartheid, the mining economy was built around massive and systemic exploitation of Black labor. Multinational corporations operating in the mining sector managed to create immense wealth, but undertook this while prioritizing wealth creation at the expense of the health of the working poor. As a result, by 1994, the mining sector had generated thousands and thousands of ex-mine workers who are suffering from lung diseases. Some experts have called this “an epidemic of lung disease among ex-mine workers.”
It is against this background of apartheid legacy and the epidemic of lung disease among ex-miner workers that the Church in South Africa has been challenged to become a Samaritan Church, hearing the cries of the sick ex-miners, and seeing the suffering face of Christ in and through the One who once said to us, “I was sick and you visited me.” Read more ….
Source : Cruxnow.com
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