Tshiamiso Trust passes R2.5bn in silicosis payouts to former miners

The Tshiamiso Trust, set up to compensate former gold miners who contracted silicosis or tuberculosis while working on South African mines, said on 9 February 2026 that it had disbursed R2.5 billion to eligible claimants since its establishment in December 2024. The milestone marks the halfway point of the trust's planned 12-year lifespan.

The trust was created to implement a landmark 2018 class-action settlement between six major gold producers, African Rainbow Minerals, Anglo American South Africa, AngloGold Ashanti, Harmony Gold, Sibanye-Stillwater and Gold Fields, and lawyers representing tens of thousands of current and former mineworkers. It covers workers employed on South African gold mines between 1965 and 2019, and extends its reach beyond South Africa's borders to claimants in Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, reflecting the region-wide labour migration that has long supplied workers to the Witwatersrand goldfields.

A mandate that runs to 2036

Tshiamiso Trust chief executive Dr Munyadziwa Kwinda said the halfway mark offered a chance "to reflect on our progress", while stressing that the trust's mandate "remains clear: to ensure that every eligible claimant receives what is due." Claim lodgements will remain open until December 2029, giving eligible former miners and, in the case of deceased claimants, their dependants years more to come forward.

Why silicosis compensation matters

Silicosis, an incurable lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust underground, has affected an estimated hundreds of thousands of current and former South African gold miners, many of them migrant labourers from across southern Africa who returned home with a disease that was, for decades, difficult to diagnose and even harder to claim compensation for. The 2018 settlement was one of the largest class actions in South African corporate history and was widely seen as a rare instance of accountability for an occupational health crisis with roots stretching back over a century of gold mining.

Persistent challenges

Despite the milestone, the trust has faced sustained criticism over the pace of payouts and the administrative burden of verifying claims from elderly former miners scattered across six countries, some of whom lack easy access to the medical facilities needed to confirm a diagnosis. Kwinda said the trust did not want any eligible person to miss out because of delays, a concern that would resurface later in 2026 as claim volumes surged ahead of the trust's long-term deadline.

Sources

• TimesLive: Silicosis settlement: R2.5bn disbursed by Tshiamiso Trust, 09 Feb 2026

Photo: Medical imaging showing lung damage consistent with silicosis, the occupational lung disease covered by the Tshiamiso Trust settlement. Yale Rosen from USA, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.