Strands of Struggle: Dealing with Health Citizenship in the Aftermath of Asbestos Mining

Abstract

Asbestos mining is banned in many parts of the world, and promoted in others. This article examines the effects of asbestos mining in South Africa, 30 years after the mines closed. Focusing on mining communities, it explores the political struggles that the communities have engaged in to address environmental threats, rehabilitate land, and secure compensation for their ill-health. Drawing on the concept of ‘bio-citizenship’, and reviewing national policies introduced to protect South Africans against asbestos exposure, this article shows how different forms of compensation (for illness contracted during employment versus pollution and illness from residential proximity to asbestos mines) shape and inform degrees of belonging and of citizenship.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by UK Aid through the Future Health Systems Research Programme Consortium, and the Economic and Social Science Research Council (Grant numbers: RES-160-25-0037 and RES-588-28-0001). The author would like to thank all the people interviewed, the editors and peer reviewers for their time, insights and constructive inputs into the article.

Notes

¹ ‘Cobbing’ refers to breaking ore into small pieces and sorting the fibre quality by hand.

² N. Rose and C. Novas, ‘Biological Citizenship’, in A. Ong and S.J. Collier (eds), Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2004), pp. 439–63; A. Petryna, ‘Sarcophagus: Chernobyl in Historical Light’, Cultural Anthropology, 10, 2 (1995), pp. 196–220; A. Petryna, ‘Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations’, Osiris, 2,19 (February, 2004), pp. 250–65; A. Petryna, ‘Chernobyl’s Survivors: Paralysed by Fatalism or Overlooked by Science?’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 67, 2, (2011), pp. 30–37.

³ A. Petryna, Life Exposed: Biological Citizenship: Science and the Politics of Health After Chernobyl (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002); Rose and Novas, ‘Biological Citizenship’.

⁴ Petryna, Life Exposed, p. 6.

⁵ J. Biehl and A. Moran-Thomas, ‘Symptom: Subjectivities, Social Ills, Technologies’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 38 (2009), pp. 267–88.

⁶ J. Comaroff, ‘Beyond Bare Life: AIDS, (Bio)Politics and the Neoliberal Order’, Public Culture, 19 (2007), p. 204.

⁷ Cf. Petryna, Life Exposed; Rose and Novas, ‘Biological Citizenship’.

⁸ J. McCulloch, Asbestos Blues: Labour, Capital, Physicians and the State in South Africa (Oxford, James Currey, 2002).

⁹ Agamben argued that modern politics is distinctive because of its ability to not know any value except for that of life. Modern governments have the capacity both to enhance life and to destroy it, as demonstrated through processes of inclusion and exclusion. Life, Agamben explains, is both sacred and disposable. He illustrates this through the concept of homo sacer, a person who can be killed, yet whose life is simultaneously symbolic. Certain people are neither full political subjects nor beyond the realm of law; instead, their lives are ambiguously positioned between life and death. This is captured in Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’, life that is divorced from social and political rights, and is both the object of state enforcement and the subject of democratic projects. Bare life reflects a contradictory process manifest in modern politics, namely a simultaneous tendency to support human liberation and a predisposition to state fascism. Yet, as Comaroff, and Biehl and Moran-Thomas have pointed out, bare life is not an alienation from meaning, relationships and social attachments. G. Agamben, Homo Sacer, translated by D. Heller-Roazen (Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 1998); Comaroff, ‘Beyond Bare Life’; Biehl and Moran-Thomas, ‘Symptoms: Subjectivities’.

¹⁰ Petryna, ‘Sarcophagus’; Petryna, ‘Biological Citizenship’.

¹¹ Biehl and Moran-Thomas, ‘Symptoms, Subjectivities’, p. 269.

¹² I have undertaken anthropological fieldwork in the Northern Cape since 1988. This article is based primarily on work in Griquatown and Prieska, undertaken in the decade 2000–2010 (especially in May/June 2005, March 2006, January 2007 and January 2008). In addition to participant observation – attending claimants’ meetings with lawyers, political rallies, hanging out in the relevant offices and accompanying people on hospital or doctors’ appointments – I conducted open-ended interviews with more than 80 residents diagnosed with ARDs. I also interviewed politicians, members of parliament, trade unionists, government representatives, asbestos activists and members of the asbestos trusts. In June 2014, I had follow-up conversations by phone and/or email with many of these previously interviewed people. In these follow-up interviews, I sought to understand what had changed subsequent to the asbestos mobilisation in the 2000s and how this had, positively or otherwise, affected their lives.

¹³ Rose, ‘Biological Citizenship’.

¹⁴ R. Gordon, Mines, Masters and Migrants (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1977); D. Moodie, ‘Mine Culture and Miners’ Identity in a South African Gold Mine’, in B. Bozzoli (ed.), Town and Countryside in the Transvaal (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1983), pp. 176–97; T.D. Moodie, Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1994); A.H. Jeeves, Migrant Labour in South Africa’s Mining Economy: The Struggle for the Gold Mines’ Labour Supply 1890–1920 (Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985); N. Nattrass, ‘South African Gold Mining: The 1980s and Beyond’, in J. Crush and W. James (eds), Crossing Boundaries: Mine Migrancy in a Democratic South Africa (Cape Town, IDASA/IDRC, 1995); S.T. Phakathi, ‘Workplace Change and Frontline Supervision in Deep-Level Gold Mining: Managerial Rhetoric or Practice?’, Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 72/73 (2010), pp. 181–204.

¹⁵ F. Wilson, Labour in the South African Gold Mines, 1911–1969 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972); Crush and James (eds), Crossing Boundaries; J. Crush, A. Jeeves and D. Yudelman, South Africa’s Labour Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines (Oxford, Westview, 1991); M. Legassick, ‘The Analysis of Racism in South Africa: The Case of the Mining Economy’, paper presented to the International Seminar on Socio-Economic Trends and Policies in Southern Africa, Dar es Salaam, 1–8 December 1975.

¹⁶ R.M. Packard, White Plague, Black Labor: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1989); E. Katz, The White Death: Silicosis on the Witwatersrand Gold Mines, 1886–1910 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1995); J-P. Leger, ‘Occupational Diseases in South African Mines: A Neglected Epidemic?’, South African Medical Journal, 81, 4 (February 1992), pp. 197–201; S. Marks, ‘The Silent Scourge? Silicosis, Respiratory Disease and Gold-Mining in South Africa’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32 (2006), pp. 569–89; D. Rajak, ‘“HIV/AIDS Is Our Business”: The Moral Economy of Treatment in a Transnational Mining Company’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 16, 3 (2010), pp. 551–71; D. Rajak, ‘Expectations of Paternalism: Welfare, Corporate Responsibility and HIV at South Africa’s Mines’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 115, 1 (2015), pp. 33–59; Z. Phakathi, H. van Rooyen, K. Fritz and L. Richter, ‘The Influence of Antiretroviral Treatment on Willingness to Test: A Qualitative Study in Rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’, African Journal of AIDS Research, 10, 2 (2011), pp. 173–180; J. McCulloch, South Africa’s Gold Mines and the Politics of Silicosis (Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 2012).

¹⁷ V.L. Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa: The Techniques of Resistance 1871–1948, Vol. 1 (Keighley, The Moor Press, 2003); V.L. Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa: Dissent and Repression in the Compounds 1948–1982, Vol. 2 (Keighley, The Moor Press, 2003); D. O’Meara, ‘The 1946 African Mine Workers Strike and a Political Economy of South Africa’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 13, 2 (March 1975), pp. 146–70; P. Richardson and J.J. Van-Helten, ‘Labour in the South African Gold Mining Industry,1886–1914’, in S. Marks and R. Rathbone (eds), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870–1930 (London, Longman, 1982), pp. 77–98; K. von Holdt, ‘Institutionalisation, Strike Violence and Local Moral Orders’, Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 72/73 (2010), pp. 127–51.

¹⁸ R. Meeran, ‘Cape Plc: South African Mineworkers’ Quest for Justice’, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 9, 3 (2003), pp. 218–29; L. Waldman, ‘When Social Movements Bypass the Poor: Asbestos Pollution, International Litigation and Griqua Cultural Identity’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 4 (August 2007), pp. 577–600; McCulloch, Asbestos Blues; J. McCulloch, ‘Hiding a Pandemic: Dr. G.W.H. Schepers and the Politics of Silicosis in South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 35, 4 (November 2009), pp. 835–48.

¹⁹ S.L. Robins, From Revolution to Rights in South Africa: Social Movements, NGOs and Popular Politics after Apartheid (Rochester, James Currey, 2010); Comaroff, ‘Beyond Bare Life’; A. von Schnitzler, ‘Performing Dignity: Human Rights, Citizenship, and the Techno-Politics of Law in South Africa’, American Ethnologist, 41, 2 (2014). pp. 336–350.

²⁰ H. Hart, ‘Asbestos in South Africa’, Journal of the South African Institute of Minerals and Metallurgy, 88, 6 (1988), pp. 185–98; McCulloch, Asbestos Blues.

²¹ McCulloch, Asbestos Blues; R. Abratt, D.A. Vorobiof and N. White, ‘Asbestos and Mesothelioma in South Africa’, Lung Cancer, 45S, (2004), pp. S3–S6.

²² L. Braun, A. Green, M. Manseau, R. Singhal, S. Kisling and N. Jacobs , ‘Scientific Controversy and Asbestos: Making Disease Invisible’, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 9, 3 (2003), pp. 194–205.

²³ McCulloch, Asbestos Blues.

²⁴ N. Ndlovu, J. teWater Naude and J. Murray, ‘Compensation for Environmental Asbestos-Related Diseases in South Africa: A Neglected Issue’, Global Health Action, 6, S1 (January 2013), pp. 82–8.

²⁵ M.A. Felix, J-P Leger and R.I. Ehrlich, ‘Three Minerals, Three Epidemics – Asbestos Mining and Disease in South Africa’, in M.A. Melman and A. Upton (eds), The Identification and Control Of Environmental and Occupational Diseases; Asbestos and Cancers, Vol. XXIII, Advances in Modern Environmental Toxicology (Princeton, Scientific Publishing Co, 1994); McCulloch, Asbestos Blues; J. McCulloch, ‘Asbestos, Lies and the State: Occupational Disease and South African Science’, African Studies, 64, 2 (2005), pp. 201–16.

²⁶ McCulloch, Asbestos Blues; Meeran, ‘Cape Plc’; B. Gravelsons, W. Hawes, S. Jakubowski, A. Kent, J. Lowe (chair), A. Macnair, D. Michaels, A. Morton, D. Sanders, P. Towell, A. Whiting, J. Widdows and A. Williams, UK Asbestos – The Definitive Guide (UK Protection and Indemnity Insurance, 2004), available at http://www.ukpandi.com/knowledge/article/uk-asbestos-the-definitive-guide-1069/, retrieved 8 August 2016.

²⁷ S. Jasanoff, Science at the Bar (Harvard, Harvard University Press, 1995).

²⁸ McCulloch, Asbestos Blues; asbestos exposure to microscopic fibres can result in either ‘benign’ or serious diseases. ‘Benign’ diseases means people experience shortness of breath and discomfort, but not severe pain or disability. Serious ARDs include asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma (a malignant cancer). Asbestosis and lung cancer are linked to the degree of asbestos exposure, while mesothelioma is unrelated to dosage and can result from trivial exposure. Mesothelioma is fatal, leading to painful and imminent death. It is strongly correlated with blue and brown (Amosite) asbestos exposure. R. Abratt, N.W. White and D.A. Vorobiof, ‘Epidemiology of Mesothelioma – A South African Perspective’, Lung Cancer, 49, S1 (July 2005), pp. S13–S15. All forms of ARD have no cure. Diagnosis and distinction between the different kinds of disease are complicated and subject to considerable variation. There is an extended latency period and most people are diagnosed only 20–40 years after exposure. L. Waldman, The Politics of Asbestos: Understandings of Risk, Disease and Protest (London, Earthscan, 2011).

²⁹ N.J.Jacobs, Environment, Power and Injustice: A South African History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003).

³⁰ McCulloch, Asbestos Blues.

³¹ Abratt, ‘Asbestos and Mesothelioma in South Africa’.

³² ‘Msauli, Abandoned Town and Asbestos Mine’, Tracks 4 Africa, available at http://tracks4africa.co.za/listings/item/w169188/msauli-abandoned-town-and-asbestos-mine/, retrieved 12 June 2015.

³³ Abratt, ‘Asbestos and Mesothelioma in South Africa’; Ndlovu, teWater Naude and Murray, ‘Compensation’.

³⁴ McCulloch, Asbestos Blues; Ndlovu, teWater Naude and Murray, ‘Compensation’.

³⁵ NUM, Submission on Asbestos and Safety, 21 June 2007, Cape Town, made to the Chrysotile Joint Technical Task Force Team (CJTTFT), held in Cape Town, 20–21 June 2007. No page number.

³⁶ J. McCulloch and G. Tweedale, Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008).

³⁷ B. Gibson, ‘The Spirit of the Summit: A Brief Review of Everite’s New Technology Campaign’, unpublished presentation, 11 June 2007, p. 1.

³⁸ McCulloch, Asbestos Blues.

³⁹ For a detailed review of the CPAA and its asbestos-related activities, including its membership, funding models and campaigning, see Waldman, ‘When Social Movements Bypass the Poor’.

⁴⁰ McCulloch and Tweedale, Defending the Indefensible.

⁴¹ K. Cullinan, ‘Man Sues Asbestos Giant over Rare Cancer’, Health-e News Service, available at https://www.health-e.org.za/2002/01/30/man-sues-asbestos-giant-over-rare-cancer/, retrieved 8 August 2016.

⁴² L. Braun and S. Kisting, ‘Asbestos-Related Disease in South Africa: The Social Production of an Invisible Epidemic’, American Journal of Public Health, 96, 8 (August 2006), pp. 2–12.

⁴³ L. Kazan-Allen, Recent Developments Affecting European Asbestos Claims, International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (2002), available at www.ibasecretariat.org/lka_bahia_2_txt.php, retrieved 2 March 2015.

⁴⁴ Gibson, ‘The Spirit of the Summit’, p.7.

⁴⁵ Everite stopped asbestos production in 2002, in advance of the legal stipulation to do so.

⁴⁶ P. Saaiman, Department of Tourism, Environment and Conservation, budget speech address, 12 June 2008, available at http://www.polity.org.za/article/sa-saaiman-northern-cape-tourism-environment-and-conservation-prov-budget-vote-200809-12062008-2008-06-12, retrieved 8 August 2016.

⁴⁷ ‘Annual Report 2007/8’, Department of Minerals and Energy, Republic of South Africa.

⁴⁸ ‘SA Yearbook 2008/09’, Minerals, Energy and Geology, Department of Minerals and Energy, Republic of South Africa, available at http://www.gcis.gov.za/content/resource-centre/sa-info/yearbook/2008-09, retrieved 8 August 2016.

⁴⁹ N. Visagie, ‘Cabinet to Get Report on Pollution in N.Cape’, Diamond Fields Advertiser, 24 January 2008.

⁵⁰ Jones, cited in P. Smit, ‘Asbestos Banned, but Legacy Continues’, Engineering News, 30 October 2009. Available at http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/respiratory-asbestos-holds-significant-health-risks-2009-10-30, retrieved 6 January 2015.

⁵¹ These research results were presented to the Northern Cape Executive Council – which oversaw an inter-governmental committee bringing together the departments of health, environmental affairs, social services and local government. In Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West provinces, also heavily affected by asbestos mining and secondary pollution, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism co-ordinates the government’s asbestos response. J. Nel, ‘The Current Risk of Asbestos Exposure to the Citizens of the Prieska Area, Northern Cape Province in South Africa’, Masters’ dissertation, North-West University, 2006); P. Smit, ‘Asbestos Banned’.

⁵² Waldman, The Politics of Asbestos.

⁵³ D. Fassin, When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa (London, University of Califonia Press, 2007).

⁵⁴ Cf. Rose, ‘Biological Citizenship’; Petryna, Life Exposed.

⁵⁵ Petryna, Life Exposed.

⁵⁶ Cf. ibid.; Rose, ‘Biological Citizenship’.

⁵⁷ Including the departments of environmental affairs, health, social security and welfare, minerals and energy, water affairs, housing, labour and nature conservation.

⁵⁸ Cf. A. Cornwall, ‘New Democratic Spaces: The Politics and Dynamics of Institutionalised Participation’, IDS Bulletin, 35, 2 (2004), pp. 1–10.

⁵⁹ Cf. J. Gaventa, ‘Introduction: Exploring Citizenship, Participation and Accountability’, IDS Bulletin, 33, 2 (2002), pp. 1–11.

⁶⁰ J. teWater Naude, ‘The Story of the Asbestos Relief Trust – Part 1’, Occupational Health Southern Africa, 20, 1 (2014), pp. 4–6; D. Liebenberg-Weyers, ‘A Multidisciplinary Approach for the Assessment of Rehabilitation at Asbestos Mines in South Africa’, MSc dissertation, North-West University, 2010.

⁶¹ In 2007, a Rehabilitation Prioritisation Index (RPI) was created as a scientific, quantitative means to prioritise where rehabilitation should occur and to deal with the emotive dimensions of this pollution. The RPI documents 113 mines and 144 dumps, but in 2008, 84 had yet to be rehabilitated. Liebenberg-Weyers, ‘A Multidisciplinary Approach’; Nel, ‘The Current Risk of Asbestos Exposure’; L. van Rensburg, S. Claassens, J.J. Bezuidenhout, P.J. Jansen van Rensburg, ‘Rehabilitation of Asbestos Mining Waste: A Rehabilitation Priorisation Index (RPI) for South Africa’, Environmental Geology, 57, 2 (2009), pp. 267–73).

⁶² Waldman, ‘When Social Movements Bypass the Poor’, p. 1.

⁶³ Rose and Novas, ‘Biological Citizenship’.

⁶⁴ Waldman, ‘When Social Movements Bypass the Poor’.

⁶⁵ Cf. Rose and Novas, ‘Biological Citizenship’.

⁶⁶ Cf. Petryna, ‘Chernobyl’s Survivors’, p. 6.

⁶⁷ Possible reasons include: mislaid paperwork (either by the private doctors who submit the claim or by the MBOD); difficulties in contacting claimants; lack of agreement between the MBOD diagnosis and that sent in by the private doctor; challenges in determining next of kin and individuals’ rights to claim.

⁶⁸ During the late 1970s and early 1980s, asbestos compensation varied from R6,000 to R30,000, depending on an individual’s ‘race’, position held and employment duration. J. Myers, ‘The Social Context of Occupational Disease: Asbestos and South Africa’, International Journal of Health Services, 11, 2 (1981), pp. 227–45. In 2005, first degree compensation was still about R6,000 and ‘second degree pneumoconiosis’ in the region of R18,000. J. Roberts, The Hidden Epidemic Amongst Former Miners: Silicosis, Tuberculosis and the Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act in the Eastern Cape, South Africa (Durban, Health Systems Trust, 2009).

⁶⁹ In 2011, the Northern Cape’s official unemployment rate was 27.4 per cent (Statistics South Africa, 2012) and the poverty rate was 48.5 per cent. K. Pauw, ‘A Profile of the Northern Cape Province: Demographics, Poverty, Inequality and Unemployment’, Provide Project Background Paper Series, 1, 3 (2005), pp. 1–20.

⁷⁰ Working with Richard Spoor, a South African attorney, and Thompsons, UK-based attorneys.

⁷¹ Actual amounts to be paid for different ARDS were decided by the trustees.

⁷² This settlement excluded anyone compensated through Cape plc.

⁷³ The ART compensates for four categories of disease: ARD1 (lung impairment of 10–40 per cent); ARD2 (lung impairment greater than 40 per cent), ARD3 (asbestos-related lung cancer) and ARD4 (mesothelioma). MBOD payments must be deducted from any Trust-based award . On average, ART compensation is higher than MBOD payments, with ARD1 in the region of R40,000; ARD2 about R80,000, ARD3 R170,000 and ARD4 approximately R350,000. teWater Naude, ‘The Story of the Asbestos Relief Trust’.

⁷⁴ Asbestos Relief Trust, ‘A Ten-Year History 2003–2013’, (2013), available at http://www.asbestostrust.co.za/documents/Asbestos_Relief_Trust_History-final.pdf, retrieved 25 June 2015.

⁷⁵ Waldman, The Politics of Asbestos.

⁷⁶ Ndlovu, teWater Naude and Murray, ‘Compensation’.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ teWater Naude, ‘The Story of the Asbestos Relief Trust’.

⁷⁹ Ndlovu, teWater Naude and Murray, ‘Compensation’.

⁸⁰ Asbestos Relief Trust, ‘A Ten-Year History’; Ndlovu, teWater Naude and Murray, ‘Compensation’.

⁸¹ Petryna, ‘Chernobyl’s Survivors’.

⁸² von Schnitzler, ‘Performing Dignity’, p. 338.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ McCulloch, Asbestos Blues.

⁸⁵ Ndlovu, teWater Naude and Murray, ‘Compensation’, p. 83.

⁸⁶ S.J. Milne, E. Garton, G. Nelson, J. Murray, J.C.A. Davies and J.I. Phillips, ‘A South African Database of Samples Analysed for the Presence of Asbestos’, Occupational Health South Africa, 19, 6 (2013), pp. 14–21.

⁸⁷ Nel, ‘The Current Risk of Asbestos Exposure’; Liebenberg-Weyers, ‘A Multidisciplinary Approach’; G. Matsabatsa, ‘Post Closure Environmental Impacts of Asbestos Mining in Penge, Limpopo Province, South Africa’, MSc dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 2009; van Rensburg, ‘Rehabilitation of Asbestos Mining Waste’.

⁸⁸ Liebenberg-Weyers, ‘A Multidisciplinary Approach’, p.vii.

⁸⁹ Sixty per cent of Limpopo province’s rehabilitated sites had evidence of secondary pollution. Liebenberg-Weyers, ‘A Multidisciplinary Approach’.

⁹⁰ Nel, ‘The Current Risk of Asbestos Exposure’.

⁹¹ P. Otness, M. Feldwick and P.N. Di Marco, ‘Asbestos – Recent Developments and Implications for Health Policy’, in A. Langley, M. Gilbey and B. Kennedy (eds), Proceedings of the Fifth National Workshop on the Assessment of Site Contamination (Adelaide, National Environment Protection Council Service Corporation, 2003), p. 243.

⁹² Liebenberg-Weyers, ‘A Multidisciplinary Approach’.

⁹³ S. Meintjies, M. Hermanus, M. Scholes and M. Reichart, ‘The Future of Penge: Prospects for People and the Environment’, Project Report and Guidelines for the Asbestos Relief Trust, 2008.

⁹⁴ Ibid.

⁹⁵ D. Peters, ‘Land Hand-Over Celebration for the Koegas Community SA, 19 June 2008’, available at http://www.polity.org.za/article/sa-d-peters-land-handover-celebration-for-the-koegas-community-19062008-2008-06-19, retrieved 12 June 2015.

⁹⁶ Abratt, ‘Asbestos and Mesothelioma in South Africa’.

⁹⁷ Waldman, The Politics of Asbestos; teWater Naude, ‘The Story of the Asbestos Relief Trust’. In the event of mesothelioma, diagnostic challenges and the short duration of the disease make it unlikely that the disability grant will provide substantial support.

⁹⁸ Milne, ‘A South African Database’, p. 19; J. Phillips, K. Renton, J. Murray, E. Garton, B.E. Tylee and D. Rees, ‘Asbestos In and Around Soweto Dwellings with Asbestos Cement Roofs’, Occupational Health Southern Africa, 13, 6 (2007), pp. 3–7.

⁹⁹ Petryna, ‘Biological Citizenship’. p. 265.

¹⁰⁰ Asbestos Relief Trust, ‘A Ten-Year History’.

¹⁰¹ Rose, ‘Biological Citizenship’.

¹⁰² Von Schnitzler, ‘Performing dignity’, p. 338.