The mining industry needs to broaden its approach to health and safety by recognising that the conditions mineworkers experience in their homes and communities have a significant bearing on their safety performance at work.

This was the key message delivered at the Wits Mining Institute (WMI) breakfast dialogue Series 2, held in Johannesburg, on August 27, which examined the relationship between community environments and safety outcomes in mining.

Held under the theme, “Beyond the Fence: How Community Environments Shape Health and Safety Performance in Mining”, WMI director and adjunct professor Dr Pontsho Twala said the mining industry could no longer view workplace safety in isolation from the socioeconomic environments where mineworkers lived.

“Poor living conditions, limited access to services, transport challenges and family pressures are all factors that could influence a worker before they even arrive at a mine, and zero harm cannot only be about the workplace activity.

“Mental health, human rights, decent wages, education and awareness are also needed to form part of a broader safety framework,” Twala says.

During the dialogue, particular attention was given to the lived experiences of women in mining and the often-invisible risks that female workers carry from their homes and communities into the workplace.

Industry body Minerals Council South Africa safety and sustainable development deputy head Lerato Tsele noted that women remained a vulnerable group within the mining workforce.

She highlighted challenges ranging from personal protective equipment (PPE) designed historically for male workers to sexual harassment, inadequate facilities and the additional responsibilities many women carried outside of work.

“Women in mining are a vulnerable group in the workforce. We’ve made progress as the [mining] industry but we are still experiencing significant teething problems in meaningfully and safely incorporating women in the workplace,” Tsele said.

She added that meaningful inclusion required changes to workplace design, equipment, culture, supervision and facilities, while highlighting the impact of childcare, household responsibilities, caring for elderly relatives and financial pressures on women arriving at work already physically and emotionally fatigued.

Meanwhile, North-West University Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) programme leader and senior lecturer Dr Lucé Pretorius said mineworkers should be viewed as whole people moving continuously between their homes, communities and workplaces.

She used the example of a fictional female mineworker, Naledi, to illustrate how fatigue, stress, emotional strain and cognitive load could accumulate across these different environments.

“One recent study in South African mining said that 31% of employees reported moderate to severe psychological distress with women reporting higher [levels] than men. Numbers tell us what is wrong but they don’t necessarily tell us why,” Pretorius argued.

Additionally, she said that mining companies needed to combine downstream support, such as counselling, employee assistance programmes and financial and legal assistance, with upstream interventions such as addressing working conditions, shift design, fatigue management, PPE and workplace facilities.

Pretorius added that the mining industry also needed better evidence to identify psychosocial risks before they manifested in safety incidents.

Moreover, diversified mining and metals company South32 Africa external affairs senior manager Noleen Dube noted that safety culture could not be developed exclusively within the controlled environment of a mine.

She said mineworkers often came from communities where high-risk behaviour could become normalised through everyday experiences involving transport, road safety, security and other social pressures.

“How do we integrate both the community and workplace safety cultures? In order for us to improve the safety culture and the workplace that we all want in the long term, we need to embed a safety culture within the broader society,” she argued.

Dube added that mining companies had an opportunity to use their social investment programmes to strengthen safety cultures in surrounding communities and called for greater involvement by men in initiatives aimed at improving women's safety and addressing gender-based violence, arguing that sustainable change could not be left to women alone.

Multinational mining and metals processing group Sibanye-Stillwater Learning Design Hub unit manager Mabatho Gaula said South Africa’s mining industry should adopt a connected systems view of health, safety and wellbeing.

She argued that the operating environment, workforce, worker health and wellbeing, and the external environment should be considered as interconnected rather than as separate areas of responsibility.

Gaula also pointed to safety performance data, workforce demographics, health and wellbeing indicators and external factors such as transport, infrastructure, public services and municipal capacity as signals that could be considered together.

The objective, she said, should be to move from looking at isolated indicators towards understanding how different risks interact.

“When we improve an aggregate outcome, it does not mean that the critical risk has disappeared. This is why we need a broader response that is focused not only on critical risk identification but on learning, leadership and accountability,” Gaula said.

The discussion comes amid continued concern over mining fatalities and injuries, reinforcing calls for the industry to look beyond conventional safety controls.

Each of the speakers stressed that broadening the safety lens did not mean transferring responsibility for workplace safety away from mining companies, but rather meaningfully recognising the wider system in which mineworkers lived and worked.