Zachariah Mokhothu inside the home he shares with his mother in the South African township of Kutlwanong. In his 15-year mining career, he got injured and developed tuberculosis before his paralysis / credit: Ihsaan Haffejee / New Frame
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by New Frame.
Zachariah Mokhothu, 49, was excited when he got his first job in mining. He is the eldest son and was the only breadwinner. He never imagined that working underground would change his life. As he gets into the car to head home to Kutlwanong township outside Odendaalsrus in the Free State, pieces of his wheelchair keep falling off.
“Is there anyone who used to work in mining who has a scrap of a wheelchair like this?” he asks casually as he sits in the car.
According to Statistics South Africa, the mining industry generated Rand 527.5 billion ($36 billion USD) in sales in 2019, with 16 commodities ranked in the top 10 internationally. South Africa is currently ranked fifth in the world for mining’s contribution to GDP and in the top three globally in terms of production.
While the industry continues to thrive, there are plenty of men like Mokhothu who pay for its success. During his 15-year career in mining, he got injured and contracted tuberculosis (TB) before his paralysis.
Mokhothu says he was pushing a wheelbarrow at work when he realised that his left arm had gone numb and he couldn’t move it. He went to the site manager and asked for his medical aid documents so he could go to the doctor. He was told his documents were missing and that he possibly didn’t sign for medical aid. “It is impossible that I didn’t sign for my medical aid when I know that anything can happen underground. Mining is dangerous,” he says.
Mokhothu’s relationship with his employer, Redpath Mining, deteriorated from the moment he walked to the hospital after being denied a company car to take him. He was alone there and a few days after a stroke had caused the numbness in his arm, the rest of his body followed.
Former mineworker Zachariah Mokhothu / credit: Ihsaan Haffejee / New Frame
Trickery and Denial
His mother Regina Mokhothu says it was difficult when he couldn’t move at all. “We got no support from the mine, not even a check-up. Luckily Zacharia still had medical aid from his former employer, so he went to a couple of physiotherapy sessions before it expired.
“My heart breaks when I see his situation and how the mine has treated him. He was the only breadwinner when he was working. The family didn’t want for anything. I’ve become too old to work. I used to be a domestic worker in the city.”
A Redpath mining representative said Mokhothu wasn’t injured on duty and that he wasn’t an employee yet when he had the stroke. “If he was injured on duty, the process would be to complete forms, send them to [insurance company] Rand Mutual, observe how severe the situation is and pay accordingly. Rand Mutual makes that decision.”
Mokhothu says he was tricked into signing a voluntary termination agreement and that he has a document to this effect. He also has a letter from Rand Mutual notifying him about his payments towards medical aid.
Thabani Tsokodibane, 56, had worked in the mining industry for over 10 years. In 2010, he was diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis / credit: Ihsaan Haffejee / New Frame
Mining Fatalities
More than 11,000 mineworkers died in South Africa between 1984 and 2005, according to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy. The death toll from mining accidents was about 270 in 2003 and the department, Minerals Council South Africa and other industry stakeholders reached an agreement to reduce mining fatalities by 20 percent a year. There was an improvement from 2010 onwards, but fatalities have increased again in recent years.
Those who survive mining accidents, such as Thabani Tsokodibane, 56, tell of the lack of care and blatant disregard they experience at the hands of managers and employers when they are injured or fall ill. Tsokodibane had been working in the mining industry for more than a decade when he contracted TB at Harmony Gold’s Bambanani mine in Welkom in 2010.
He went to the clinic and was told he had drug-resistant TB. “I took my medicine every day. I was at the clinic daily for almost a year. At work, nobody said much to me or called to check. I thought everything was still in order. But when I went back to work, they said, ‘We have put somebody else in your shift, go home.’”
Disappointed and worried about providing for his wife and seven children, he applied for a job at another mine. But the human resources (HR) department told him in the final stages of the process that the mine could not employ him because his health tests had shown he was not fit to work underground. The TB had affected his lungs, leaving him with chronic breathing problems.
“My body has never been the same. I can build and do plumbing, which I used to do for extra income, but now I work slower because I just get weak,” says Tsokodibane. He says it is more difficult to breathe and he comes down with flu-like symptoms, including coughing every five minutes, that sometimes last for weeks. “I go to the clinic, get cough mixture and that’s all.”
Thabani Tsokodibane worked in a mine in Welkom in South Africa’s Free State / credit: Ihsaan Haffejee / New Frame
‘Some Sort of Justice’
Mokhothu and Tsokodibane hope to receive compensation from their respective former employers through the Tshiamiso Trust. They are hopeful that, after a long wait, they will get some sort of justice for the effects of mining on their bodies and would like more than monetary compensation.
Mokhothu says he is most frustrated with how his employer treated him. “I was tricked. After years, I got a letter from [medical insurance company] Discovery about the payments that were deducted from my salary, which means they hid my medical aid from me. I think it’s because they wanted to deny that I had the stroke at work. Mines are very good at denying responsibility. Even with TB, you will be asked if you have proof that you got it from work.
“I have a diploma in secretarial services from Standford college. I thought I could do admin at the mine and the HR person came and said he can give me light duty, I should just sign. But when I read the document, it was a voluntary termination agreement. I refused to sign and was very angry that they tried to trick me like that.”
Mokhothu wants to run his own business one day. He lives with his mother, apart from his wife and children who live in another township, because the roads in Kutlwanong are easier to navigate in a wheelchair; it doesn’t get stuck in the mud. He takes taxies to the hospital, to collect his grant or to submit documents at the Tshiamiso Trust offices and it is hard.
“I never wanted to be a miner. I wasn’t finding a job with my diploma and the opportunity came up. I regret being part of this industry where people see you get hurt in the line of duty, on their premises, and refuse to take responsibility. It’s as if I put myself in this wheelchair.”
Harmony Gold spokesperson Moeketsi Maloeli said: “All employees have a choice on whether to take medical aid or not. If they happen to fall sick without medical aid, there are health hubs with state-of-the-art equipment, some are even better than government hospitals. A miner can go there until they get well.”
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Grayzone.
Ilhan Omar was greeted with vigorous booing during a July 2 Minneapolis concert featuring Somali singer Suldaan Seeraar in Minneapolis. The booing was so profound and so sustained that it was impossible to mistake it for cheering, or all the thumbs down for thumbs up. It reportedly went on for ten minutes or more, punctuated with, “Get out!” and “Get the f*ck out of here!”
Ilhan smiled, gesturing at the crowd to tamp it down, as though the adulation was just too much. Her husband, Tim Mynett, stood at her side looking awkward and confused, then someone who seemed to be a concert manager gestured at the crowd more emphatically to tamp it down. Some say the booing went on even longer while Ilhan went through the process of presenting Suldaan Seeraar with some sort of award.
The singer shifted uneasily from one leg to another, seeming startled and unsure what to do, then reached out to gesture at the crowd, also asking them to tone down their gestures of disapproval. This seemed to be more than he had bargained for when he agreed to share the stage with the congresswoman.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was booed last night by thousands of the Minneapolis Somali community last night at a Somalia Independence Day celebration concert.
Seeraar is extremely popular in the Somali community and was playing to a packed house; he’s unaccustomed to boos. This was his first concert in North America and he’s likely unfamiliar with Ilhan’s record in the House and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights, where she serves as vice chair. (Karen Bass currently chairs the subcommittee, and vice chairs the National Endowment for Democracy, the regime change wing of the U.S. government, and is all but certain to become the next mayor of Los Angeles come November.)
Ilhan, an African immigrant and the only Black person on the subcommittee besides Bass, is a shoe-in to become chair if Democrats hold onto the house, unlikely as that may seem.
Many Africans shudder at the thought, however –– not only in Somalia, her country of origin, and the rest of the Horn of Africa, but also in the African Great Lakes Region and in diasporas from both regions.
When I organized a Twitter space discussion with Somali American activists on Ilhan’s record, I heard an outpouring of anger not only over her perceived neglect of her district, where violent crime is surging, but also over her role in the removal of Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and her support for a candidate affiliated with her personal clan. This was but one of examples of the congresswoman’s role in advancing U.S. meddling in the Horn of Africa.
Ilhan Omar Meets with Kagame and Tedros As They Plot Against Ethiopia
In Rwanda on a private visit, Congresswoman Mrs @IlhanMN stopped by our offices today, for a presentation of the Foundation and other programmes, initiated by Our Chairperson @FirstLadyRwanda. pic.twitter.com/HNQBffJDy1
David Himbara, a former economic advisor to Kagame, and Tom Zoellner, author of Rusesabagina’s biography, slammed Ilhan in a Minnesota Post op-ed, writing that her relationship with Kagame threatened “to throw her entire stance on the U.S. criminal justice system into a light of hypocrisy.”
On April 7 of this year, the congresswoman met with former TPLF Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to “discuss global health security challenges, including the status of the global COVID response, the global hunger crisis, and ways to improve digital technology to broaden healthcare access.”
Yesterday, we met with @DrTedros to discuss global health security challenges, including the status of the global COVID response, the global hunger crisis, and ways to improve digital technology to broaden healthcare access. pic.twitter.com/VfifvVrcSL
Tedros has relentlessly abused his global platform as Director of the World Health Organization, in violation of UN rules about political neutrality, to advocate for Tigray— home of the TPLF — as though it were the only Ethiopian region suffering the consequences of the war. He never mentions the immeasurable suffering caused by TPLF invasions of Amhara and Afar Regions, both of which I traveled through in April and May.
On several occasions, Ilhan has asked the State Department for “legal determinations” as to whether the Ethiopian government is guilty of atrocities. Meaning, in fact, illegal determinations, because the assumption she has advanced is that the U.S. has the right to rule that international crimes — most of all genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — have been committed and action must be taken, as in Libya and Syria. According to international law codified in the UN Charter, only the UN Security Council can do that.
On December 21, 2021, while questioning Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee, Ilhan requested an illegal “legal determination” regarding Ethiopian atrocities, called for an arms embargo on Ethiopia, which would make it unable to defend itself, and proposed a “carrot and stick approach” to bringing Somalia to heel.
Ilhan Omar Backs Cold War-Style Measure to Bully African Nations Into Submission
The House passed H.R. 7311 roughly two months after 17 African countries either voted to abstain or did not vote on a UN resolution condemning Russia for invading Ukraine, and Eritrea dared to vote no. The African states voting no comprised just over half of the 35 UN member nations that opposed the measure.
House Resolution 6600, a harshly punitive bill that would sanction Ethiopia and Eritrea, is now pending in the House Foreign Relations Committee. According to Ilhan’s constituents, she has not spoken out against it, although she did make a splash by voting against the embargo on Russian oil.
Why Was Ilhan Omar Booed at Suldaan Seeraar’s Minneapolis Concert?
This writer joined a July 6 Twitter space opened by Somali American community organizer Abdirahman Warsame; 294 Somali Americans and a few Somalis — despite the distant time zone — joined the space. Many of the Somali Americans participating were from Ilhan’s Minneapolis district, and some of the younger ones had attended the concert.
Abdirahman told me that activists with the #NoMore Global Movement for Solidarity in the Horn of Africa had planned to get a few front row seats at the Suldaan Seeraar concert to boo Ilhan and that once they started, it was like a match in a haystack.
Everyone in the Twitter space was furious because Ilhan did her best to help the U.S. displace President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo, whom they described as a decent, responsible, corruption-fighting anti-imperialist.
Farmaajo had joined Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in signing the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Cooperation Between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, which ended the long-running war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and promised a new day of regional cooperation between the three largest nations in the Horn of Africa. It said:
“Considering that the peoples of Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea share close ties of geography, history, culture and religion as well as common interests, the three countries shall build close political, economic, social, cultural and security ties. The three governments hereby establish a Joint High-Level Committee to coordinate their efforts in the framework of this Joint Declaration.”
That, however, was more peace and independence than the U.S. government could tolerate, as many on the Twitter space angrily confirmed. Now, with Farmaajo out of office, the alliance is considerably weakened. The peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea still stands, although the U.S.-backed TPLF keeps skirmishing with its troops on their common border, and Eritrea is helping Ethiopia in its civil war with the TPLF in Welkait.
Ilhan put an enormous effort into getting rid of Farmaajo in a parliamentary election, which many in this Twitter space said was actually clan-based and manipulated by bribery.
Last year, on December, she quote-tweeteda State Department threat to take action if Somalia did not hold elections immediately, stating: “Farmaajo is a year past his mandate. It’s time for him to step aside, and for long overdue elections to proceed as soon as possible.” Her comment was widely republished to make the case against Farmaajo in the U.S. press.
Farmaajo is a year past his mandate. It's time for him to step aside, and for long overdue elections to proceed as soon as possible. https://t.co/f08bSjOJrm
Both the president and the parliament were at that time in office past their constitutional terms. That made Farmaajo interim president, but the states of Puntland and Jubaland refused to recognize his authority. Elections had been repeatedly planned but postponed due to disagreements between parties and lack of election infrastructure. In addition, the Islamist Al-Shabaab was continuing to oppose the existence of a secular Somali state, and the U.S. was still bombing on occasion.
According to those in the Twitter space, Farmaajo had been fighting to establish a direct, one-person-one-vote electoral process to replace the corrupt system of parliamentary election. They said he would have won in a landslide had he succeeded.
As soon as Farmaajo was defeated on May 15 — even before the formal transfer of power — Biden announced a plan to reintroduce troops to Somalia. The New York Times reported the news without raising an eyebrow, but the fury expressed in the 194 reader comments was palpable.
Most commenters were Americans outraged that the U.S. would be introducing more troops anywhere after the Afghanistan debacle, but they also included this response by a Somali American (edited very slightly for punctuation and grammar):
Somalia’s federal government just re-elected former president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud less than 48 hrs ago.
The former president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, who was previously a U.S. citizen and resident of Buffalo, NY, has lost the election due to parliamentary bribery, corruption, and foreign nations’ interfering, spending millions of dollars to overthrow Farmaajo. Those nations included Kenya, U.A.E., & others.
It’s not surprising news to witness the Biden administration seeking to have U.S. military presence in Somalia, since Hassan Sheikh’s election because President Farmaajo would’ve opposed it. Furthermore, this move will only increase security risks and destabilize the Horn of Africa. Sending U.S. military troops now to Somalia is unnecessary, and those troops will be viewed as enemies to the nation and its serenity.
The Somalia army has been fighting Al-Shabaab and all terrorist activities within the region. The army are well trained by the U.S., Turkey, Eritrea, and so on, but the Somalia government is faced with an arms embargo which limits its abilities and its operations. If President Biden wanted to offer solutions or a hand, then the approach would’ve been totally different than resending American troops back into a hostile situation. Former U.S. President Trump’s hands-off position in foreign affairs was exceptionally appreciated.
Also as soon as Farmaajo was gone, and even before the formal transition of power, an oil and gas extraction contract with a U.S. corporation that Farmaajo had blocked was back in play.
The July 6 Twitter space on the booing of Ilhan Omar contained similarly angry commentary by Somali Americans about her imperialist foreign policy positions. After the discussion, several participants sent over the following pointed statements:
Deeqa, @Deeqa_lulu
I am a Somali woman and I think I would have obtained my rights and my future would have been better in Somalia if I had the opportunity to vote for President Farmaajo, but we didn’t have the one-person-one-vote system that he was trying to put in place. Ilhan Omar is originally from Somalia and she has a daughter my age who can vote for her own president in America. She says she believes in democratic principles and she’s a member of the Democratic Party, but she didn’t support a very important right for me, the right to vote in a one-person-one-vote election.
Is this about the Democratic Party or about U.S. foreign policy toward Somalia? Either way, I feel bad and frustrated that she hasn’t changed that. Why would I expect Joe Biden to understand my problem if Ilhan Omar doesn’t? I contacted my family in America and told them not to give their votes to the Democratic Party or to Ilhan. Our 2022 election here in Somalia was eye opener for us about the Democratic Party policy toward Somalia.
We want to vote here in Somalia. That’s one of my biggest dreams now. –Deeqa
Mohammed Caanogeel, @MCaanogeel1
Ilhan Omar is being used by the Democratic Party, whose foreign policy has been aggressive and counterproductive towards Somalia.
She got booed at the concert for two reasons:
Domestically, she promised the East African community help with gun violence and drugs in our community and she hasn’t helped us with that at all.
Internationally, she undermined our sitting Somali president, President Farmaajo, by tweeting and making speeches that he was no longer the president of Somalia even though the constitution of Somalia gave him legitimacy to continue until another president took over. She was helping the U.S. government undermine this president who had captured the hearts and minds of all Somali people.
Farmaajo enjoyed 90% popularity for good governance. This president introduced reforms into the economy to win debt relief from the IMF and World Bank, but Ilhan voted against debt relief here in the United States.
Farmaajo asked the U.S. to lift the arms embargo so that our army could fight the Al-Shabaab fundamentalists, but Ilhan refused to vote for that.
President Farmaajo was loved for his stability, transparency, and fairness. He made us proud by building the military and making our intelligence one of the top 10 in Africa. He built institutions back after 30 years of war, invited foreign embassies into Somalia, and established embassies abroad.
He became such a role model president that the Somali people bought him a home, library, and offices for future campaigns. Even poor people loved Farmaajo so much that they gave to this fund drive for him.
Ilhan joined U.S. policymakers in rejecting all his good deeds, rejecting what the Somali people wanted, rejecting one-man-one-vote, and instead threatened to cut off aid. She and the rest of the U.S. government seek only the worst for Somalia. As we write to each other, the U.S. military has overtaken Berbera Airport and brought a warship to Berbera shores. -Mohammed Caanogeel
Ilhan Ignores the Boos in a Safe Blue District
After the booing episode, Fox gleefully hosted Ilhan Omar’s Republican challenger Cecily Davis to mouth meaningless platitudes about how her opponent is “out of touch with her constituents,” claiming “they are ready for change and are seeking someone who represents their conservative values.”
Davis appeared to be completely ignorant about why an audience of Somali Americans might boo their Somali American representative. The same was true of other right-wing outlets who framed the booing as confirmation that Ilhan’s woke identity offends her own community and that their candidate was therefore a serious contender.
Shukri Abdirahman, a conservative Republican who previously ran to unseat Ilhan, also highlighted the congresswoman’s “woke” positions on social issues as a source of local resentment, but also made sure to point to Ilhan “becoming an election-meddling dictator in the foreign affairs of Somalia – a sovereign nation.”
🧵 Understanding The Booing
Ilhan Omar getting booed and being told to get the f*ck out by our Somali community is not just a revolt against Ilhan selling her soul to the devil and becoming an election-meddling dictator in the foreign affairs of Somalia – a sovereign nation. 1/3
— Shukri Abdirahman (@ShuForCongress) July 5, 2022
Abdirahman Warsame (no relation to Shukri) told me that some culturally conservative Somalis had told him they were uncomfortable with Ilhan’s defense of abortion and LGBT rights, but no one expressed that discomfort in the Twitter space.
Minnesota’s 5th District is the bluest in the state, so the incumbent merely has to win the August primary to win the election, and she is expected to, though perhaps not by the margin she’d like. However, the House is all but certainly turning red, so the next chair and vice chair of the House Foreign Relations Subcommittee will in all likelihood be someone other than Ilhan Omar.
Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace through her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. She can be reached on Twitter @AnnGarrison and at ann(at)anngarrison(dot)com.
Editor’s Note: This interview originally appeared in People’s Dispatch.
Last month, Uganda paid the first installment ($65 million) of $325 million in reparations to the Democratic Republic of the Congo following an order from the International Court of Justice. This is for the crimes committed by Uganda during its occupation of the Congo in the 1990s. While this was a positive first step, there is a long way to go before justice is achieved. A key aspect is bringing Rwanda to justice for its crimes.
Kambale Musavuli of the Centre for Research in the Congo talks about this process of justice, the crimes of Rwanda and Uganda, and the responsibility of their partners such as the United States and United Kingdom.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—An event held June 5 at the Institute for Policy Studies aimed to raise awareness and foster discussions around a new book, Survivors Uncensored: 100+ Testimonies of Resilience and Humanity, co-authored by Rwandan genocide survivors Claude Gatebuke and Delphine Yandemutso.
Not only does Survivors Uncensored bring together testimonies from survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, it documents pre- and post-genocide atrocities, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The co-authors expressed the need for healing, reconciliation, accountability and peace promotion. Additionally, they shed light on the role of the United States and the West in atrocities currently occurring in the DRC, spanning from 1996 to today.
Panelists from left: Delphine Yandamutso and Claude Gatebuke. Moderator Steven Nabieu Rogers in the center / credit: Julie Varughese
Panelists included:
Delphine Yandamutso, Rwanda Accountability Initiative and co-author Survivors Uncensored
Claude Gatebuke, African Great Lakes Action Network and co-author Survivors Uncensored
Salome Ayuak, Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team
Dismas Kitenge, special guest live from Kisangani province, DRC
Steven Nabieu Rogers of Africa Faith and Justice Network moderated the discussion. IPS Director Tope Folarin welcomed the guests.
The co-sponsors of the event included Advocacy Network for Africa, Africa Faith & Justice Network, African Great Lakes Action Network, Africa World Now Project, Black Alliance for Peace, Friends of the Congo, and Institute for Policy Studies.
