Silicosis Lawsuit in South Africa: Payouts, Filing, and Deadline

The silicosis lawsuit in South Africa is a class action brought by tens of thousands of current and former gold mineworkers who contracted silicosis or work-related tuberculosis from silica dust exposure underground. It ended in a 2018 settlement worth at least R5 billion with six major gold mining companies, and that settlement created the Tshiamiso Trust to pay lump-sum compensation to eligible miners and their dependants across southern Africa.¹² Claims can still be filed until December 2029. As of 15 June 2026, the Trust had paid R2.68 billion to 27,571 claimants.³

What the Lawsuit Was About

Gold in South Africa sits inside quartz that contains high concentrations of silica. Blasting and drilling that quartz releases fine crystalline silica dust, and inhaling it over years causes silicosis, an irreversible scarring of the lungs that also sharply raises the risk of tuberculosis.⁴

The class action, Nkala and Others v Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited and Others, was certified by the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Johannesburg on 13 May 2016. The court approved two classes, one for silicosis and one for tuberculosis, and ruled that claims for general damages could pass to the estate of a deceased miner so that dependants would still benefit.⁵

On 3 May 2018, six of the companies settled. The Gauteng Local Division of the High Court approved the settlement on 26 July 2019, a ninety-day opt-out period ran until 24 November 2019, and the settlement became effective on 10 December 2019.⁶⁷ The settlement set up the Tshiamiso Trust (“to make right” in Setswana) to identify eligible claimants and pay them. Two other companies, DRDGold and East Rand Proprietary Mines, did not join the settlement and remain parties to ongoing class action litigation.⁸

Who Can Claim

To claim from the Tshiamiso Trust, you (or the deceased miner you are claiming for) must have performed “risk work” involving exposure to harmful dust at a qualifying gold mine owned or managed by one of the six founding companies between 12 March 1965 and 10 December 2019.³ The six founding companies are:

African Rainbow Minerals
Anglo American South Africa
AngloGold Ashanti
Gold Fields
Harmony Gold
Sibanye-Stillwater²

The settlement covers two diseases only: silicosis and work-related tuberculosis.⁹ Dependants of deceased miners who meet the criteria can also claim. The Trust operates in six countries: South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.¹⁰

The claim filing deadline is December 2029.¹¹

How Much the Trust Pays

Benefits are lump-sum, once-off payments and come on top of anything you may receive under the government’s Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act (ODMWA). There are 12 compensation classes and the amounts adjust annually for inflation. Based on early 2023 figures, gross benefit amounts ranged from about R10,699 to R534,930 depending on disease severity and whether the claimant is a living miner or a dependant.¹²

In broad terms:

Silicosis benefits run from roughly R70,000 for the mildest classification to R250,000 for more severe cases, with a special award of up to R500,000 for the most serious impairment.⁶
Tuberculosis benefits run from R10,000 to R100,000 depending on impairment and claimant category.⁶

Payments are reduced proportionally if a miner worked at both qualifying and non-qualifying mines. No reduction applies where the miner performed at least 30 years of risk work at qualifying mines during qualifying periods.¹³

How to File a Claim

Filing is free. The Trust has repeatedly warned claimants not to pay anyone to help them lodge a claim.³ The process runs through eight stages:¹⁴

Check employment details through the Trust’s status portal or call centre to confirm the mine qualifies.
Book an appointment at a TEBA lodgement office.
Attend the lodgement in person with identity documents, industry card or employee number, service records, and medical records. Dependants must also bring proof of relationship and the miner’s death certificate.
Attend a Benefit Medical Examination (chest X-ray and lung function test) arranged by the Trust. This is free for miners with more than five years of service; miners with fewer years pay a fee that is refunded if the claim succeeds.
The Medical Certification Panel reviews the results and issues a Certificate of Medical Finding.
The Trust Certification Committee reviews all documents and certifies the claim under the Trust Deed.
The Founding Companies’ Agent verifies service information and calculates benefit modifiers. This step can take up to 90 days.
Banking details are validated and payment is made.

The Trust states plainly that “the claims process is not quick.”³ You can dispute decisions at either the medical certification stage or the trust certification stage within 120 days of receiving the relevant certificate.¹⁴ If your condition worsens after an unsuccessful claim, you are allowed to lodge a second claim.¹⁵

Where Claims Get Stuck

The realistic picture is difficult. As of July 2025, 84% of all lodged claims had not resulted in payment.¹⁵ By September 2025, only about 30% of claimants whose cases had been certified by the Trust had actually received compensation. Of roughly 83,810 certified claims, approximately 58,400 were deemed medically ineligible.¹⁶

Two documentation problems dominate the delays.

The first is medical certification. The Trust suspended reliance on certificates issued by the government’s Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases (MBOD) because it wanted to verify whether the MBOD’s diagnostic criteria match the standards in the Trust Deed. Chairperson May Hermanus said the verification is required; critics call it an unnecessary hurdle for miners who already hold government-recognized diagnoses. Attorney Richard Spoor, one of the lead lawyers on the original class action, has questioned the MBOD’s lack of clear diagnostic criteria, which makes the standoff harder to resolve.¹⁶

The second is death certificates. In South Africa and neighboring countries, they often list only “natural causes” rather than silicosis or tuberculosis, and families struggle to prove cause of death. In December 2024, the Trust Deed was amended to accept death notification forms and medical certificates of cause of death certified by an attending medical practitioner. That change helped push total payouts past R2 billion by early 2025, but the Trust’s 2025 annual report acknowledged that “thousands of claims” remain stalled because of missing documentation and unresolved disagreements between trustees representing the mining companies and those representing claimants.¹⁷

The advocacy group Justice for Miners has argued that mining company representatives on the Trust’s board are using “legalistic interpretations” of the Trust Deed to delay claims and minimize payouts.¹⁸ The group has also reported that lodgement sites in neighboring countries are “often offline” and that information is not always distributed in claimants’ native languages.¹⁹

Some payments do move quickly. CEO Munyadziwa Kwinda has said that streamlined processes in Botswana have enabled some claimants there to receive payment within two weeks of their medical examination.²⁰

A Note on the Separate Qhubeka Trust

If you or a relative worked for Anglo American South Africa or AngloGold Ashanti and were part of an earlier UK-led group action, you may have already been covered by a different trust. A separate settlement of R500 million was reached in March 2016 through the UK law firm Leigh Day and South African attorneys Garratt Mbuyisa Neale, on behalf of 4,365 former gold miners or their relatives. That settlement established the Q(h)ubeka Trust, which is a different mechanism from the Tshiamiso Trust.²¹ The Qhubeka Trust has largely finished its work: by April 2023 it had paid R421.8 million to 2,280 former mineworkers, or 99.2% of the amount due to its 2,301 eligible beneficiaries.²² New claims from that group action are not being taken. The Tshiamiso Trust is the compensation route still open.

The Deadline That Matters

The Tshiamiso Trust has roughly five years of active claims processing left. New claims must be lodged by December 2029, and the Trust’s operations are set to end in 2031.¹¹ An estimated 500,000 miners and dependants across southern Africa may be eligible.¹⁵ With just over 27,500 paid to date and heavy documentation delays in the pipeline, starting the claim early matters more than waiting for the process to become easier. Check your qualifying employment through the Trust’s status portal or call centre, then book a lodgement appointment at a TEBA office.¹⁴

1
ACTSA. Justice for South African Gold Miners
2
Legal Resources Centre. Silicosis Settlement
3
Tshiamiso Trust. Tshiamiso Trust Homepage
4
Tshiamiso Trust. Origins
5
SAFLII. Nkala and Others v Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited and Others
6
SAFLII. Ex Parte Nkala and Others
7
Tshiamiso Trust. Silicosis Settlement Becomes Effective
8
SAFLII. DRDGOLD Limited and Another v Nkala and Others
9
Tshiamiso Trust. Tshiamiso Trust Continues Outreach Campaign
10
Mining Weekly. Tshiamiso Trust Has Paid Out R2.5bn in Silicosis, TB Compensation
11
African Mining. Tshiamiso Trust Pays Out R2.5 Billion to Former Gold Mineworkers
12
Tshiamiso Trust. Benefit Payment Calculation
13
Tshiamiso Trust. Compensation Classes
14
Tshiamiso Trust. How to Claim
15
Eyewitness News. Huge Delays in Payouts to Miners With Silicosis and TB
16
GroundUp. Compensation for Sick Gold Miners
17
Tshiamiso Trust. Tshiamiso Trust Annual Report 2025
18
GroundUp. Fear Trust Compensating Miners for Silicosis May Run Out of Funds for Running Costs
19
Club of Mozambique. R2.5bn Paid but Thousands Still Uncompensated
20
360 Mozambique. Tshiamiso Trust Has Paid $124 Million in Compensation
21
Leigh Day. Anglo American Silicosis
22
Daily Maverick. Silicosis Redress: Lessons From Suffering of Mineworkers