E C A A R -- SA
ECONOMISTS ALLIED FOR ARMS REDUCTION
Patrons ECAAR -- South Africa
Rhoda Kadalie 3B Alpine Mews, Box 60542
Human Rights Activist High Cape, Cape Town 8001
Njongonkulu Ndungane Tel: +27-21-465-7423
My husband got a cough from January to January from the dust of the lorries. When he got home at night from work, he would be sneezing and coughing. His eyes would be itching, so that I had to put eyegene in his eyes. And during the day, when he was on the lorries where there was no water nearby to wash his hands when his eyes itched, he just rubbed his eyes with his hands that were full of gunpowder dust. That is why he lost the sight of his left eye, and has got 20 percent sight in his right eye. The Swartklip bosses never worry about the workers.
Mrs Petra Daniels was employed to weigh the chemical components for ammunition produced at Swartklip. She was 24 years of age when the chemicals exploded and she lost both of her hands. She was just so grateful to have survived that she never pressed for adequate financial compensation to ameliorate her disability, and was never assisted to do so by Swartklip management. Mrs Regina Robinson died in March 2001 in a similar explosion at the same work station.
A parliamentary inspection of Swartklip was scheduled for October 31, 2002 but was then cancelled by parliamentary officials.
Wastes at Swartklip are still disposed of on the open "burning grounds" and at Swartklip beach. Few, if any, tests are likely to have been conducted on the health and environmental consequences. The armaments industry, as a matter of "national security," has until now considered itself beyond the planning and environmental jurisdictions of local councils.
Non-governmental organizations as recently as June 2002 objected to a proposal to build an incinerator at Swartklip, which would be within 500 metres of shacks in Khayelitsha. Denel has now referred the matter to the Department of Environmental Affairs in an effort to override environmental objections to the incinerator. These issues have also been referred to the Cape Town City Council in November 2002 but, again, no action has
yet been taken.
The people of the Cape Flats suffer perhaps the world’s worst incidences of tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases. Research in the United States finds that communities adjacent to military and armaments facilities are disproportionately affected by cancers and other diseases resulting from exposure to toxic materials. Degradation of human health and the environment by military pollution is not always visible, immediate or direct, and often presents itself only years later.
The disastrous sulphur fire at AECI’s plant at Macassar near Somerset West in December 1995 alerted South Africans to the health and environmental dangers associated with explosives and ammunition.
An explosion on November 13, 2002 in a storeroom at the ammunition plant at Swartklip, which severely damaged the building, again alerted South Africans to these dangers. The explosion occurred during the morning tea break thus, miraculously, only one person was injured albeit seriously.
Production ceased for three weeks pending reconstruction. The cause of the explosion was internally investigated by Denel, the Department of Labour and South African Police Services, but no information has been provided to the public.
The need therefore continues for NGOs and other voices of civil society to make urgent representations both at parliamentary and local government levels for thorough and independent on-site testing for soil, water and air contamination at Swartklip, and for medical audits of workers.
A phenomenon apparently common to armaments industry workers is a refusal whilst still employed to discuss working conditions, but an eagerness to do so once the employment ends. Workers were intimidated into silence by the apartheid-era National Key Points Act that equated disclosure of information about the armaments industry with treason. Given the unemployment crisis, workers who now complain about infractions of safety procedures are apparently threatened with: "there’s the gate, there are thousands out there waiting for your job."
Former employees report an abnormal occurrence of heart disease amongst ex Swartklip workers. A possible explanation is the use of nitroglycerine in the manufacture of ammunition. Nitroglycerine is also used in the treatment of angina. The body apparently adjusts rapidly to its presence, but soon becomes dependent. The onset of heart diseases is said to be frequent about one year after workers are no longer exposed to nitroglycerine. The incidences of asthma and arthritis also appear to be abnormally high.
There is reason to be concerned about the exposure of Swartklip workers and Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha residents to beryllium both because of its use in manufacture and their proximity to hazardous wastes, including the open burning. An acute condition can result from exposure to beryllium air levels greater than 1000g/m3.
Beryllium is a silver-grey metal which is lighter than aluminium, but 40% more rigid than steel and, in an alloy, six times stronger than copper. Beryllium-copper alloys withstand high temperatures, are extraordinarily hard, resistant to corrosion, do not spark and are nonmagnetic. Beryllium is an excellent electrical and thermal conductor.
The brittleness of beryllium has limited its industrial uses, and increases the hazards associated with its toxicity. Given poor ventilation, small particles and chips of insoluble beryllium break-off during machining and spread through the air in the work area. Inhalation of these tiny particles can lead to chronic beryllium disease.
Beryllium disease is apparently similar to tuberculosis, and can occur both quickly or many years after exposure to beryllium. Although primarily a lung disease, it can also affect other organs, particularly the lymph nodes, skin, spleen, liver, kidney and heart.
Unlike chest x-rays and spirometry testing, blood and urine screening can however detect beryllium sensitivity before it has progressed to beryllium disease.
The ex Swartklip Workers Committee is acutely aware that employment at Swartklip, including many of their own family members, is a matter of "bread and butter" in an area of high unemployment. It is alleged by former Somchem workers that the situation at Somchem outside Somerset West is even worse than at Swartklip, Somchem being another division of Denel. The intimidation of workers and ex workers at Somchem is said to be such that, unlike the ex Swartklip Workers Committee, they have been unable to organise. Nonetheless, both Swartklip and Somchem require thorough investigation.
Environmentalists have already been told that Swartklip may have to close down, with the consequent loss of jobs, should they continue to oppose construction of an incinerator. Such threats cannot be taken lightly. International experience finds however that conversion of the armaments industry – if properly managed – can create both more and better-paying jobs. The armaments industry is a capital rather than labour intensive industry and, in fact, is an exceptionally poor creator of jobs given the financial investments involved.
It is also relevant that despite massive government support, Denel continues to lose money. It posted a loss during 2001/2002 of R363 million on public assets of R4 billion.
Of overriding importance is the location of Swartklip in a residential area of one million people. Is it a disaster-just-waiting-to-happen per AECI in Macassar, Bhopal in India or ammunition plants in China?
In the United States, after a two year court battle, the National Environmental Law Center in May 2002 finally reached a settlement requiring the US Army to cease open burning and open detonation of munitions and other wastes at the Sierra Army Depot in California. The depot had been the greatest single source of toxic air emissions in the State of California – its air pollutants including lead being two and a half times greater than that of an oil refinery. The open burning at Sierra Army Depot, as still occurs at Swartklip, released hazardous and carcinogenic substances including mercury, lead, beryllium, copper, dioxin and PCBs.
Elsewhere, soil and water tests at ammunition plants such as Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant in Minnesota and Badger Army Ammunition Plant in Wisconsin have found severe soil and water contamination even many years after closure of the plants. Soils and water contaminated by antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, chromium, lead and thalium as a consequence of open burning at the Twin Cities Plant are now being cleansed at costs to American taxpayers of several hundred million dollars.
The extent of contamination at Swartklip will have to be determined by independent tests. It must be questioned whether the contamination is such that the area is no longer fit for human habitation. Swartklip is a vast area which, if sensitively redeveloped, could transform the present socio-economic impoverishment of both Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha.
The late Oliver Tambo is reported to have declared Armscor to be "a frankenstein monster that cannot be reformed and must be destroyed". No less than the former chief of the Defence Force, General Constan Viljoen, has conceded that Armscor’s executives and senior apartheid politicians controlled South Africa’s economic resources during the 1980s. Armscor was ultimately responsible was the devastation inflicted on neighbouring countries in terms of the apartheid government’s destabilization policies. These were estimated in 1989 by the United Nations to have caused:
(a) the deaths of up to one and a half million people
(b) four million refugees
(c) economic damage to the extent of US$65 billion, and
(d) the deaths of 100 000 elephants and rhinos whose tusks and horns were sold to compensate Armscor for weapons supplied to Renamo and Unita
The Bill of Rights and in particular Section 24 of the Constitution is unambiguous regarding the environment and the rights of South Africans, that industry should not be harmful to either the health of workers or the wider community. Denel took over Armscor’s manufacturing assets in 1992. Yet South African citizens whose lives were destroyed because of their employment in the armaments industry have been forgotten.
They were intimated into silence during the apartheid era by threats that disclosure of information was tantamount to treason. They are still intimidated into silence by threats of dismissal. Given the deplorable health conditions in many areas of South Africa, but especially the Cape Flats and amongst former Denel: Swartklip employees, we trust that the Ad Hoc Committee on Reparations will intercede as a matter of urgency.
Yours sincerely
Terry Crawford-Browne
Attachment: "Arms workers to sue Denel", Weekend Argus, June 7, 2003.