“We are like bubblegum”: underground narratives of tuberculosis among South African miners

Abstract

Miners working on South African mines suffer from the highest rate of tuberculosis (TB) in the world. The prevalence of tuberculosis among miners is four to seven times higher than for the general population of South Africa, a country with the second highest rate of tuberculosis in the world. It is against this background that we explore ideas about tuberculosis infection and management among gold and platinum miners in two South African mineworker communities. Using ethnographic methods, we explore the key organising metaphors used by miners to understand TB in relation to infection and the impact it has on their lives, among them “dust” and “we are like bubblegum.” Drawing on Robert Nixon’s (2011) model of “slow violence,” we argue that miners understand TB less in terms of a bacterial infection and more in terms of conditions of life underground. Their concept of “dust” demonstrates that there is an inter-relationship between tuberculosis and dusty working environments regardless of the mineral that is being extracted. Miners’ anxiety of being discarded, like a bubblegum that has lost its flavour, reflects their relationship to the capitalist system in which they are caught.