Abstract
South Africa is a uniquely mineral rich country. Of the six types of asbestiform minerals
found in the country, three, namely crocidolite, amosite and chrysotile were mined and
milled on a large commercial scale. Asbestos was used locally in South Africa, but the
majority of its production was exported worldwide. In the 1970s, South Africa was the
world’s third largest producer of asbestos, behind Canada and the USSR. About 97% of the
world’s production of crocidolite and virtually all of the amosite came from South Africa.
The output from the South African asbestos mining industry peaked at 380,000 tonnes in
1977 and declined thereafter as export markets declined due to restrictive legislation in
countries that imported asbestos (Virta, 2006; Kielkowski et al., 2011). Legislation in South
Africa banning the use of all types of asbestos came into effect in 2008, well after the last
asbestos mine ceased production in 2001 and closed in 2002. Although South Africa
benefitted financially from the exploitation of its asbestos mineral reserves, the revenue
from asbestos never accounted for more than 3% of the value of its total minerals output
(McCulloch, 2003). There is however a high price to pay in terms of a legacy of disease and
environmental contamination through mining activities and the transport of asbestos and
asbestos containing products.