Paper short abstract:

The paper unpacks how medical interventions in Southern Rhodesia conscripted colonial science and medicine in the construction of racialized and politicized narratives of silicosis. It interrogates the techniques of medical exclusion that were conscripted during the social construction of silicosis

Paper long abstract:

In 1949, the Southern Rhodesian government (colonial Zimbabwe) enacted legislation to regulate and manage the occupational hazards of those employed in ‘dusty industries’ such as gold mining. The resultant Act established the infrastructure for medical surveillance in the prevention, management and compensation of workers who would have contracted silicosis. Silicosis, dubbed a ‘social disease with medical manifestations’ had emerged into global medical limelight during the 1930s following its earlier diagnosis and prevalence in the hard rock mining areas of USA, Canada, Australia, and the Witwatersrand goldfields in South Africa. Pathologist and medical experts became key in the formulation of science-based knowledge on the aetiology and nosology of the disease as well as the medicolegal and technical aspects that determined compensation and management of the sick. This paper unpacks how the Silicosis legislations and accompanying medical interventions in Southern Rhodesia conscripted colonial science and medicine in the construction of racialized and politicized narratives of the disease. It interrogates the techniques of racial medical exclusion, suppression of disease statistics, racial limitation of compensation and cost minimization for mining capital that were conscripted during the social construction of silicosis. Using the case study of gold mining the paper argues that the role of colonial medicine in occupational health in Southern Rhodesia was political and racial. The paper uses archival material from the National Archives of Zimbabwe, secondary historical sources, and scientific literature from occupational medicine.