Khumbul’ekhaya, which is the Nguni word for “remember home”, is a CEO-led strategy on health and safety that has been developed by the CEO Zero Harm Forum to drive and sustain the mining industry’s pursuit of zero harm.

The Khumbul’ekhaya health and safety strategy began as a meaningful conversation about health and safety. On 25 January 2019, 34 industry CEOs and four Minerals Council office bearers gathered for a half-day facilitated event. Called the CEO Heartfelt Conversation, the event aimed to encourage deep and intense introspection into and facilitate engagement on health and safety-related issues in the mining industry. It also aimed to emphasise the personal role CEOs held in turning the industry’s regressive and plateauing health and safety performance around.

While CEOs agreed that improvements in safety and health performance over the past two decades have been significant, they recognised that a step-change is required in order for the industry to achieve zero harm. The result was Khumbul’ekhaya.

The objectives of the Khumbul’ekhaya strategy are to:

• Promote a holistic approach to the elimination of fatalities
• Develop a system of understanding occupational deaths in and beyond employment
• Adopt methods for more effective and competitive training, for example through centralisation and modernisation
• Adopt globally leading practice to learn better and faster from others

As part of its holistic approach, Khumbul’ekhaya complements and supports existing initiatives in place, especially the work being undertaken by the MHSC, the MOSH Learning Hub and the Mandela Mining Precinct.