HEALTH & SAFETY
De Beers sets new safety benchmark through ownership culture De Beers Group has achieved the lowest total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) in its 135-year history, reflecting the strength of a safety culture embedded at all levels of the business.
Employees demonstrate visible, engaged leadership at Venetia Underground mine, South Africa.
Tefo Molosiwa, Head of Policy & Planning: Safety, Sustainable Development and Risk at De Beers Group.
I ts 2025 TRIFR of 1.0 across global operations represents a further improvement on the previous year’s record performance. According to Tefo Molosiwa, Head of Policy & Planning: Safety, Sustainable Development and Risk at De Beers, this achievement is rooted in a deceptively simple principle - ownership. “At De Beers, we have leaned into the experience, care and institutional knowledge in our teams by listening, learning and partnering rather than instructing,” Molosiwa says. “This has delivered a level of ownership and leadership in the health and safety space that really delivers value for us.” Across operations in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada, De Beers’ safety strategy draws heavily on the expertise of artisans, operators and contractors. Frontline employees - including truck drivers, electricians, maintenance crews and pit operators - are often drawn from surrounding communities, many having grown up with the mine as part of their lived experience. “They understand mining, rock, plant, equipment and on-mine processes, so we deliberately create space for this operational knowledge to shape safety controls,” he explains. “The result is a trust-based system in which accountability runs both upward and downward, rather than imposing top-down safety directives.” While the general manager remains legally accountable for safety, Molosiwa notes that leadership must ensure that the necessary processes and resources are in place. At the same time, those working at the coalface must trust that they have been given the tools and support needed to carry out their work safely. “In this framework, trust is not aspirational - it is operational,” he says. A cornerstone of the De Beers approach is ‘critical action closure’. One example how this is implemented is through the company’s Safe Sentry programme. The process focuses on the constant identification of hazards and on strong partnership and
accountability between teams on the ground and their leaders to ensure that controls are implemented swiftly and at the required standard. The commitment to identifying hazards loses its value if action is not taken, or if the speed of response does not reflect the level of risk present on the ground. Hazards identified on the shop floor are escalated to leadership, with solutions co-developed between frontline teams and management. Importantly, there is formal accountability for closing these actions and verifying the effectiveness of the controls implemented. “Identifying the issue is only the first step,” Molosiwa notes. “What needs to follow is the co-development of action and accountability on the effectiveness of that closure.” This disciplined focus on high-consequence risks helps prevent safety systems from becoming diluted by excessive
26 MODERN MINING www.modernminingmagazine.co.za | May 2026
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