(Excerpt from the book ‘The Greek community in South Africa’)
Between 1890 and 1920, lots of Greeks who immigrated to South Africa worked in the mines along with other whites and African labourers. Most of them died from the fatal disease known as miner’s phthisis. Although they were suffering from the disease, they continued to work even harder because their duty to their families was much more important than any consideration of their health. Most of them were from Laconia, Cyprus and Crete, and died between the ages of 30 and 40.
