Miners working on South African mines suffer from the highest rate of tuberculosis (TB) in the world. The prevalence of tuberculosis among miners is four to seven times higher than for the general population of South Africa, a country with the second highest rate of tuberculosis in the world. It is against this background that we explore ideas about tuberculosis infection and management among gold and platinum miners in two South African mineworker communities. Using ethnographic methods, we explore the key organising metaphors used by miners to understand TB in relation to infection and the impact it has on their lives, among them “dust” and “we are like bubblegum.” Drawing on Robert Nixon’s (2011) model of “slow violence,” we argue that miners understand TB less in terms of a bacterial infection and more in terms of conditions of life underground. Their concept of “dust” demonstrates that there is an inter-relationship between tuberculosis and dusty working environments regardless of the mineral that is being extracted. Miners’ anxiety of being discarded, like a bubblegum that has lost its flavour, reflects their relationship to the capitalist system in which they are caught.

在南非矿山工作的矿工患上了世界上最高的结核病（TB）。矿工中的结核病患病率是南非总人口的四到七倍，而南非是世界上结核病患病率第二高的国家。在这种背景下，我们探讨了两个南非矿工社区中金矿和白金矿工结核病的感染和管理方法。我们使用人种学方法，探索了矿工用来理解结核病与感染及其对生命的影响的主要组织隐喻，其中包括“尘土”和“我们就像泡泡糖”。借鉴罗伯特·尼克松（Robert Nixon，2011）的“缓慢暴力”模式，“我们认为，矿工对结核病的细菌感染了解较少，而对地下生命条件的了解更多。他们的“粉尘”概念表明，结核病与多尘的工作环境之间存在相互关系，而与所提取的矿物质无关。矿工被抛弃的焦虑，就像失去了风味的泡泡糖一样，反映了他们与被困的资本主义制度的关系。