Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Johannesburg suffocates in shadow of mine dumps

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Camille Malplat -


Cook at my spinach. That is the sand from the mine. The yellow one in the soil — it’s destroying everything,” said Thabo Ngubane as he tended his small allotment in Soweto.


In Johannesburg tens of thousands of poor South Africans like him spend their lives in the shadow of vast mine dumps, exposing them to toxic substances like arsenic, lead and uranium.


The gold rush from 1886 that caused the imposing slag heaps to spring up around South Africa’s largest city saw many investors and miners become fabulously wealthy.


The same was not true of those who lived and worked near the pits, and were exposed to dust and chemicals.


More than 200 mounds of earth contaminated with heavy metals, notably uranium, lie within sight of South Africa’s commercial capital according to the Harvard International Human Rights Clinic.


They include the one close to where 50-year-old Thabo tends his vegetables in Snake Park in the north of the Soweto township.


“When there is heavy rains, all the mine waste comes here and erodes everything,” he said.


The company responsible for the slag heap built a storage pool to allow contaminated water to evaporate in an effort to protect the neighbouring homes from pollution.


But the pool walls have been poorly maintained allowing acid water to leak into Thabo’s agricultural plot.


“I’m coughing all the time... My daughter also,” Thabo complained.


Several other areas in Soweto, which is home to more than a million and a half people, have also fallen foul of Johannesburg’s mining legacy.


Twenty kilometres east in Riverlea Extension 1 is a community of 2,500 people including Rose Plaatjies whose home is surrounded by three mine dumps. Rose, a retired labourer, has been there since 1962 when she was forced to move to comply with the apartheid-era rules on segregated living. Black people from the region often moved to Soweto while “coloureds” like Rose moved to Riverlea.


Now 63, she suffers from shortness of breath and is dependent on an oxygen tank — all of which she blames on the mines.


“In almost every street in this community, people are living on oxygen machines,” said David Van Wyck, a researcher at South Africa’s Benchmark foundation, a Christian NGO.


Efforts by the authorities to contain the contaminants have been described as slow and inadequate by the Harvard International Human Rights Clinic. — AFP


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