Trapped in a nightmare of hazardous dust
Residents on edge as miner mulls reopening pit
AKGADI Mashegoane pulls her 8-year-old son, Oratile, closer to her and inspects his eyes. They look red and slightly swollen. And his coughing fits are keeping her up at night.
Her other son, who has just turned 18, has been diagnosed with asthma.
She looks worried as she sits on a frayed couch inside her crumbling RDP home, which is buttressed against a towering mine dump in Sinqobile on the desolate outskirts of Kagiso.
The unemployed Mashegoane blames this unwanted neighbour – and the collection of mine dumps encircling her home – for her family’s illnesses. “We are inhaling mine dust 24 hours a day, especially when there is wind. We get headaches and our children cough all the time. Our kids are in and out of hospital because of all this dust.”
For the past eight years, she has lived in the shadow of the mine dump, which juts like a barren mountain over the squat homes of Sinqobile.
Mashegoane, who lost her job at the Post Office earlier this year, wishes she could move. “I have no money, nothing,” she says, gesturing to the shacks being erected in her yard to supplement her meagre income. “We are stuck here.”
Mining company Mintails plans to remine the hazardous mine dump and others it owns that loom Krugersdorp and the West Rand. It is breaking down the old dumps, scouring them for valuable gold, silver, nickel and uranium.
But re-mining presents its own problems, warns Mariette Liefferink, the head of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment. “Remining can contaminate air, water and soil. When you remove the dump, you are also removing the vegetation and the crust, and it liberates the dust. Then people ingest that dust.”
Liefferink says Mintails’ reclamation of historical tailing dumps is “exacerbating water and airborne pollution,
Rparticularly windblown toxic and potentially radioactive dust fallout”. Mashegoane believes the pollution was worse when Mintails started its open cast mine, Princess Pit, opposite Singobile last year – until violent protests by the community – a court order and intervention by then mineral resources minister Susan Shabangu – temporarily suspended mining operations.
Residents complained blasting had caused cracks in their homes. Mintails attributes the damage to hailstorms and to the company’s alleged pollu-
It doesn’t help to renovate if they are going to start
mining again
tion and poor consultation.
“They were blasting three times a day – all you heard were explosions,” says Mashegoane, showing a crack that runs across her wall. “It doesn’t help to renovate if they are going to start mining here again. We don’t know,” she shrugs.
In nearby Mindalore, residents, too, complain of blocked sinuses and nosebleeds from mining dust. “There’s so much dust, sometimes it looks like mist where Mintails is operating,” remarks Matilda du Toit, who complains her house is often coated in it.
Annemarie le Roux, another resident, worries about the health consequences of mining activities in the white-collar suburb. “We leave for work in other areas, but our kids and grandchildren are in preschools and schools inhaling this rubbish all day long.
“What is the future of health for these kids?”
Located alongside Sinqobile, the continued occupation of the informal settlement of Tudor Shaft stands like an indictment to authorities. Built on mining waste and home to several thousand people, it is so toxic and radioactive that several government agencies have recommended the community be urgently relocated.
But nothing happened. Across the road, Mintails’ Princess Pit runs like a scar to Sinqobile. “These mining companies make holes in the earth, make us sick, then they leave,” says Lucas Misapitso, a mechanical engineering student, who is trying to raise money to take his fellow Tudor Shaft residents to Parliament to talk about the dangers lurking in Tudor Shaft. “This is a human rights violation.”
And always, it’s the poorest of the poor that pay the price, adds Liefferink.
“The challenge for Mintails is to be able to demonstrate that the West Rand is a better place across all three sustainability measures – social, environmental and economic – rather than a worse one because of its activities. The view is that Mintails is not cleaning up the historical and current mess and minimising its mining footprint.”
Communities like those in Sinqobile, Tudor Shaft and Soul City represent a fraction of the 1.6 million residents living on radioactive mine residue within the Witwatersrand goldfields.
“They are suffering the impact of the legacy of largely unregulated gold mining within the West Rand goldfields and from the accumulative impact of the massive open cast mining operations by companies like Mintails.”
Mmthabo Mphago, who lives opposite Mintails’ Princess Pit, tells of her weekly, and sometimes daily, visits to the clinic. “The dust from all these dumps is too terrible for our children. They are coughing all the time. All the children in Sinqobile have red eyes and asthma.”
Chali Mohale, another resident of Sinqobile, promises one thing. “If Mintails does start remining at Princess Pit, we will mobilise the community and we’ll have to close their operations down forcefully.”