South Africa: Soweto residents accuse former gold mine of poisoning them

The pungent-smelling dust from the embankment stings the throat and gets stuck between the teeth. And for good reason: according to analyses, the mine tailings site contains highly toxic materials such as arsenic, lead, and uranium. A legacy of the gold rush that founded the city of Johannesburg in the 1890s.

In the northern part of the township, a local association, the Snake Park Cerebral Palsy Forum, has identified more than fifteen children with cerebral palsy—not to mention other disabilities and deformities that residents attribute to the mine.

'Because of the mine'

Among them is 13-year-old Okuhle, abandoned on the streets of Snake Park as a baby.

"Okuhle can't walk, talk, or use his hands," said his adoptive mother, Lilly Stebbe, 60.

Sitting in her wheelchair, the smiling girl communicates by shouting.

"Because of the mine, Okuhle also has asthma," her mother adds. "She also has eye and sinus problems." The sixty-year-old herself coughs tirelessly. Here, dust is everywhere.

"This dust can give you all kinds of cancer, but it can also change your DNA, and your children will be born with malformations," warns David van Wyk, a senior researcher at the Bench Marks Foundation, a non-governmental organization that monitors corporate activity.

More than 6,000 abandoned mines blight South Africa's territory, according to the country's Auditor General, including 2,322 considered a high health risk for surrounding communities.

According to David van Wyk, 15 to 20 million people across the country live near these toxic substances. Snake Park, at the foot of the mine, is home to more than 50,000 residents.

Every month, as part of a study with the University of Johannesburg, the Indiana Jones-like researcher conducts tests in the mine dump, a vast expanse of powdery soil crossed by a reddish river.

Three-legged goats

The study, carried out over two years, aims to measure and identify the concentration of dissolved solids in water.

That day, his device recorded a concentration of 776 mg per liter. A high level that, he says, makes the water unfit for consumption.

He adds: "This stream contains very toxic substances, such as uranium and strontium, both of which are radioactive."

The river, however, irrigates the land cultivated by locals, where herds graze. According to locals, some goats are born with three legs.

According to residents and Pan African Resources, which bought the mine in 2022 from the former owner in receivership, the tailings site has already been expanding for around 50 years.

"Give us ten years, maximum, and we will remove it completely," Sonwabo Modimoeng, the company's head of local community relations, promised AFP.

He admits: "We know this is affecting people." In the meantime, the group assures that it has installed signage around the site. These measures are insufficient, according to local associations.

'I blame our government'

Baile Bantseke, 59, lives in a small house a few hundred meters from the old mine. Her grandson, Mphoentle, 5, is autistic—a condition his grandmother attributes to the "mountain."

Numerous studies, including one published in 2024 in the journal Environmental Health, indicate a link between exposure to heavy metals and the development of autism.

"I blame our government," the grandmother told AFP. "Because if it took care of us, we wouldn't have these problems."

Affected families receive a monthly allowance of 2,310 rand (113 euros) for children with disabilities. This is enough to buy food, clothes, and diapers, but not enough to pay for transportation to Baragwanath Hospital, fifteen kilometers away, where the children are supposed to be treated.

"We don't have wheelchairs or pickup trucks" to transport them, laments Kefilwe Sebogodi, founder of the Snake Park Cerebral Palsy Forum and who is raising her niece who has cerebral palsy.

Every month, around fifteen mothers, aunts and grandmothers gather in a room with broken windows in the community center to "show that children matter in the community," explains Kefilwe.

One of the mothers present that day, visibly exhausted, questions the point of these meetings. But Kefilwe assures her: "We have already accomplished a lot, because we are still standing."

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