The Human Cost of Coal in South Africa
South Africa’s coal belt is blanketed in smog and ash and coated with a stench of sulfur. The area east of Johannesburg is among the world’s most polluted according to experts and poor air quality kills thousands of residents every year, but cleaning up this air would require a crackdown on polluting industries which are also an economic lifeline for local residents. The town of Emma lageni which translates to "the place of coal" in the Zulu language is where Mbali Mataboule and her daughter Princess live. Her partner found work in a nearby coal plant which helped the family out of poverty but when Princess turned four she developed asthma and started struggling to breathe. "I get very concerned because I feel like my child won’t live for a long time because of these mines. That really worries me. It means that at any time she could die because of her situation." In 2019 scientists working for South Africa’s government completed a study on the health impacts of pollution from the country’s coal industry. The results were never officially published. Reuters reviewed a copy of the study which showed that 5,000 South Africans die annually in the nation’s coal belt because the government has failed to fully enforce its own air quality standards. Bobby Peake is an anti-coal activist. "These power stations do not have the pollution control mechanisms on because they were developed in the old apartheid system and during the old apartheid system they just didn’t care about pollution."