Written by Megan Lewis, Media and Communications Manager at groundWork (Friends of the Earth South Africa)
There is a humming, an incessant buzzing, but no bees. Ah, the electricity wires connecting pylon to pylon beyond the houses over which they pass and into the hazy distance, forever buzzing with current. The sunshine bounces off the tin roofs of the houses, the shacks and the people; people who are waiting on an open patch of land. Some, however, have managed to find a little shade on the periphery. Surely all those people can’t fit into such a small number of houses. They are waiting. More continue to join them. They are waiting, some in wheelbarrows, some on the ground. There are children who wait too, with runny noses and eyes they look too tired to play. Why are they not at school? Some people greet each other; others cough loudly and for a long time. Strewn next to a tap on the street are large colourful bottles. The tap simply drips, it does not run with water when opened. People wait here too.
Big black hills form the close backdrop where people wait. A blast goes off nearby, but no one flinches. There is a strange sour smell that fills the air. No one notices or, if they do, they don’t complain. Plumes of smoke waft out behind these black hills, some from round boilers and others from one tall chimney stack – the other one seems to be out of order. A power station, part of Eskom’s large family of electricity-producing machines. With the idea to build a power station here, came the need for a mine, no, in fact several mines from where coal would be extracted to fuel the power station. With this came people, so desperate for work to feed families that they built make-shift houses here, hoping either the mine or the power station would employ them.
But twenty years have passed and nothing has changed. They are forgotten. This is the lost village of Masakhane. They wait with wheelbarrows to collect coal that Eskom has mandated the nearby mines supplying the power station to provide to this community. Ah, so they are not forgotten, you say. They wait by the one communal tap for the municipality to fill the tank with water. Again you will say, they are not forgotten. No, perhaps they are not forgotten. They are herded like cattle – sixty people at a time, allowed only one wheelbarrow per household – up a ramp to scrabble at the black mounds to fill their wheelbarrows with coal to cook and heat their homes. It is more like sand than coal. Water in Masakhane, like most villages and towns in the Highveld region, is so polluted and racked by acid mine drainage that illness and sometimes even death can come to those that drink it.
That irritating buzzing never stops. Where is it going? Not to Masakhane. The steam that comes out of the boilers must come from water not acidic or else the power station wouldn’t work. So there is drinkable water somewhere, although the people of Masakhane just have to wait every week for water to be driven in, just like they have to wait for their weekly wheelbarrow of coal. The power station works throughout the night, but most people are not employed there or at the mines. They have lived there too long; they do not pass the health test to work.
A woman bends down at different points along the sandy path. She picks up the pieces of coal that have fallen out of wheelbarrows. She does this every week. She has been forgotten.
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groundWork’s/Friends of the Earth South Africa’s new report has found that coal-fired power stations belonging to Eskom, South Africa’s energy utility, are the primary driver for poor outdoor air quality in the Highveld region in Mpumalanga. What this means for the communities here is severely poor health, particularly in the form of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases that can lead to death. Read our official press release and watch out for our video news release which will be released on Friday morning.
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Here are some messages you can Tweet in solidarity with the communities suffering in this dirty and dangerous area:
#Eskom’s air pollution killing people says @groundWorkSA #coal #cleartheair
#Eskom is creating a dying youth @groundWorkSA #coal #cleartheair
#Eskom ignores people’s health for profit @groundWorkSA #coal #cleartheair
#Eskom’s #coal is a killer @groundWorkSA #cleartheair