Just 40 miles from Johannesburg, in an area of South Africa known as the Vaal Triangle, 1.7 million people live in the most dangerous barrage of pollution on earth.
From the highway towards Vanderbijlpark, you can see the thick veil of smoke that covers Africa's largest steel mill. To the southeast, near the town of Vereeniging, the Lethavo coal power plant, whose name means “happiness,” gleefully spews ash and toxic sulfur dioxide. Further south, outside the Sarsolburg petrochemical plant, the stench of rotten eggs caused by hydrogen sulfide in the air regularly wafts from the neighboring area.
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Read: Eskom says coal pollution kills 330 South Africans a year
At a time when one in three South Africans is unemployed, these power plants provide stable jobs for residents, but they also emit extremely high levels of harmful emissions, making them Fehreniching is considered the most polluted city in the world. The toxin causes hundreds of premature deaths each year across the Vaal Triangle and causes respiratory illnesses in many of those still breathing. This situation highlights the damage that the world's dependence on steel, oil and coal is having on human health, and the difficulties that a green transition faces if it comes at the expense of the livelihoods of workers dependent on old economy jobs. It is a clear reminder of.
Although Vereeniging is relatively unknown outside of South Africa, the country owes much of its status as the continent's most industrially advanced country. This is where the country's first coal was discovered in 1878, and this coal led to strongmen Sammy Marks and Hendrik van der Biel to establish one of South Africa's most concentrated industrial areas. It was helpful. In the town's Vaal Technorama Museum, the last lump of coal mined from the Cornelia Mine lies on a desk. A 1923 painting depicts a happy image of the local Vaal River, with leisure boats sailing through a waterway lined with steel mills and power stations.
Coal “has ensured the region's industrialization and economic growth,” the nameplate declares.
The village is located around the Sasol Sigma coal mine in Sasolburg.Image: Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg
Today, it claims a darker claim to fame. According to the report, the highest concentrations of microscopic emissions known as PM2.5 are regularly recorded in Vereenige. bloomberg green Data analysis from OpenAQ, a nonprofit organization that operates an open-source network of more than 4,000 sensors that monitor particulate pollution around the world. Invisible particles can travel deep into the lungs and cause cancer and heart problems.
Ranajit Sahu, an air quality consultant who has worked extensively on South Africa's pollution problems, said the Vaal Triangle has heavy metals and other toxins, much of which come from factories, that are far more harmful than regular dust. This means that it is often included.
This issue has been of concern to the South African government for decades. In the mid-2000s, the government designated the area as the Vaal Triangular Airfield Priority Area, making it the first zone in a joint effort to reduce air pollution. Since then, there has been little improvement in air quality, even though businesses have applied for and received exemptions from emissions limits, and crippled municipalities have stopped waste collection and asked residents to dispose of their waste. are forced to be incinerated. Freeway traffic crisscrossing the region only adds to the pollution.
Power company Eskom Holdings and petrochemical company Sasol have repeatedly said they cannot afford or do not have the space to install equipment required by law to reduce sulfur dioxide pollution. ArcelorMittal SA has in the past threatened to shut down the former state-owned steelworks. They have also repeatedly called on the government to consider the impact of stricter and more expensive pollution standards on business in a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.
This resistance may quickly be wasted. The Environment Ministry has indicated that under new guidance it expects companies to comply with stricter pollution regulations due to come into force in 2025. ArcelorMittal and the government are also being sued by activists who previously won a ruling that the state was violating regulations. Constitutional right to clean air near Mpumalanga.
Perhaps no settlement in the region has had to make greater sacrifices for South Africa's economic interests than the town of Sharpeville, near Eskom's Rethabo power station.
The facility burns lower-quality coal, which increases pollution per unit of energy produced. A 2017 study by leading experts on air pollution blamed the Resabo factory for 204 premature deaths each year. The study, conducted by UK-based consultant Mike Holland, is one of the first to reveal in detail the scale of power plant pollution in South Africa. The decision has since been challenged by Eskom, which said its own investigation had found that around 330 people die each year across its factories.
A separate study by California-based Sahu showed that Resabo exceeded emission limits for particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides 620 times between April 2016 and December 2017. , which was more than any of the other 14 coal-fired power stations operated by Eskom. time.
Portia Mofokeng at her home in Mudrai. Toxins from industrial emissions in the Vaal Triangle cause respiratory illnesses and hundreds of premature deaths across the region each year.Image: Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg
Portia Mofokeng, 35, is one of the residents who lives within breathing distance of Lethabo. She developed asthma in 2013, and she blames industrial pollution for her symptoms and her regular visits to the hospital. Mofokeng can see the factory's cooling towers from his corrugated steel shed in Mudraai, a field that once belonged to a local farm.
“My doctor told me that if I wanted to get better, I would have to move from here and maybe go somewhere uncontaminated,” she said, sitting in an upholstered chair, clutching two inhalers that cost about a few dollars each. she said. She often has to buy her own medication out of her $18 monthly welfare check. “I don't have anywhere to go.”
When she applied for a job as a safety monitor in Resabo, she was told that her condition made it impossible for her to get the job. Her industry, the source of her illness, is considered by her community to be the only reliable source of employment in the area.
That means there is “little community opposition to pollution because their brothers and cousins work there,” she says. So what happens? she said.
A housing development adjacent to Sasol's petrochemical plant in Sasolburg. In 2005, the South African government designated the area as the Vaal Triangular Airfield Priority Area, making it the first zone in a joint effort to reduce air pollution.Image: Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg
Chimneys discharge emissions from petrochemical plants.Image: Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg
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Near the impoverished town of Zamdera, adjacent to Sasol's Sigma coal mine and its Sasolburg petrochemical plant, my hands turn black with coal dust as I slip on the stair railing of a largely abandoned apartment complex. The company says it is monitoring dust at “fence lines.”
Kido Mafisi, who has lived in Zamdera since the late 1970s, displays his medicine in a small brick house where he wakes up to find black and gray dust on his window ledges. He said he often notices this.
“I can't breathe,” she said. “I have asthma, bronchitis, and skin rashes.”
Windows covered in coal dust in a hostel in Sasolburg.Image: Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg
South Africa's Environment Department claims progress has been made in air quality in the Vaal Triangle, noting that major emitters such as Sasol, ArcelorMittal and Eskom are taking steps to curb emissions. are doing.
ArcelorMittal announced it has reduced particulate matter emissions by 87% since 2007 by controlling dust and replacing old coal-burning equipment, as well as reducing other pollutants. Sasol said it had reduced particulate emissions by 75% since 2000, primarily by installing electrostatic precipitators (devices that attract dust to electrically charged plates). In contrast, particulate emissions from all Eskom factories are at a 31-year high. Pollution is further exacerbated by the fact that sulfur dioxide, which is released as a gas, is often oxidized by water vapor to form sulfuric acid particles.
Sasol said it was implementing an offset program to reduce particulate matter emissions by removing municipal waste that would otherwise be burned. Eskom is also considering a similar program.
Residents of Zamdera take care of their horses amid hardships such as living in shacks, the municipality's failure to collect garbage, and pollution from Sasol.Image: Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg
ArcelorMittal's Vanderbijlpark plant is Africa's largest steel mill.Image: Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg
Still, there is little evidence of waste collection. Across the road from the Sasol factory, pigs and goats pick up trash on a vacant lot lined with small brick houses and tin huts built by the government. Bernard Mafata, a waste collector who drags his trolley between informal dumps and recycling centres, says residents are regularly burning their trash because municipalities no longer remove it. .
Sasol said its offset project is equivalent to preventing the emission of 40 tonnes of particulate matter per year, which is equivalent to 0.5% of the annual pollutant production from all plants. It stressed that the program was not designed to provide “equivalent” relief.
In areas of the world as polluted as the Vaal Triangle, it can be difficult to see positive changes on the horizon. But there are also some faint signals.
International pressure is mounting on businesses across South Africa to clean up their operations beyond the government's new emissions limits next year. Some of the world's richest countries are funding a $9.3 billion plan to help South Africa move away from coal. The Resabo factory, which is scheduled to begin closing in 2036, could follow the same path as the old Eskom facility, which is scheduled for conversion to renewable energy and other activities through an incentive program.
Sasol also operates a pilot green hydrogen facility in Sasolburg, a fact that is advertised on billboards throughout the city.
Children play outside Mooydraai's hut, with Rethabo power station in the distance. The industry that makes people sick is considered by many local residents to be the area's only source of employment.Image: Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg
If successful, these developments will help combat the long-term threat of climate change. But it won't help those who are now breathing in coal's disgusting legacy.
Patience is running thin for residents living in the mess left behind by South Africa's industrial giant.
“We want to get compensation. They have to pay for us,” Mofokeng said. “They're the ones causing the problem.”
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