Dont care what going on with the communities. Man 2 any activity by human beings will somehow, you know, like, change the ecosystem that we operate in. Zulu where the guys work, its way, way, way too far. I think we canabout 1. 5 kilometer. Man, voiceover yes, south africa does have mountains of coal, but we also have mountains of asbestos, and we decide to leave asbestos in the ground where it belongs. Man 2, voiceover where the coal mines and the power stations are located is amongst one of the most polluted areas on earth. Man 3, voiceover a very, very large cost to coalmining. Youre basically signing death warrants for people who live there. Zulu the people here are working just to put food on the table. There, they just have to survive. [camera lens clicking] announcer earth focus is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundationa margaret a. Cargill philanthropy the Orange County community foundation, and the farvue foundation. [distant rumbling] man and weve got 17 coal fields in south africa, and more than half of them are bunched together on Mpumalanga Highveld. Its called the central basin. In our research, we have spoken to many people. I think this is really bad on the ground. Its really, really bad. Woman there are two mines here. That one is the old mine. If you can see the dust that is coming out when they are blasting, you can even smell it. Even if you wipe yourself like this, you theres a black dust in your hand. So what about if you inhale it . [distant chatter] [childs congested coughing] woman i moved to Mpumalanga Highveld for better future. Ive worked in the mines, and i was affected with sinus while i was working there. In 2013, i got my firstrn. [coughing continues] woman so he gets sick, is struggling to breathe. He was admitted at the hospital. They diagnosed him with bronchitis asthma. I visited one doctor and asked why, so he told me, the area that you are living in is too dirty, so most of the kids are affectedith asth because theyre inhaling dirty air. 2015, i get my secondborn. 6 months down the line, she was admitted at the hospital, having the very same signs. They sometimes struggle to breathe and they struggle to speak. Sometimes they dont breathe at all. You can even see that she or hes gone. Munnick we know from International Studies that a range of about two kilometers around each power station, the soil is enriched in heavy metals that come out of the coal. Theres sizable pollution, and for a long time, i know, you know, since the late eighties, i think wee known that we were equal to what was in east germany in the bad air quality on the highveld. And theres something called a [indistinct], which is a test you do before you get employment, mostly at power stations and in the mines, and locals tell us that they regularly fail the [indistinct] test because theyve grown up in a very polluted area. As theyve grown up, theyre unfit for work. [birds chirping] [tau coughs] munnick this pollution was particulate matter, primary explanations of all the respiratory problems that we see on the highveldparticulate matter 2. 5, small enough to get very deep into your lungs. [overlapping chatter] rachel mokgtsana 30 of the patient around this [indistinct], they are suffering from asthma because of thewhat you call the pollution that is from the [indistinct] around us. We have asthmatic patient, we have t. B. Patient, h. I. V. Patient, and so on. Mathabule something that is painfulthe government doesnt take us seriously. They dont know what you are going through, and even if we go to our consule to ask if they can move us from here to somewhere, it doesnt take us seriously because they think that maybe we are[sniffles]playing or we just want some houses somewhere. [childs congested coughing] mathabule its painful to. To watch your kids dying in front of you. [boy humming quietly] munnick the highveld is a sacrifice zone for the carbonintensive economy, and the people who live there have been sacrificed. Man eskom is a 100 stateowned company, so the government owns eskom. Eskom does support, you know, like, the coal industry. The big portion of our Energy Generation is based, you know, like, on coal. Theres been its called a [indistinct] symbiotic relationship between the coalmining industry and eskom. Let me put it this way about 70 of the Energy Requirement in south africa are met through coal. I think, uh, the simple fact is that weve got it, its in abundance. We still have probably00 more years of coal, you know, like, in the ground. Woman is it immoral to open yet another one in an area like highveld thats clearly got extraordinary levels of pollution on a local level . Mashigo yeah, what you need to realize, as i mention, i mean, on average over the past 10 years, Coal Production in south africa has remained fairly stable, between 250 and 260 million tons per annum. As in when you open new mines, other mines are closing down. Man coal, for the last hundred years or so, has really powered the economy. It was critical to the industrialization of this country. Now, with the declining World Markets for coal, the price of the export coal has collapsed, so the economics of the thing has changed. Im a Public Interest lawyer concerned particularly about mining and mine communities. Presently were putting together a series of legal actions against the coalmining industry. Its a bit of a race against time. There is massive restructuring and reorganization taking place. Essentially, the big majors, the big players who were all involved in the South African coalmining industry are getting out as fast as they can, selling off their assets, splitting them up into tiny parcels, and a corresponding upsurge in small, flybynight little companies with very little accountability doing what they will. Theres no management, so the richest seams are being mined out, and Everything Else is being abandoned. I mean, optimum is a perfect example, one of the biggest coal producers in the country for years. Announcer welcome to optimum coal, a company that combines productivity. Spoor captured by gangsters, they looted the rehabilitation fans and walked away. You know, the mines closed, thousands of people lost their jobs. Announcer we believe in enriching the lives of our employees and enhancing values. Spoor and were left with these gaping holes in the earth. Announcer . Over 3,000 employees. Spoor and no resoces to fix them, so weve got a toxic mess of an environmental disaster, social decay, a collapsing infrastructureurban infrastructure; you know, water systems, sewerage systems, and the likeand you left sitting with what looks like a postapocalyptic nightmare. Zulu here, where we live, there are a lot of abandoned mines. When a mine is abandoned, people go there and mine for themselves. Theres nothing else there is because there are no jobs. There are big mining companies, but they employ people from outside in all of that. We want the story of the artisanal miners to be heard. [man speaking native language] zulu so they work the coal over there and take the coal and put it here on a stockpile and then load it on the sacks, and then they take it up. As you can see, itsits quite heavy. This is another shaft. The coal, many kilometers down there to work, and when they come back, they throwthey stockpile the coal here and same, whichand again, pack it and take it out. Im in environmental activities, so i know that mining is bad. And we have huge eskom power stations that are busy destroying the environment and contributing to climate change. Just come here and take the minerals, and leave the people here angry and leave the people here not working. This guy is yeah, they are tapped illegally, so there is that stigma around them. Yes, see, this guy hauls this sack from all the way down there and up the stairs. And when he came here, when he just put the sacks down, and there is a police van here coming and saying, no, this guy is a criminal. After all this hard work, this guy has that. [man 2 speaks native language] zulu and theyre just going to take it away and say the coal belongs to the mine. Officially, the coal was here before the mine was here, and they say its mine property and the coal belongs to the mine, stuff like that. These people are not criminals because they are just fathers and brothers, looking for something to put on the table. Spoor try and find out whose mine that is, i mean, for starters. Try and work outif you see these abandoned workers, you try and work out. Its layers upon layers of companies and rights and sessions. The dmr couldnt tell you who they belong to. Where are the records . We dont know. No, dead end. Man there is, of course, a big coalmining industry in south africa. It is multifaceted, from mining to transportation of coal tall kinds of services in communities that have built up around the coalmining towns of south africa. The coalmining sector has been an extremely successful example of black economic empowerment, and now suddenly theyve been told, no, no, the future is green, the future is not coal. For them, this is a disaster because of their new investments into the coal sector that they see as possibly becoming stranded assets. [crowd chanting indistinctly] man oh, the challenges that we find ourself into would be the low salaries to our members, and as the union, our role and responsibility is to fight for job security. The mines, some of them are closing because they are saying the export price has dropped and so on, so forth, the coal price has dropped, and so on, so forth. We are of the view that the price has been manipulate a week ago, the president was addressing a wateredback region, that we had mines in that area that can survive ore in existence for the next hundred years. That tells you that we have abundance of coal as a raw merial, and that should be the only source of energy in our country. You know, and unfortunately, we are not going to talk about the global and whatsoever sentiment that people might advance. Those that are scientists, they can raise what their views. It is a myth, and we are not going to allow to be dictated by anyone. [men chanting in native language] [man speaking indistinctly] spoor the proposed mine near the krugera very large, very extensive minewould be devastating for that area for a number of reasons 1water, there simply isnt adequate water; 2it would destroy thousands of hectares of highyield agricultural land; and thirdly, it would be on the border of the Kruger National park, which is a World Heritage site, and it would do damage to the tourism industry, which is one of the few bright spots we have here. Weve been approached regarding this kruger coalmining project by a number of local community organizations. The technique that weve developed is to put up these demands, make these calls, note those objections, and then wait for the dmr to award the license anyway. I must be frank about it. I mean, it would be a really bad thing if there was a coal mine there, but it wouldnt surprise me if the right were granted. [man speing indiinctly] i was at a meeting where they promised 5 jobs with a specific mine, but what happened is that the Mining Company brought their own laborers in. They did not recruit locals to work at the mine because their laborers were already trained as miners, so they just brought them in and started mining. Th make all these promises about jobs and security and the contribution to the local economy and the community, and then they just leave. [sea bird squawks] ooshuizen weve got wonderful sun, weve got a great wind resource. If you look at south africa, it could be, you know, one of the big contributors to Renewable Energy in the world. Its something that can make the economy grow. It just needs to get tapped into. We are still not even at 10 of the countrys electricity being supplied by renewables. I think, with Technology Moving forward, you could get very close to supplying all the energy that the country needs from renewables. The resource is there. Quite a few of the turbines in the country can actually produce more electricity than what they were originally designed for. A day like today, when the wind is blowing nicely, if we could actually sell the excess capacity into the grid, that could supply electricity to about 14,000 basic households. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to sell that excess capacity into the grid at this point. We are capped at the old contractual capacity. Matharka if we were to rely on solar, um, look at todays weather. Its raining, and we dont control weather. If we dontwe go all over a month without wind and so on, so forth, what would then happen to the electricity security of the country . So we are saying we have coal, we have shoal. We go, we mine. Come rain, come shine, everything is always fine with coal. Spoor more and more people are realizing that we are a very waterscarce country. If you look at some of the coalfired power plants in mpumalanga and other parts of the country, its actually massive amounts of water that they consume. One of the big benefits of the renewablesthey dont consume any water. Yelland i dont believe anybody in south africa is seriously suggesting that we can switch off our coalfired power stations, which provide 80 of the power in south africa currently tomorrow. Hmm. Its a vision and a goal towards which we can strive. This is not a South African trendlets move away from coalits a global trend, so, you know, one can try all one likes to hang on to a dying industry, but you cant fight a wave. You have to ride the wave, and the wave of the future is not coal. For me, you know, its better that they ride the wave instead of being left out to sea, looking for the next wave while the winners are having cocktails on the beach. [sea gulls crying] matharka if we say we are no longer going to generate coal through coalfired power stations, and theyre going to solars and so d so, how many people are going to employed in those initiatives . Spoor if you compare perunit of electricity produced, both in the operating and in the construction phase, the number of jobs in the renewable area is higher. Theres the old coal fields of mpumalanga province, where there is an entire coalmining industry in decline, but the big opportunity is that these towns have got roads and schools and clinics and housing and skills. Theyve got welders, electricians, buildersall looking for jobs. And the most important thing that theyve got is a grid connection. This makes them an incredibly Good Opportunity to become Renewable Energy Development Zones of the future. Spoor in the last few years, renewables has actually become the cheapest form of energy thats available, and that is definitely adding impetus to this whole transition to renewables. We just cant wait much longer to make that transition. Munnick there is big scope for renewables to expand. What it needs is to have a proper Renewable Energy industrial strategy. It would be a much more inclusive economy. Mashigo the evidence is there, the proof is there. I mean, why else would we participate, you know, like, in all the initiatives to try and address it at a global level and acknowledge thati mean, eskom, we contribute probably 40 , you know, like, of the Carbon Emissions in the country, so, i mean, its the. Weve admitted it. Wevnever said nay. Were not denialists. We are not denialists. Woman and the eskom ready to change . cause youre the key energy supplier. Are you ready for that change . Mashingo heh heh im not going to answer that. I dont think im the one to answer that. Ha ha ha yeah, but the road map is there. I know were going there, but, yeah, no, that i will not answer. May i please not answer that . Yeah. Announcer earth focus is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundationa margare a. Cargill philanthropy the Orange County community foundation,. And conflicts one of the silence and fice some casuties is often the environment. From the chemical contamination of soil and the collapse of water and food supplies. To the habitat damage caused by displacement. All has devastating consequences
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