Pastor Moses Vilane lives in Masakane. In the background is the Duvha Power station, one of 12 coal-fired power stations in Mpumalanga owned by Eskom. (Photo: Thom Pierce/Spotlight)News & Features
4th August 2025 | Sue Segar
Emissions from power stations and dust from coal mines in South Africa’s “energy mecca” are making many people in the area sick. For the first article of a new Spotlight special series, writer Susan Segar and photographer Thom Pierce travelled to Mpumalanga to get first-hand accounts of what people living in the Emalahleni local municipality are going through.
If you drive along the main road from Emalahleni (previously Witbank) towards Bethal in Mpumalanga, there’s a road to the left that takes you across the Olifants River to a small community called Masakhane.
Overlooking Masakhane, about half a kilometre away, is Eskom’s enormous Duvha Power Station, its smoke-spewing chimneys 300 metres tall. Surrounding the settlement are numerous coal mines, both active and abandoned. Between them, these mines supply millions of tons of coal to keep the area’s power stations burning, so that South Africa has electricity.
On the way here, you’ll see the coal trucks, one after the next, hurtling in both directions along the potholed road, as they deliver load after load of coal to fuel Duvha.
It is no wonder the area was renamed Emalahleni, which translates to ‘place of coal’. But for many people living here, it has also become a place of dirty air that makes them sick, as they told Spotlight.
‘See how they left this place’
Near one abandoned mine is a large pond, a sickly greenish brown. A pile of discarded mining masks lies in the mud. In the background, always, is the smoky pall from Duvha. It’s one of 12 coal-fired power stations in Mpumalanga, all owned by Eskom. Everywhere, are the pylons, which, for years, simply didn’t benefit the people of Masakhane, who until a few years ago didn’t have electricity.
“See how they left this place,” says pastor Moses Vilane. From the ridge where we’re standing, he points to the abandoned mine and the landscape around it. Below us, a few locals are digging into the dirt with pickaxes and scraping bits of coal into their barrows with spades. A woman, draped in a skirt in the colours of the South African flag, gives us a friendly wave.
At the abandoned coal mine, the surface is crunchy, hard and sharp under foot. Here and there are sludgy puddles of mud, sometimes black, sometimes red. There are hillocks of red dirt, mounds of coal residue, a few broken-down buildings, the remains of a shaft.
“It smells of hazard,” says Vilane. “They just left it like this. This mine was meant to be closed up when they finished mining. Criminals could dump a body here and nobody would know.”
Last year, he says, a child had to be rescued from the deep mud.
Community after community
Masakhane is just one of the communities in the Mpumalanga Highveld where people are exposed to dangerously high levels of air pollution. This heavily industrial area, with its huge concentration of coal-fired power stations, coal mines, petrochemical facilities and refineries, is South Africa’s energy mecca, but it’s also one of the most polluted places in the country. Activists call it the sacrifice zone, or the place where people sacrifice their lives so that the rest of the country can have electricity.
In 2007, the then Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism declared the area, among others, a pollution hotspot in terms of the National Air Quality Act because the air was regularly found to be over the legal limit for harmful pollutants. In landmark litigation activists dubbed “the deadly air case”, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria found in 2022 that the poor air quality in the Highveld Priority Area (HPA) violated the right to a healthy environment. This judgment was recently upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal.
In Phola, Empumelelweni, Vosman, Overline, Ackerville, MNS informal settlement, wherever we go in the area, the story is the same – residents describe their respiratory and other ailments. Mothers show us their children with chest issues. Old people show us their collections of inhalers and other medication. Always, there’s the cruel contrast between the towering power stations and massive mine dumps, and the shattered remnants of rural life.
Masakhane was once a farming area, but today most of the land is owned by mining companies. There are a few goats grazing along the side of the road, but there’s not much grazing land left here.
‘Most of our community don’t work’
“We have about 6 000 people living here. The people who are exposed are people living around the mines but not working in the mines. The business forums control the jobs around here, and they want bribes for jobs, so most of our community don’t work,” says Ndabezitha Mahlangu, a traditional leader in Masakhane. Business forums can be a legitimate mechanism for facilitating local involvement in construction and other large projects, but many such forums across the country have in recent years been accused of extortion, intimidation and other unlawful actions.
“They [the owners of the abandoned mines] left a mountain full of coal dust and, whenever it’s windy, the dust comes up, and the people inhale it,” says Mahlangu. “It affects their breathing and their lungs. Many of the people around here have sinus or asthma, and some have skin problems like eczema.”
Mahlangu took over as the local traditional leader when his father passed away last December. “Even when they were still here, while my father was chief, there was no proper consultation. The mine didn’t provide jobs or healthcare to our community. They just turned a blind eye to the people of this village,” he claims.
“Now, the people around here look to me to help rehabilitate the mine [to shut it down properly] but it’s difficult with no funding,” he says. According to Mahlangu, the local municipality hasn’t offered much support. Spotlight sent questions to the municipality about this and other issues, but had not received answers by the time of publication (if they do respond, we will link to their full response in part 2 of this series).
Not far from the abandoned mine, we meet Elisabeth Mtloung who runs a community centre, comprising a creche, a library and a clinic, partly focusing on orphans and child-headed households.
“I don’t think people are getting sick, I know people are getting sick,” she says. “It’s a fact that most of the people living alongside the mines have chest problems, me included. And as for the people working in the mines, it’s even worse.”
“Some of the mines hand out free milk to the mineworkers, because it helps to remove the dust from their lungs. They also provide it in some of the schools around here. But people are still getting sick,” she says. While milk may help with general nutrition, there is no evidence that it specifically helps mitigate the effects of air pollution. A leading pulmonologist consulted by Spotlight described the claim as dubious.
Cracked walls
In the near-by village of Vosman, one is struck by how many of the houses have cracked walls, something locals say is caused by blasting in the mines. The nearest coal mine is just a few hundred metres away. Residents say they regularly have to replace windows, and sometimes roofs.
In April this year, the Witbank News reported that a blasting incident in Vosman left several houses in ruins, with others badly damaged.
Related Posts
Sitting on a bed that 28-year-old Vosman mom Mbali Mathebula shares with her two daughters, she demonstrates how to use a nebulizer. When she can’t afford the medication that goes into the nebulizer, she says she just uses salt water.
Mathebula says both her daughters have been hospitalised due to asthma. “She just couldn’t breathe. The clinic told me it was flu, but later with further checkups, a doctor at the Witbank General Hospital told us it was asthma caused by air pollution,” Mathebula says of one of her daughters.
The two children, both withdrawn and small, stay close by their mother’s side as she speaks. Each breath seems to be a labour for these girls. Their mother’s voice is rasping.
“Whenever they’re blasting, immediately we must get inside,” she says. “As soon as we hear it or feel the blasting, we rush inside because of the dust.”
And the nearby mining is far from the only challenge. Like many communities in South Africa, Vosman is not immune to power cuts, even though much of the country’s electricity is generated just around the corner.
“If there’s a power failure, we can’t use the nebulizer because it needs electricity,” Mathebula explains. “If one of my daughters has an asthma attack when the electricity is out, I have to get to hospital immediately.” If this happens at night, then she says she must find transport to get to the hospital. “If I have used all my grant money on food, and have no money, I must run around in the dark asking neighbours to lend me money.”
It was her daughters’ illness which led to Mathebula joining the so-called “Cancel Coal” case which saw activists joining forces to stop government’s plan to build another 1 500 megawatts power station in her area.
In December last year, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria ruled that the government’s decision to procure 1 500 MW of new coal-fired power was unlawful and invalid on the basis that the Minister of Mineral Resources, and the National Energy Regulator of SA (NERSA) did not adequately consider the impact of new coal power on the constitutional rights of people, particularly children.
‘He always comes through for me’
Sitting beside each other, Tony Mtimunye, 26, and Bongani Mahlangu, 28, who have been friends since their teens, speak in the chesty way so familiar in this part of the country. Both have suffered from asthma for years and both live in Empumelelweni, a sprawling informal settlement not far from Vosman.
“Whenever I run out of inhalers, I run over to Bongani’s house. He always comes through for me,” says Mtimunye. “He knows he can depend on me too when he runs out,” he adds.
“In summer, an inhaler can last me three months, but in winter, I go through one a month. I always carry one with me, but sometimes it runs out,” says Mtimunye. He carries a bag around with him with one or two asthma pumps just in case a child needs it, he says. “I know that not all people can afford asthma pumps. I’m like the local pump dealer,” he says.
After meeting Promise Mabilo, coordinator of the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement, Mtimunye says he started linking his illness to the environment he lives in. “I realised what I am feeling is not just random, it’s actually an environmental injustice,” says Mtimunye who now works as a health campaigner with Vukani.
“There’s a real lack of knowledge in our communities about the toxic air around Emalahleni. Most of the people can’t link what they feel in their lungs to the air around them. They have normalised it. They just go to the clinic and hope to be treated. We are out here to educate them as much as we can,” he says.
In another house in Empumelelweni, Nomhlekhabo Nkosi shows us her collection of asthma paraphernalia – white pumps, brown pumps, Asthavent pumps and a purple inhaler disc which releases pre-measured doses of medication to reduce inflammation and makes it easier to breathe.
Nkosi says she barely needs the asthma pump when she is in Nelspruit, where she studies. She ascribes that to the better air quality there. Others in the community also tell us that their symptoms lift when they travel to other parts of the country.
‘Is this safe?‘
The informal community of Ackerville lies in the foothills of the Ferrobank Industrial Park, which is home to a huge plant belonging to Ferrometal and a range of other industrial sites relating to fuel, gas, steel, coal and chrome. A few kilometres away are Samancor Chrome, Highveld Steel and Transalloys.
Ackerville is surrounded by both active and abandoned mines. Here too, it’s hard to miss the heaps of coal waste and the pools of stagnant water scattered across the landscape, all beneath a constant smoky pall hanging overhead. During our visit, a flame burns from a pipe high in the sky at Ferrometal.
A woman, who does not wish to be identified, is hanging out her washing when we walk by. She says she has lived in Ackerville since 1993 and has three children, aged 22, 14 and 4. She says they all have sinus and respiratory issues.
“The dust is everywhere, all the time. We go inside at five o’clock, and we shut the windows, to stop the dust getting in,” she says.
Driving out of Ackerville, we stop at a local medical centre, where we meet a doctor, who is doing a rotation at the facility. He tells us that he admits “one or two” people into hospital every day with respiratory issues, “mainly pneumonia which can be associated with lower respiratory tract infections”.
Although he hasn’t worked in the area for very long, he believes that air pollution is playing a major role in people’s illnesses and is exacerbating cases of asthma.
“You’re looking at the gases from the mines … people are using coal stoves, and they are burning bushes … in the rural areas here so that also plays a role, but the mining and the dust is without doubt contributing to people’s ill health,” he says.
Most experts seem to agree that air pollution is indeed causing much ill-health in the HPA – government admits as much in several policy documents. But the details of what types of pollution are involved and what they do to the body are somewhat complex. Several gasses like SO2, NO2, and O3 are at elevated levels in parts of the HPA, as are small particulate matter (often referred to as PM10 and PM2.5 depending on the size of the particles). This soup of pollutants impact different people differently and has been linked to a variety of health issues, ranging from respiratory conditions like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, to cardiovascular issues such as heart disease and stroke.
Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that air pollution is to blame for around 6.7 million premature deaths per year. Levels of key pollutants like SO2 and PM10 in the HPA routinely exceed the WHO’s recommended safe levels.
As we continue our interview with the doctor in Ackerville, he suddenly stops talking. “Is this safe?” he asks. Up to this point he had been talking freely, but something in the air had abruptly changed. Continuing after a long moment, he politely asks us not to use his name in our reporting. As with several others we spoke to, there is a sense that dirty air might not be the only dangerous thing in the area.
*This is part one of a Spotlight special series on air pollution and health in the Emalahleni area in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province. Part two will focus on the activism, government actions, and litigation relating to the air quality crisis in the area.
Note: SECTION27 was one of the parties involved in the ‘Cancel Coal’ case. Spotlight is published by SECTION27, but is editorially independent – an independence that the editors guard jealously. The Spotlight editors gave special attention to maintaining this editorial firewall in the production of this story.
