Soweto, South Africa
Saturday, July 05, 2025

Kids in the Snake Park neighborhood call it “Yellow Mountain”. The imposing former gold mine overlooks part of the township of Soweto, South Africa, and is poisoning its inhabitants, according to several local associations.
The pungent-smelling dust from the slope stings the throat and gets stuck between the teeth. And with good reason: according to analyses, the mine tailings site contains highly toxic materials such as arsenic, lead and uranium. A legacy of the gold rush that gave rise to the city of Johannesburg in the 1890s.
In the northern part of the township, a local association, the Snake Park Cerebral Palsy Forum, has counted more than fifteen children suffering from cerebral palsy – not to mention other handicaps and malformations that residents attribute to the mine.

– ‘Because of the mine’ –
Among them is 13-year-old Okuhle, abandoned on the streets of Snake Park as a baby.
“Okuhle can’t walk, talk or use her hands,” explains her adoptive mother, 60-year-old Lilly Stebbe.
Sitting in her wheelchair, the smiling little girl communicates by squealing.
“Because of the mine, Okuhle is also asthmatic,” adds her mother. She also has eye and sinus problems. The 60-year-old herself coughs incessantly. Dust is everywhere here.

“This dust can give you all sorts of cancers, but it can also change your DNA, and your children will be born with deformities,” warns David van Wyk, senior researcher at the Bench Marks Foundation, a non-governmental organization that scrutinizes corporate activity.
According to the country’s Auditor General, there are over 6,000 abandoned mines in South Africa, 2,322 of which are considered to pose a high health risk to neighboring communities.
According to David van Wyk, 15 to 20 million people across the country live close to these toxic substances. Snake Park, at the foot of the mine, is home to over 50,000 residents.
Every month, as part of a study conducted with the University of Johannesburg, the Indiana Jones-like researcher carries out tests in the mine’s landfill, a vast expanse of powdery soil with a reddish river running through it.

– Three-legged goats –
The two-year study aims to measure and identify the concentration of dissolved solids in the water.
On this particular day, his device recorded a concentration of 776 mg per liter. A high level which, he says, makes the water unfit for consumption.
He adds: “This stream contains highly toxic substances, such as uranium and strontium, both of which are radioactive.”
Yet the stream irrigates land farmed by locals, and where flocks graze. According to locals, some goats are born with three legs.

According to residents and Pan African Resources, which bought the mine in 2022 from the previous owner in receivership, the tailings site has already been spreading for some 50 years.
“Give us ten years, maximum, and we’ll remove it completely,” Sonwabo Modimoeng, the company’s local community relations manager, promises AFP.
He admits: “We know it affects people.” In the meantime, the company claims to have installed signage around the site. Insufficient measures, according to local associations.
– “I blame our government” –
Baile Bantseke, 59, lives in a small house a few hundred meters from the old mine. Her grandson Mphoentle, 5, is autistic – a condition the grandmother attributes to the “mountain”.
Numerous studies, including one published in 2024 in the journal Environmental Health, indicate a link between heavy metal exposure and the development of autism.
I’m angry at our government,” the grandmother told AFP. Because if it looked after us, we wouldn’t have such problems.”
Affected families receive 2,310 rand a month (113 euros) in assistance for disabled children. Enough to buy food, clothes and diapers, but not enough to pay for transport to the Baragwanath hospital, fifteen kilometers away, where the children are supposed to be monitored.

“We don’t have wheelchairs or pick-ups” to transport them, laments Kefilwe Sebogodi, founder of the Snake Park Cerebral Palsy Forum, who is raising her niece with cerebral palsy.
Every month, around 15 mothers, aunts and grandmothers gather in a room with broken windows in the community center to “show that children count in the community”, explains Kefilwe.
One of the mothers present that day, visibly exhausted, questions the usefulness of these meetings. But Kefilwe assures her: “We’ve already achieved a lot, because we’re still standing.”

Humaniterre with AFP