[water dripping] [indndistinct chatter] man: just watch your steps, yeah? voice-over: most of the people that work here, they used to work at mines before. so whenn the mine decidides to shut down, they have nothing to do but to go down ththere and dig for themselves. [coal crunching underfoot] man 2: we find t that coal is or national r resources. . it's the only thing t that can generate electricity at this point inin time. woman: the owner of the mines are here to get profit. they

don't care what going on with the communities. man 2: any a activity by human beings will l somehow, you know, like, changege the ecosystem tht we operate in. zulu: where the guys work,t's way, way, way too fafar. i think we can--about 1.5 kilometer. man, voice-ovever: yes, south africa does have m mountains o f cocoal, but wewe also have mouns of asbestos, and we e decide to leave e asbestos in the ground wherere it belongs. man n 2, voice-over: where the coal mines and the power stations are located is amongst one of t the most polluted areas on earth.. man n 3, voice-o-over: a very, y large cost to coal-mining. yoyou're basically signining deh warrants foror people who live there. zulu: the people here are working just to o put food on the table.

there, they just have to survive. [camamera lens clicking] announcer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation--a margaret a. cargill philanthropy-- the orange county community foundation, and the farvue foundation. [distant rumumbling]

man: and we've got 17 coal fields in south africa, and more than half of them are bunched together on mpumalanga highveld. it's's called the central l bas. in our research, we have spoken to manany people. i think ththis really b bad on the e ground. is reallyly, really bad. woman: there are t two mines he. that one is s the old mine. y u can see the dust that is coming out when they are blasting, you

can n even smell it. even n if u wipe yourself like this, you-- there's a black dust in your hand. so what about if youou inhale it? [distant chatter] [child's congested cououghing] woman: i moved to mpumalanga highveld for better future. i've worked in n the mines,s, and i s affecteded with sinunus while is working there. in 2013, , i got my firboborn. [coughing continues] womaman: 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, s so he told me, "the area t that yoare living i in is too didirty, so most of the e ks are affectcted with asasthma bee they're inhahaling dirty air."

2015, i get my second-born. 6 months down the line, she was admitted at the hospital, having the very samame signs. they sometitimes struggggle to breaee and they strugglgle to speak. sometimes theyey don't breathe at all. you can even seeee that she or he's 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 c coal. there's s sizable pollution, a d for a lolong time, i i know, you know, since ththe late eightiesi think k we've known that we were equal toto what wawas in easast germany in thehe bad air quality on the highveleld. and there's something calleded a [indiststi, which isis a test yoyou do befoe yoyou get employment, momostly t

power stations and in the mines, and locals tell us that they regularly fail the [indistinct] test because they've grown up in a very polluted area. as they've grown up, they're unfit for work. [birds chirpining] @@au coughs]

munnick: t this pollutution was particulate matter, primary exexplanations of all the respspiratory problems that we e on the highvhveld--particulate matter 2.5, smsmall enough to gt vevery deep into your lulungs. [overlapping chatter] rachel mokgtsana: 30% of the patient around this [indistinct], they are suffering from asthma because of thehe--wt you call the pollution that is from the [indistinct] around us. we have asthmatic patient, we have t.b. . patient, h h.i.v. patient, and so on.

mathabule: something that is painful--the government doesn't take us seriously. they don't know w what you are going throu, and even if we go to our consulate to ask if f theyan move us s from here e to somewh, it doeoesn't take us seriously because they think that maybe we are--[sniffles]--playing or we justst want some houses somewhe. [child's congested c coughing] mathabule: it's painful to... to watch your kids dying in front of you.u. [boyoy humming q quietly] mumunnick: thehe highveld d is a sacrificice zone foror the carbonon-intensive economy, , ad the people who live there have been sacrificed.

man: eskom is a 100% state-owned company, so the government owns eskom. eskom d does support, you know, like, the coal industry. the big portion of our e energy generation is babased, you know, like, on c coal. there's been--- it's's called a a [indistincnct] symbiotic relationship betetween the coal-mining industry and eskom. let me put it this way: about 70% ofof the energy requiremenent in south africa ae met through coal. i think, uh, the simple fact is that we'vee got it, it's in abundance. we still have probably 200 m moe years of coal, youou know, liki, in the ground. woman: is it immoral to open yet another onone in an area like highveld that's clearly got extraordinary levels of

pollution on a local level? mashigo: yeah,h, what you need o realize, as i mentioion, i mean, on average over the e past 10 years, coal production in south africa has remained fairly stablele, 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. i'm m a public interesest lawyer concerned particularly about mining and mine communities. presently we're putting together a series o of legal acactions against the coalal-mining inindustry. it's a bit o of a re agaiainst time. . there is m mae restructuring g and reorganizatn taking place. essentiaially, the big majors, the big players s wo

were all involved in the south afafrican coal-m-mining industre getttting out as fast as they c, selling off f their assets, splitting them up into tiny parcels, and a corresponding upsurge in small, fly-by-night littttle companies with vevery little accouountability doing wt they will. thehere's no managemement, so the richest s s are being minened out, and everything elslse is being abandoned.d. i mean, optimum isa perfecect example,e, one of thte biggggest coal p producers i ine country for years. announcer: welcome to optimum coal, a company ththat combinens productivity... spoor: captured by gangsters, they looted the rehabilitation fans a and walked away. you u k, the minenes closed, , thousandsf people lost their jobs... announcer: we e believe inin enriching the lives of our employees and enhancing values... spoor: and we're left with thehe gaping holes in the eartrth... announuncer: ...over 3,000 employees... spoor: a and no resources to f x them, so we've got a toxic mess of an environmental disaster,

social decay, a collapsing infrfrastructure--urban infrastructuture; you know, watr systems, seweragage systems, and the likeke--and you're left sitting with what looks like a post-apocalyptic n nightmare. zulu: here, , where we le, there are a lolot of abandoned minese. when a mine is abandoned, people go there and m mine for themselves. there's 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 speakaking native language]

zulu: so they y work the c coalr there anand take the coal and dt it here on a stotockpile and thn load it on t the sacks, and then they take it up. as you can see, it's--it's quiuite heavy. ththis is another shaft.t. the , manyny kilometerers down there o work, and when they come back, they throw----they stockpile the coal here and same, which--and again, p pack it and take it o . i'm in environmental activities, soso i know that mining g is ba. and we have huge eskom power stations that are e busy destroying the environment and contriributing to climate chcha. 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 s that stigmgma arod them. yes, see, thisis 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 sayiying, "no, this guy is a criminal." after all this hard work, this guyuy has that. [man 2 speaks native language] zulu: and they're 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 it's 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 out--if you see these abandoned workers, you try and work out. it's layers upon layers of companies and d rights and sessions. the r couldn't tell you who ththey bebelong to. where a t the records? we don't know. no, dead end.

man: there is, of course, a big coalal-mining industry in south afafrica. it is multi-fafaceted, from mining to transnsportationf coco to all kikinds of servicecn communitieies that havave builtp around t the coal-mimining townf south africa. the coal-mining sector has been an extremely successful example of black economic empowerment, and now suddenly they've been n told, ", no, the future is grgreen, the fututure is not coal." for them, this is a a disaster becausese f their r new investments into the coal sectotor that thehey see as possibly becoming stranded asassets. [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 responsibibilitys s to fight for

job b security. the e mines, sof 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 p price has been manipulated. a w week ag t the president was addressing a watered-back region, that we had mimines in thahat area thahat cn survive or be e in existence for the next hundreded years. that tells you that we haveve abundae of coal l as a raw matererial, d that should be the only source of enenergy in our couountry. yu 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 wewe are not going to allow to be dictated by anyone. [men chanting in native language]

[m[man speaking indistininctly]

spoor: the proposed mine near the kruger--a very large, very extensive mine--would be devastating for that area for a number of rereasons: 1----water, there e simply isnsn't adequatae water; 2----it would d destroy thousands of hectares of high-yield 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. we've been approached regarding this kruger coal-mining project by a number of local comommunity organizatitions. the technique that we've developed is to put up these demands, make these calllls, note those objectction, and then wait for the dmr to award the license anyway. i must be frank about it. i mean, it would b be a really bad thing if there was a coal mine there, but it wouldn't surprise me if the right were grantnted.

[man speaking indistinctly] i was at a meeting w where they promisised 500 jobs with a a specific mine, but what happened is t that the mining c company broughght their owown laborers . ththey did not recruit l localso work at the mine because their laborers were already trained as miners, so they just brought them in and stararted mining. they makake all these promiseses about jobs and security and the contribution to the local economy y and the cocommunity, d then they just leaeave. [sea bird squawks] ooshuizen: we've got wonderful sun, we've got a great wind

resoururce. if you look at south africa, it could be, you know, one of the big contributors to renewable energy in the world.d. it's something that can make the economy grow. it just needs to get tapped into. we are still not even at 10% of the country's electricity being supplied by renewables. i thinink, 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 ththan what they wee originally designed for. a day like today, whenen the wind is blowing g nicely, ifif we could actuallyly sell the excess capacity into the e grid, that could supply elelectricity t to about t 14,000 basasic househol. ununfortunatelely, we are e not alallowed to s sell that e exces capacity intnto the grid at this point. we are capped at the old contractuaual capacityty. matharka: if we were to rerely n solar,r, um, look at today's's weather. it's raining, and we

don't control weather. if we don't--we go all ovever a month without wind and so on, so forth, what would then happen to the electricity security of the cocountry? so we a are sing g we have coal, we have shoal. we go, we mine. come rain, come shine, everything is always fine with coal. spoor: more and d more people ae realizining that we are a very water-scarce country. if you look at some of the coal-fired power plants in mpumalanga and other parts of the country, it's actually massive amounts of water that they consume. one of the big benefits of the renewables--they don't cononsume any y water. yelland: i i don't belelieve any in s south africica is serioiouy suggestingng that we c can swith off our r coal-fireded power statations, whicich provide e 8f the power in southth africa currently momorr. hmm. it's's a vision and a goal towas

which h we can strive. this is t a south african trend--"let's move away from coal"--it's a global trend, so, you know, one can try all one likes to hang on to a dying industry,y, but you cacan't fight t a wave. you havo ride the wave, and the wave of the future is not coal. for me, yoyou know, itit's better r thay ride the wave instead d of being left out to sea, looking for the nextxt wave whilile the winnnnee having cocktails on e beach. [seaea gulls crying] matharka: if we e say we are no lolonger going to generarate col through h coal-fired power stations, , ansthey're going too solarsrs and so and so, how w my people are going to be employed in thohose initiatives?? spoor: if you compare per-unit of electricity produced, both in the operating and in the construction p phase, the number of jobs in the renewable area is higher.

there's the old coal fields of mpumalanga province, where there is an entire coal-mining industry in decline, but the big opportunity is that these towns have got roads and schools and clinicics and housing and skski. they've got welders, electricians, builders--all looking for jobs. and the most important thing that they've got is a grid connection. this makes them an incredibly good opportunity to become renewable energy development zozones of thehe fu. spoor: in the last few years, renewables has actually become the cheapest form of energy that's available, and that is definitely adding impetus to this whole transition to

renewables. we just can't 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 wouldld we particicipate, u know, like, in all the initiatives to try and address it at a global level a and acknowledge that--i i mean, esk, we contributute probably 40%, you know, like, of the c carbon emissions in the country, so, i mean, it's's there. we've admitd it. we'v've never said nay. wewe not t denialists. we are not denialists. womaman: and the eskom ready t o change? 'cauause you're the key energy supplier. are you ready for that change? mashingo: heh heh! i'm not going to answer that. i i don't thinik i'm the one to a answer that. ha ha haha! yeah, but the road p is thehere. i know we're goioing there,e, but, yeah, no, thatat i will not a answer. mamay i pleasese not answer tht?

yeah. annonouncer: "earth focus"s" ise possible i in part by y a grantm anne ray f foundation--a-a margt a. cargill philalanthropy-- ththe orange c county communitity foundation, and the farvue foundat

announcer: funding for this program was provided by the minerva nolte estate. [music playing] woman: people e are getting watr in t their home.e. [m[man speakining spanh]h] womaman 2: we needenender equalility, and wewe need this reflflected in n national prioririties. narrator: in india, millions of city residents don't have running water in their homes. narrator: w west virgininia, drinking water is threatened by chemical spills, mining, and hydraulic fracking wells. woman: this is my water from this morning. narrator: on the other hand, cities across europe are buyin