[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 that coal is our national r resources. . it's the ononly thing that can gegenerate 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, change t the ecosystem tht we operate in. zulu: where the guys work, it's way, w way, way too far. i t thk we can--about 1.5 kilometer. man, voicece-over: yes, south africa does hahave mountains of coal, bubut we also have mountns of asbestos, and we decide to leleave asbestos in the ground where it b belongs. man 2, voice-over: where the coal mines and the power stations are located is amongst one e of the most polluted areas on eararth. man 3, voioice-over: a very, vey lalarge cost to coal-minining. you're basically s signing death warrantsts for people who live there. zulu: the people here are woworking just to put food on the table.

there, they just have to survive. [camererlens clicking] announcer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation--a margaret a. cargill philanthropy-- the ororange county community y fountion,, and the farvue fououndation. [distant rumblining]

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 called ththe central basin. in our research, we have spoken to many people. . i think this s really b bad on the e ground. is really, really b bad. woman: t there are two mines h . ththat one is the old mine. if u can see the dust that is coming out when they are blasting, you

can even smellll it. even if you wipe yourself like this, you-- there's a black dust in your hand. so what ababout if you ininhale it? [distant chatter] [child's's congested coughining] woman: i moved to mpumalanga highveld for better future. i've worked in the mimines, and i i s affefected with h sinus whililes working ththere. in 2013, i got my firirstborn. [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 whwhy, so he told me, "the ea that yoyou are liviving in is too dirty, s so most of the kids are afaffected with asth b becae they're inhaling dirty air."

2015, i get my second-born. 6 months down the line, she was admitted at the hospital, having the very same signs. they sosometimes ststruggle to breate and they struggle to speak. sometimes they don't breathe at allll. you can even see that she e 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 metats thatat come out t of the coaoal. there's sisizable pollution, and for a long time, i k know, you know, since the late eighties, i thinink we've knknown that w wee equal l to what wawas in eastt germanany in the b bad air quauy on thehe highveld.d. and therers somethining called a [indistini, which is a a test you do before you u get employment, mostly at

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 ununfit for work. [birds chirprping] [tau coughs]

munnick: this s pollution was particulate matter, primary explanations of all the respiratory problems that we see on thehe highveld--particulalate matter 2 2.5, small l enough tot very d deep into y your lungs. [overlapping chatter] rachel mokgtsana: 30% of the patient around this [indistinct], they are suffering from asthma because of the--what you call the pollution that is from the [indistinct] around us. we have asthmatic patient, w we have t.b. patitient, h.i.v.v. patient, and so on.

mathabule: something that is painful--the government doesn't take us seriously. they don't know what you are going through, and even if we go to our consulate to ask itheyey can move us from here to somewhere, it doesn't take us seriously because they thihink that maybee are--[snsniffles]--playing or re justst want some houses somewhe. [child's congested c coughing] mathabule: it's painful to... to watch your kids dying in frontnt of you.u. [boyoy humming quietly] mumunnick: the highveld d is a sacrificice zone foror the carbonon-intensiveve economy, ,d the peoplele who live there have been sacririficed.

man: eskom is a 100% state-owned company, so the government owns eskom. eskom does supporort, you know, like, the coal industry. the big poportion of our energyy generation i is based, you know, like, on coal. t there's beeeen- it's calleled a [indisistinct] symbiotic relationship between the coal-mining 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 sisimple fact is that wewe'e got it, it's in ababundancnce. we s still have e probably 2 20e years of c coal, you know,w, li, in thehe ground. womaman: is it immoral to open t another one in an area like highveld that's clearly got extraordinary levels of

pollution on a local level? mashigo: yeah, what t you need o realize, as i memention, i m me, on aveverage over the e past 10 years, coal production in south africaca has remained fairly stable, between 250 and 260 million tons per annum. as in when you open new mines, other mines are closing down. n: coal, f for the last hundndrd 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 a public interest lawyer concerned particularly about mining and mine communities. presently we're putting together a seriries of legal actionss against the coal-minining industryry. it's a b bit of a re against time. there e is massive restructururing and reorganizatn taking place. essentialllly, the big majors, the big players who

were all involved d in the south african coal-mining g industryre getting ouout as fast t as they, selling off their r assets, splitting them up into tiny parcels, and a corresponding upsurge in small, fly-by-night little comompanies with very little accountabilility doing wt they will. therere's no managementnt, so the richest ses are being mined d out, and everything else e is being abandoned. i i mean, optimum isa perfect t example, o one of thee biggesest coal proroducers in ne country for yeyears. announcer: welcome to optimumm coal, a cocompany that combines productivity... spoor: captured by gangsters, they looted the rehabilitatition fans andnd walked away. you kno, the mines closed, thousands of people lost theieir jobs... announcer: we believe in enenriching the lives of our employees and enhancing values... spspoor: and we're left with the gapingng holes in n the earth.h. announcer: ...over 3,000 employees... spoor: and no resources to fix them, so we've got a toxic mess of an enenvironmental disastere,

sosocial decay, a collapsing infrastructure--urban infrfrastructurere; you know, wr systems,s, sewerage systems, and the like----and you'rere left sitting with w what looks like a post-apocalyptic nigightmare. zulu: here, where wewe live, the are a lot of ababandoned mines. when a mine is abandoned, people gogo there and mine for themselves. therere's nothing ee there is because there are no jobs. there are big mining companies, but they employ people from outside in all o of that. we want the story of the artisanal miners to be heard. [man speaking natitive language]

zuzulu: so they work thehe coalr there e and take t the coal anat it h here on a stockpile and thn load it onon the sacks, and then they take it up. as you can see, it's--it's quite heavy. this i is another shaft. thehe , many kililometers down there t o work, and whenen they come back, they t throw--they stockpilele e cocoal here and same, whwhich--d agagain, pack it and takake it . i'm in environmental activities, so i know that mining is bad. and we havave huge eskom power stations thahat are busy dedestroying t the environment d contributing to climimate chang. 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 illeleg, so thehere is thatat stigma arad 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 downwn, and theres 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 they're just going to take it away and say the coal belongs to the mine. officially, the coal was here before the mimine was here, and thehey says 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 n layers of companis and rights and sessions. the dmr coululdn't tell you whwho they belong to. where are the records? we don't know. no, dead end.

man: there is, of course, a big coal-mining inindustry in south africa. it is multi-fafaceted, from mining to traransportationf coal to all l kinds of s servicn commununities thatat have builip around the coal-mining towns of south africa. the coal-mining sector has been an extremely successful example of black economic empowerment, and now suddenly thehey've been n told", no, the future i is green, the future is not coal." for them, this is a a disaster because off their new investments into the coal sectotor that they see as possibly becoming strandeded 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 responsibilityty is to figight r

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 thehe price hasas been manipulated.d. a week ago, the president was addressing a watered-back region, that t we d mines in that area that t n susurvive or be in e existence r the next hundred years. that tells you that we have abundance of coal as a raw material, and that s 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 g indistinctly]

spoor: the proposed mine near the kruger--a very large, very extensive e mine--woululd be devastating for that area for a numberer of reasonons: 1--watet, there simply isn't a adequate water; 2--it would destroy thousands s of hectares of high-yield agrgricultural 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 approachcd regarding this kruger coal-mining project by a number of local community organizazations. thehe technique that we've developed is to put up thehese demands, make thehese calls, note ththose objections, and thenen wait for the dmr toto 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 wouldn't surprise meme if the righwere granteded.

[manan speaking g indistinctly] i was at a a meeting w where thy promised 500 jobs with a specific mine, but what hahapped is that the miningng company brought their owown laborers in. they did notot recruit locals to work at t the mine because thehr laborers were alreready traineds miners, so they y just brought them i in and stararted mining. they makake all these promises abouout jobs and security y ande contributition to the local economy y and the community, a 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. 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 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 produduce more electricity than what they were originally designed for. a day lilike today, , when the w winds blowowing nicelyly, if we could actutually sell the excessss capacity into the grid, that cocould supplyly electricicity o ababout 14,00000 basic hououseh. unfortununately, we e are not allowed d to sell ththat excesss capacity into the grid at this point. we are capped at the old contraractual capapacity. mamatharka: if we were t to reln solar, um, look at tododay's

weather. it's rainining, and we don't control weather. if we don't--we go all over a month without wind and so on, so forth, what would then happen to the electricity y security of fe coununtry? so o we are saying we have coal, we have shoal. we go, we mine. come rain, come shine, everytything is always f fine with coal. spoor: m more and more people ae realizing 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 d don't consume any wawater. yeyelland: i d don't belieieve y in sououth africa a is seriousuy susuggesting t that we canan swh off our cocoal-fired p power statioions, which h provide 808f the power in south africa currently tomorrrrow. hmm.

it's a vision and a goal towards which we can strive. thihis 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 toto a dying industry, b but you can't fight a a wave. you have o ride the wave, and the wave of the future is not coal. r me, you know, it's better that theyy ride the wave inead of being left out to o sea, looking for e next wave while the wiwinners ae having cococktails on the beach. [sea gulls c crying] matharka: if w we say we are no longer goioing to genenerate col througugh coal-fired power stationsns, and they're going go solars and so o and so, how many people a are going t to be empld in those initiatives? spoor: if you compare per-unit of electricity produced, both in the opoperating and in the construction 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 t the g opportunity is that these towns have g got roads a and schoolsld clinics and housing and skills. they'v've got welders, electricians, builders--all looking for jobs. and the momost important thing that they've got is a grid connection. this makes them an incredibly good opportunity to become renewable energy development zones s of the futu. spoor: in the lastst few years, renewawables 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 incnclusive economy. mashigo: the evidence is there, the proof f is there. i mean, wy else would we participate, you know, like, in all the initiatives to t try and address itit at a global level a and acknowledge that--i mean, eskom, we contribute probablyly 40%, you know, like, of the carbon emissionons in the country, sosi mean, it's's there. wewe've admd it. we've never sasaid nayay. we not denialists. we are not denenialist woman: and the eskom ready to change? 'cause you're the key energy supplier. are you ready for that change? mashshingo: heh h heh! i'm n nog to answewer that. i don'n't thik i'm m the one to answer ththat. ha ha ha! yeah, bubut the road p is thehere. i knowow we're going there,e, but, yeah, no, thatat i will not a answer. may i please not a answer that?

yeah. announcer:r: "earth fofocus" ise possibible in part by a granantm anne ray f foundation--a marargt a. cargillll philanthrhropy-- the oranange county community fofoundation, and the farvue foundat?o?ñ?ñ?o?"

announcer: funding for this program was provided by the minerva nolte estate. [music playing] woman:n: people are getting watr in their he.e. [m[man speakining spanish]h] woman 2: w we need genender equalityand we neeeed this rereflected in nationall prioririties. narrator: in india, millions of city residents don't have running water in their homes. narrator: in west virgininia, drininng water i is threatened y chemical spills,inining, a hydraulic fracking wells. woman: this is my water from this morning. narrator: on the other hand, cities across europe are buying