Victim of the Coal Plant at Informal Settlement in South Africa

Thomas Mnguni, an environmental justice activist, lives with his young family in Middelburg, just outside eMalahleni (Witbank). He is concerned about the impacts of mining, which exposes people to dust and which causes people’s houses to crack. He doesn’t see any
benefits from building new coal-fired power stations. Like many in his community, his family is often forced to buy bottled water to drink because of concerns about the quality of the tap water.
“Sometimes in desperate circumstances we drink the tap water, but in common cases we buy drinking water.”
“They say they want to build coal power stations because the country needs more electricity, the question we are asking is electricity for whom…In Middelburg we have three coal power stations, yet we still have communities without electricity and people
who can’t afford electricity, so what good does building a new coal power station serve us as a community?...The Highveld has very good weather for solar and wind generation. Getting people involved in producing their own electricity would help.”