South Africa is a prime example of the unsettling connections that exist between race, gender, poverty, and the environment. Apartheid has had and continues to have a devastating effect on black South Africans as well as the environment. The importation of hazardous wastes, the dumping of mercury in rivers, the strip mining of coal and uranium, the outdated methods of producing synthetic fuels, along with the rampant poverty, lack of sewage facilities and deliberate structuring of the notorious 'homelands ' present South Africa with serious environmental concerns. Post-apartheid South Africa has to confront the inherited toxic and environmental crisis as it strives to transform and rebuild South African society.
In order to implement and maintain the racist policies of apartheid, the apartheid regime created 'bantustans' and residential townships. Corporations were given free rein to locate their industrial sites near these areas to access a cheap supply of labor. In addition to the hazardous working conditions, industrial plants have polluted the air, soil and water, thus poisoning the lives and environment of millions of black South Africans. The situation today has not improved as many South Africans are forced to contend with outdated apartheid-era legislation affecting their environment and health:
• The 'bantustans' policy had placed 87 percent of the country's population (all black) on 13 percent of the land.
• South African gold mines extract large quantities of uranium as a secondary product, thus exposing nearby black communities to cancer-causing radium and radon which commonly leak from uranium mine wastes.
• Communities living next to the five major oil refineries are continuously exposed to a hazardous toxic soup including high levels of benzene, sulfur dioxide, toluene and xylene.
• In July 2001, Shell and BP’s leaking underground petrol pipeline in residential South Durban resulted in a leak of over 1 million liters of petrol forcing many families to be relocated.
• The community of Aloes, outside of Port Elizabeth, continues to be exposed to the various smells and leaks from the three adjacent toxic landfill sites that surround them.
• Former workers at the U.S.-owned Vametco Mine outside of Brits are suffering serious illnesses from vanadium exposure while the company continues to deny any link between their former jobs and their current health problems.
• In 1987, 85 percent of South Africa's commercial energy was derived from coal, resulting in accelerated exploitation of coal seams through strip mining and producing some of the worst air pollution in the world. Current air pollution laws do little to change this practice.
• Between 1978 and 1983, 780 of the 3,500 workers at the Penge (Asbestos) Mines in the Eastern Transvaal had contracted asbestosis.
• In Mmafefe, a region of the Lebowa homeland, a health project report documented that 603 out of the 1724 houses in the village, 7 of the 12 schools, and many churches were made from asbestos brick and plaster.
• In the Mngweni River, which flows into the Valley of the Thousand Hills, Thor Chemicals is responsible for mercury concentrations 1,500 times the level at which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declares materials toxic. Thousands of barrels of mercury waste, some of it from U.S. companies Borden Chemicals (Louisiana) and American Cyanide (New Jersey), sit on the Thor property waiting for some form of disposal.