- In Snake Park, Soweto, activist Thokozile Mntambo is training her community to help her research whether the mine dump towering over their homes is making them sick.
- A century of gold mining on the Witwatersrand has left mountains of waste that contain heavy metals and toxins.
- Snake Park’s volunteers believe the tailings dust is the source of many residents’ breathing problems, chronic sicknesses and birth defects.
- In recent years, climate change has increased the threat as storms and heavy rains can turn tailings into floods of toxic sludge.
- Now a new mining company, Pan African Resources, is set to re-mine the area’s dumps — will this improve anything?
Read the full script for this video here.
Read Pan African Resources’ response here.
Anna-Maria van Niekerk is Bhekisisa’s news editor. She joined the centre after six years as the managing editor of the investigative television show, Carte Blanche. Anna-Maria has an extensive career in in-depth health and human rights reporting and has been named both the Vodacom Journalist (2002) and Discovery Health Journalist of the Year (2010) for exposés on the selling of human body parts for muti in Limpopo and the devastating consequences of HIV denialism.
Jessica Pitchford is Bhekisisa's TV and multimedia editor. She's been a journalist since the early nineties and has reported on some pivotal events in South Africa’s political history, such as the country’s transition to democracy and the work of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.
Yolanda Mdzeke was a junior multimedia reporter and multimedia reporter at Bhekisisa between March 2021 and June 2025.
Hannah Glaser is a student at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at City University of New York. She interned with the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism from June to July 2024.
Astra Rincón Montañez is a student at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at City University of New York. She interned with the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism from June to July 2024.
