By Oliver Balch —

Much of the waste from 600 abandoned mines around South Africa’s largest city is piled high next to residential communities.

Johannesburg’s mine dumps look strangely beautiful from a distance. Lustrously yellow in the sun, blazing red at dusk, their huge molehill shapes provide the city with its distinctive skyline.

Up close, it’s a different story. Rasalind Plaatjies has lived in the shadow of a “tailing” – as these piles of mine waste are known – all her adult life. Today, the 62-year-old grandmother from the city’s Riverlea district suffers severe respiratory problems. For 16 hours a day, she is hooked up to an oxygen tank, her lungs debilitated by dust from the waste heap.

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