Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productioncomplaints, buy up the farms from the complainants and then rent them out again. Asa result, the Association now owns large stretches of land affected by sinkholes and, asthe landlord, is in a powerful position to deal with complaints. By 1984, the area had589 sinkholes, most of them caused by dewatering and other mining activities. Theyseriously damaged railway lines, roads, mining infrastructure and buildings, includingpeople’s homes. Some structures just disappeared into the dolomite caverns below.The gold miners deliberately built large numbers of slimes dams on top of sinkholes.In mining terms, according to an industry seminar [Robinson and Toland 1979],sinkholes add ‘stability’ to slimes dams by draining away fluid and so preventing abuild-up of pressure with the potential to burst the walls. Slurry thus drains straightinto the caverns of the aquifer which are then made into sumps for toxic waste. Insome cases, miners attempted to plug sinkholes with mining waste. Predictably, inWolmarans view, it didn’t work. The waste simply dropped down into the water of theaquifer.That the waste is heavily contaminated with uranium has been known to a closedcircle of miners, scientists and state officials for decades. With the political transitionfrom apartheid to majority rule, argues CSIR water researcher Anthony Turton, themining corporations’ controlling grip on this group slipped. Some began to speak outand confirmed public suspicions that the Far West Rand aquifer was contaminatedwith radioactive uranium. “It is this new generation of public domain literature thathas given rise to the dilemma now confronting Government, because in essence, whatit has shown is that there is a massive pollution plume downstream of gold-miningactivities, consisting of a cocktail of heavy metals, sulphates and radionuclides” [2008:3].The seriousness of the situation was brought home to people on the Far West Randin a dramatic way. Two local farmers, the Coetzee brothers Sas and Douw, decided toclean up their farm dam on the Wonderfonteinspruit during 2007. As soon as theyremoved the wall and exposed the sediment, a satellite picked up the radiation fromuranium that had accumulated at the bottom of the dam and alerted the NationalNuclear Regulator (NNR). The NNR then instructed the Coetzees to repair the wall,never to drain the dam again, not to disturb the sediment, not to allow their cattle todrink there, and not to sell any produce from their farm as it might be contaminated.The Coetzees complied because “we were brought up to believe that it is not rightto knowingly harm someone”. But they are not happy to bear the cost while thoseWasting the Nation - groundWork - 93 -