Radioactive city: how Johannesburg’s townships are paying for its mining past

Much of the waste from 600 abandoned mines around South Africa's largest city is piled high next to residential communities - most of which are poor and black

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.

"Sometimes I don't have the energy to get up. I just have to stay in bed and do nothing," she says. She feels fortunate, though. A number of her elderly neighbours have died from respiratory disease.

Plaatjies is one of tens of thousands in Johannesburg's impoverished townships who are paying a high cost for the city's rich mining past. More than 600 abandoned mines surround South Africa's largest city, with much of their waste now piled up high next to residential communities - most of which are poor and black.