{"id":14383,"date":"2015-11-13T08:03:11","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T13:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14383"},"modified":"2015-11-13T08:03:11","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T13:03:11","slug":"the-haunting-legacy-of-south-africas-gold-mines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14383","title":{"rendered":"The Haunting Legacy of South Africa\u2019s Gold Mines"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/feature\/the_haunting_legacy_of_south_africas_gold_mines\/2931\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Haunting Legacy of\u00a0South Africa\u2019s Gold Mines\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"dek\"><em>Thousands of abandoned gold mines are scattered across South Africa, polluting the water with toxics and filling the air with noxious dust. For the millions of people who live around these derelict sites, the health impacts can be severe.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The name is derived from \u201chappy prospect\u201d in Afrikaans, and once upon a time, life and the gold haul were both good at the Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine, 50 miles west of Johannesburg. But two years after the mine\u2019s owners abandoned it because it was unprofitable, sewage runs in the streets of the old mining village, tailings impoundments cover nearby towns in dust, and illegal miners rule the abandoned shafts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m just going to take one or two potshots at them to keep them at a distance,\u201d says Louis Nel, head of security at the now-abandoned Blyvooruitzicht.<\/p>\n<div class=\"imageleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/images\/features\/Blyvooruitzicht-300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300px\" height=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"credit\">Dean Hutton\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/div>\n<div class=\"caption\">Mining waste piles from the closed Blyvooruitzicht gold mine line a roadside in South Africa.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>He raises his shotgun and shatters the afternoon calm with several blasts. A few\u00a0<em>zama zamas<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 illegal miners whose title means \u201cWe try! We try!\u201d in Zulu \u2014 run for cover.<\/p>\n<p>Blyvooruitzicht is but one of thousands of abandoned mines scattered across South Africa, many from the gold industry. With recently shuttered mines adding to the massive impact of those left derelict years ago, the country faces a growing environmental, health, and social crisis created by a withering gold industry and inadequate oversight.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa\u2019s Department of Mineral Resources, or DMR, holds a list of 6,000 \u201cderelict and ownerless\u201d mines, which became the government\u2019s problem over the years when the former owners disappeared. While the DMR slowly rehabilitates those mines\u2014 at a rate of about 10 per year \u2014 companies continue to walk away from operations such as Blyvooruitzicht, and both mining companies and the government are slow to accept responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Haunting Legacy of\u00a0South Africa\u2019s Gold Mines\u00a0 Thousands of abandoned gold mines are scattered across South Africa, polluting the water with toxics and filling the air with noxious dust. For the millions of people who live around these derelict sites, the health impacts can be severe.\u00a0 The name is derived from \u201chappy prospect\u201d in Afrikaans, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10602,271,10601,1482,7995,3701,1215,8506],"class_list":["post-14383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-abandoned-mines","tag-environment-2","tag-gold-mines","tag-mining","tag-sewage","tag-south-africa","tag-toxins","tag-yale-360-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14384,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14383\/revisions\/14384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}