The town where residents suffer

Thubelihle, a township in Mpumalanga, appears unremarkable on a map - until the layers are added: pollutant- spewing coal plants, clouds of ash, a lack of healthcare and jobs, and vulnerable people. By Ethan van Diemen

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In the coal-rich heartlands of Mpumalanga, residents breathe some of the world's most polluted air.

This reality is felt most acutely in Thubelihle, a community of about 20,000 residents that lies within eyesight of Eskom's Kriel and Matla power stations and is surrounded by numerous mines.

Using Google Earth Engine, Daily Maverick layered satellite-derived pollution exposure data with indicators of vulnerability, including poverty, a lack of healthcare access and proximity to emissions sources, to identify one of South Africa's most at-risk communities. Thubelihle, our analysis shows, is at the confluence of severe air pollution, fly ash waste carried on winds and levels of socioeconomic and infrastructural deprivation that arguably make this Mpumalanga community among the most vulnerable to the silent killer that is air pollution.

But the small community is not an isolated case. This geo-journalism project points to a broader national crisis in which data and lived experience reveal the constitutional failure to secure clean air for millions of people across South Africa.

The power of the map lies in what it revealed before a single interview was conducted. Before we arrived in Thubelihle, the data told us that this community was not just heavily polluted, but structurally disadvantaged in ways that compound the pollution's harm. On the ground and in person with the men, women and children who call Thubelihle home, Daily Maverick was given an unvarnished and ultimately woeful account of daily life under a polluted sky.

"The air is very dirty. It's very dirty," said resident Thandeka Hlatshwayo. "It's affecting us. It's like ash," she said in between coughing fits. "I'm very, very sick."