‘How the toxic legacy of British lead mining is still devastating lives in central Zambia’ 26 March 2021

A mother waters the dusty yard in front of her modest breezeblock home in Kabwe, a once-thriving mining town in central Zambia. A line of washing hangs limply in the sunshine, but her concern isn’t for the laundry. “All I have ever wanted for my child is to have a normal life, a good one, without any health complications,” she says. “Those who abandoned this mine and caused this problem must be taken to court.” The history of this town of 230,000 people is, like many areas of southern Africa, closely linked to mining. Kabwe, 100km north of the capital Lusaka, mushroomed around a mine established in 1904 by the Rhodesian Broken Hill Development Company, a British firm. For decades, miners crushed and smelted ore to extract lead. The metal put Kabwe on the map before it ruined it. Even now, lead particles waft across town, seeping into homes and bodies.

Environmental studies have shown that soil in the township surrounding the mine has concentrations of lead more than 150 times higher than the 400mg per kilogram that scientists generally regard as the limit before it becomes hazardous to health. An analysis of samples by the US-based environmental group Pure Earth in 2014 shocked its president, Richard Fuller. “Kabwe is the most toxic place I’ve ever been to,” he said. Prolonged exposure to the metal can be devastating to the body’s nervous system and damages the brain, heart, kidneys and other organs. It’s also associated with higher rates of miscarriage, seizures and death. Children are at special risk from lead because their brains and bodies are still developing. The cognitive damage suffered by poisoned children is often permanent, with behavioural problems, learning disabilities and lower IQs reported by doctors.

…Last month Amnesty International urged leading investors, including Blackrock, Fidelity and JP Morgan, to hold Anglo accountable. Peter Frankental, Amnesty’s economic affairs director, said: “There’s an urgent need to clean up the toxic lead legacy in Kabwe, and to provide justice and remedy. Alleviating the ongoing suffering of Kabwe’s children, and its future generations, requires Anglo American’s leadership and engagement, not its evasion and obstruction.” For Johannesburg-based lawyer Zanele Mbuyisa, the case is only the latest in a series of David and Goliath battles she has fought with multinationals, including Anglo American, to gain compensation for thousands of miners whose health has been wrecked by working in Africa’s extraction industries in the past 20 years.