The Mpumalanga Highveld Air Pollution Crisis: A South African Reparations Framework for

Global Environmental Injustice and the State–Corporate Crime Conundrum An analysis of the causes and effects of environmental harms within the Mpumalanga Highveld region and the failure to remedy these necessitates discussion of the relationship between the state and corporations. [...] In a way, southern green criminology gives voice to the intersection of oppression and marginalisation, environmental harm, neo-colonialism, and the exploitation of the Global South at the hands of the Global North (Goyes 2019, 2023). [...] In the ‘Deadly Air’ case, the Court granted a declaratory order that the air pollution in the Highveld priority area was a violation of the residents’ right under Section 24a of the 1996 Constitution and that the Minister had a duty to publish regulations under Section 20 of the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act. [...] The barrier between communities that enjoy privileged access to the environment and those that are the victims of racism and 6 Volume 13 (1) 2024 Kamolane-Kgadima and Kathi pollution widens as the gap between the rich and the poor, and between persons of colour and others, widens (Collin and Collin 2005). [...] It mandates that harm to people and the environment is repaired to align with the balance of mutual benefit and interconnectedness (for a discussion of the challenges of bringing the logics of Ubuntu to the environmental context see Cornell and Van Marle 2005; Enslin and Horsthemke 2004; Norren 2022).