Pictures of the week: Legacy of the mine, by Ilan Godfrey

Travelling the length of South Africa, Johannesburg-born photographer Ilan Godfrey set out to chart the aftereffects of his country’s mining industry on its people and landscape.→ Photograph: Ilan Godfrey

What he found was land weakened by digging, leading to subsidence and floods, and rendered unfit for use; air, land and water pollution; and communities left in poverty when the mines closed.→ Photograph: Ilan Godfrey

This stretch of flood water, surveyed by resident Jeffrey Ramiruti, covers part of an informal settlement built up around the former gold mine of Tudor Shaft in Krugersdorp, outside Johannesburg.→ Photograph: Ilan Godfrey

The settlement is built on top of dust-ridden, radioactive mine “tailings” – remains of underground waste. Ramiruti is one of around 1.6 million people in South Africa to live in such close proximity to these dumps, where radiation levels are similar to those in the exclusion zones around Fukushima.→ Photograph: Ilan Godfrey

Communities built up quickly around the mines that were rapidly constructed in South Africa following the discovery of a diamond on the banks of the Orange river in 1867, and the Witwatersrand gold rush in 1886 that led to the establishment of Johannesburg.→ Photograph: Ilan Godfrey

Gold, diamond, coal and platinum mining formed the backbone of the country’s richest economy which, although down from its peak, is still hugely profitable today.→ Photograph: Ilan Godfrey

After eight years of lobbying, the thousands of residents of Tudor Shaft are in the process of being relocated to safer land. But some will remain: illegal miners are still accessing closed mines through disused ventilation shafts to scour for nuggets of gold.→ Photograph: Ilan Godfrey

It’s dangerous work in hot, oxygen-deprived conditions, with the constant threat of shafts collapsing. Men are paid depending on how much gold they find.→ Photograph: Ilan Godfrey

For those left behind the gold rush, there’s a flicker of good news: in September, 23 former miners who developed tuberculosis working in gold mines won a landmark payout, which is expected to lead to a surge of other claims. And thus mining’s legacy continues.

To see more of the photographer's work, go to www.ilangodfrey.com Photograph: Ilan Godfrey