Rhodes is Victorious in the Face of apparent Defeat.

“The Government looks upon them as living in a native reserve, and desires to make the transfer and alienation of land as simple as possible...” Cecil John Rhodes

On the 27 July 1894, in what was described as a rousing speech, Cecil John Rhodes introduced the Glen Grey Act, which was to become the forerunner of the 1913 Land Act, to the Parliament of Cape Town, stating emphatically if not arrogantly that “We have given them (The Natives) no share in the government — and I think rightly, too — and no interest in the local development of their country”

By 1994 almost 100 years to the day, Rhodes had suffered his first defeat.  The natives had ascended to the lofty heights once held exclusively by the white race.

But the question today, 21 years after this apparent defeat, is what else has changed from the grand imperial vision so forthrightly and unambiguously expressed in his speech to parliament in 1894. 

Apparently not much.

In the mining sector, the one closest to the heart of the  Anglo Saxon Imperialist Rhodes, “the natives” still have “no interest in the local development of their country” and today are still and increasingly so, alienated from their land, and are denied, through laws developed by its own government, the right to self-determination.

The introduction of the Mineral Petroleum Development Act (MPRDA) in 2002 and the subsequent amendments proposed by Parliament in 2014, despite its claims to serve the interests of the people of South Africa, is merely an extension of the policies that Rhodes himself proposed.

This point was made consistently in a National meeting of Mining Affected communities held in Berea last week and affirmed in the Berea Declaration released after the meeting. The declaration states: “Noting that the current mining laws as legislated in the MPRDA limits our democratic and inalienable right to self-determination, that amendments currently proposed to the Bill seeks to further reduce our right to self-determination and that in addition, many customary communities own their ancestral land although their ownership has not been formally recognized with title deeds of their mining and mineral rights, we reaffirm that it is the peoples, specifically occupiers of the land`s, fundamental right to decide if any extractives / mining can take place on their land or not”

In 2013, during a speech to the Mining Indaba in Cape Town, the then Minister of Minerals noted that the 1913 Land Act has left a historically legacy that requires an “acknowledgement of the need to address the underpinning Structural and historical elements and not just the symptoms as they occur” The Minister went on to affirm that “this requires mining stakeholders to work together in partnerships in order to obviate any prospects of the events of last year (2012) repeating themselves. The country and the industry” she insisted “cannot afford the prospect of another Marikana.”

Yet further on in her speech she found no irony in only acknowledging the key stakeholders as, government, business and labour, leaving the historically disposed and directly affected communities stuck in the abyss of a Rhodesian native reserve, without an “interest in the local development of their country”.

As if to do justice to the imperialist and racist vision of Rhodes, the government proceeded, with a disdain for the interests of mining affected communities that would make Rhodes proud, to colluded with the Chamber of Mines to engineer the MPRDA Bill to further exclude communities and unconstitutionally rushed the Bill through the NCOP in 2014.

This exclusionary and Imperialist legacy would have today been entrenched in law had communities not written to the President to threaten a constitutional challenge should he sign the Bill into Law.

The Bill was finally returned to Parliament this year to “facilitate public participation”.

Mining Affected communities from across the country, who gathered in Berea last week have seen no indications that Parliament, the Minister, The Department of Mineral Resources or the Chamber of Mines have any intention of finally ridding South Africa of the destructive legacy of Rhodes and Apartheid and they remain excluded and condemned to the Native reserves policy of old which denies them ownership of land and an interest in their local development.

The only ones to benefit from this continuing form of Neo-Colonialism is individuals connected to the ruling Party through BEE, Old White Capital and Trans National Corporations.

Mining Communities in particular are clearly the losers.

To quote a delegate to the National Meeting of Mining Affected Communities; “State ownership of all mineral wealth is not about peoples ownership, but a ruse under the guise of national ownership for a state that has been captured by corporations to jointly screw us”

So while the students of our Universities tilt at Statues of White Supremacy, mining affected communities are being beaten with Statutes of Colonial Legacy.