No Quick Fixes to Mining Challenges

With the community of Ga-Mapela, who are affected by the AngloPlats Mogalakwena mine, in a state of uprising, the temptation to accept ready made answers to a decades long reality of dispossession and exclusion is somewhat understandable but wholly inadequate.

The response from Anglo Platinum to the outpouring of rage and anger by the youth of the surrounding villages, has been to narrow the focus of news reports and public dialogue to one of divisions within the community and unreasonable demands of the youth.

The reality is far more complex and has a history which stretches back to 1991 when Anglo first established an operation in the area. This particular mine has since stood out more for its record profitability than its impact on the local community.

From the outset, the communities, which today surround the most profitable platinum mine in the world, were in conflict with the mine. In 2003 seven thousand residents of Ga-Pila were forcibly removed to make way for the mine. Each household was offered R5000 plus a replacement home in a new village that was built by Anglo Platinum on a farm known as Sterkwater.

The Ga-Pila community lost 1800 hectares of agricultural land on the Sandsloot farm that it had occupied for generations. By contrast the only land available for growing crops at Sterkwater is the small plots that surround each house.

In 2007 a further 1000 families, around 10 000 residents of two other villages, Ga-Puka and Ga-Sekhaolelo(collectively known as Mohlohlo) were relocated to two new villages to make way for the ongoing expansion of the Mogalakwena mine.  At the time the Community organisations released a statement in which they stated that “Anglo Platinum has been working purposefully and deliberately to turn Mohlohlo into a ghetto by cutting off the community’s access to the resources that sustain them, including land for food production, water grazing, roads and schooling. It has created conditions that are difficult, dangerous and unhealthy in an effort to force people to relocate. This must stop”.

But nothing has been able to stop the unrelenting encroachment of the mine on the livelihoods and wellbeing of the affected communities.

In 2008 ActionAid released the Precious Metals Report which looked at the Impact of Anglo Platinum on poor communities in Limpopo and uncovered several contradictions between specific claims made by Anglo Platinum and the reality of its operations. These claims were vociferously denied by Anglo at the time. Yet, here we are, faced with an uprising of discontent and anger.

In April 2007, the UN`s Special Rapporteur, Miloon Kothari, after conducting a mission to South Africa and visiting Limpopo and the Mogalakwena area, concluded in his report that “there appears to be insufficient meaningful consultation between government officials and affected individuals and communities…Programmes aimed at delivering housing and creating sustainable human settlements will only succeed where they are directly informed by the people who they affect, and where they are responsive and targeted to the specific needs of a given community.”

At the beginning of 2015, ActionAid, in conjunction with Wits University`s Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), undertook a study to follow up on the 2008 ActionAid Precious Metals Report.  The report in the final stages of completion will be released in October of this year.  

Once again Anglo Platinum has been reluctant to participate in the research and the researchers found it almost impossible to get comment from Anglo on some of the findings of the research.

Without pre-empting the research findings, preliminary findings indicate that not only has things not improved for the communities around the ever expanding open cast mine, but conditions have deteriorated significantly since 2008.

Indications are that the Anglo Platinum Mine continues to play a divisive role in its engagements with communities and tribal authorities. The current uprisings and the mines insistence of dealing with Tribal Authorities as opposed to democratic community organisations have only exacerbated the tensions.

The community’s displeasure with imposed deals with tribal authorities was clearly articulated when the community targeted and burnt down the tribal authority building last week.

The research also indicates that many relocation issues such as relocations of graves, access to water, access to agricultural land for subsistence farming and allocation of housing plots has continued to fester and grow.

The mine`s continued and expanded operations, and its impact on the community in terms of dust from the open cast operation, blasting and its damaging effect on resident housing and the inexplicable loss of access to water sources in a once rich water source area, has amplified the anger and discontent of a community in which 83% of households do not have access to formal employment.

This conflict cannot be solved with quick fix solutions, no matter how good the intent. Unless the Department of Mineral Resources and the Minerals Portfolio Committee of Parliament opens up the Mining legislation to recognise the need and right of communities to fully participate in the decisions that affect them, these conflicts will continue.

Anglo will tell us that they act within the law…and generally they do.

The challenge is for Government to not only listen to and act in the interest of Mining companies, but to work with and hear the inputs of organisations that it continually rejects, like Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA), a community based movement of mining affected communities advocating for greater inclusion or the Coalition on the MPRDA (a coalition of civil society organisations who wish to see changes in mining laws),to find real sustainable solutions to an intractable legacy.