South Africa: Battle for the Wild Coast hots up

South Africa: Battle for the Wild Coast hots up

22nd October 2007

A long-drawn out battle to preserve an important South African coastal area from potential ravages by an Australian mining company is applying for a court order to halt the project in its tracks.

For previous story, see:

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press345.htm

Pondo uprising

Noseweek. Issue # 97 - November 2007

www.noseweek.co.za.

The environmental group Sustaining the Wild Coast is hoping to persuade the High Court to set aside the prospecting permit awarded to the Australian mining company Mineral Resource Commodities.

The group has the backing of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, a community organisation which has signed up 900 members since its formation in June – no mean feat in a rural area with bad roads, few telephones and the constant threat of harassment from supporters of the mining operation. A number of members of the 15 000-strong Ex-Mineworkers Union have also joined the fray.

According to the court application, the granting of a prospecting licence by the Department of Minerals and Energy was "irregular" in terms of a 1992 decree which prohibits "the clearance of land or the removal of sand, soil, stone or vegetation" within a kilometre of the high-water mark.

This is the same decree cited in the recent Appeal Court decision that orders the demolition of beach cottages built along the Wild Coast.

The only way around the restriction would have been to obtain special permission from the provincial authorities.

According to a spokesperson for Sustaining the Wild Coast, Sinegugu Zukulu, there is no evidence that the provincial government granted a permit for the removal of anything within the protected zone.

"I believe we have a strong case," he said. "By some mis-implementation of the law, the mining company was allowed to drill and remove soil samples for analysis within the one kilometre coastal conservation zone, and we will be challenging this."

Sustaining the Wild Coast claims, the prospectors have already removed 60 tons of sand from the dunes, trucked it to Richards Bay for smelting and then shipped it to Australia.

Apart from the damage to the fragile dune ecosystem, the bulk sample may well have contained valuable Stone Age relics. According to the Palaeontology Department at Wits University, stone fragments from the area have been identified as the remains of Sangoan era tools dating back hundreds of thousands of years.

The mining company's PR consultants, Maverick, insist that their client was operating within the law "and only within the bounds of what was approved by the Department of Minerals and Energy".

Maverick said the mining company's wholly-owned local subsidiary Transworld Mineral and Energy Resources "was granted a Prospecting Right and it received a permit to drill and remove sand within the one kilometre boundary, as per the Prospecting Right, which allowed us to undertake exploration".

The provincial Department of Minerals and Energy insists that the provisions of the prospecting permit allow only for drilling, not bulk sampling. An official in the department's law section, Jan van As, said the environmental authorities had been consulted before the permit was issued.

"This is not strictly a conservation area. Not much vegetation was removed or cleared from the area," he claimed.

This appears at odds with the view of the Department of Economic Affairs and the Environment in the province. Its head of enforcement, Div de Villiers, said the mining company had applied for road access within the protected zone, but not for removing anything.

"Since the Department of Minerals and Energy issued a permit for road access, as requested by Transworld, it must be aware that it's in a coastal conservation area," he said.

Attorney Richard Spoor, who will be leading the court challenge, said that if prospecting rights were set aside, "Mineral Resource Commodities would have to apply again and this would be difficult since it would have to go back to the community and consult with them to gain approval".

So far, the mining company's record of public consultation has been less than impressive. It has consistently circumvented the tribal authority, and the Amadiba Crisis Committee, by organising alternative meetings with selected individuals who favour mining the area.

Most recently, Transworld failed to pitch up at a mass meeting at the Umgungundlovu tribal authority in September. The gathering was attended by 2000 people and presided over by King Mpondombini Sigcau and Queen MaSobhuza Sigcau, as well as members of the Human Rights Commission. Although the company CEO, John Barnes, was issued with a written invitation, he denies knowing of the meeting.

A spokesperson for the crisis committee, Mzamo Dlamini, says anti-mining groups believe the Department of Minerals and Energy is in collusion with the company. "We organised ourselves as a committee because John Barnes refuses to meet with locals who resist mining, despite repeated requests. And whenever we have a meeting with the department to air our concerns they give us a workshop on mining. They would not be educating us about mining laws if they were not ready to mine. It looks like the minerals department ... supports the project," Dlamini said.

"The people of the Amadiba region are not interested in mining because they have seen the damage it causes: some of them have worked in mines, others have been to Richards Bay."

The mining company plans to mine 22km of the Wild Coast for titanium deposits, which would disturb 330 million tons of sand over 22 square kilometres of coastal dunes. Apart from the environmental damage, local residents are concerned that their security and land rights are threatened if they are displaced and resettled by mining.

The economic benefits for the local community, which were never convincing, are looking even less attractive with the removal of the smelter from the proposal. The smelter was supposed to provide 250 of the 500 jobs promised by the project. But it now seems the mineral deposits are to be trucked to Richards Bay, adding to the heavy burden on the road infrastructure.

The Department of Minerals and Energy's apparent failure to apply itself to the protection of this ecologically sensitive area of the Wild Coast is very worrying in light of the department's apparent determination to have more say over environmental decisions.

In August, the department proposed an amendment to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act that would give it full authority over environmental mining disputes. The amendment undermines the powers of Environmental Affairs and could exempt mining activity from safeguards in the National Environmental Management Act.

At a September meeting in Lanseria, a network of environmental organisations joined forces to challenge what is perceived to be a collusion between the department and mining houses. At the meeting veteran human rights lawyer George Bizos pledged support in his capacity as a consultant to the Legal Resources Centre.

The Department of Minerals and Energy wouldn't comment further, telling noseweek they would not like to conduct a regulatory process through the media". The completed impact assessment is due on 22 October, and the department should give a Record of Decision next February.