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Capital Wins as Mpumalanga Residents’ Plight Deepens
On Friday the 22 May an environmental rights event comprising of stakeholders from Environmental Rights Centre, the Wits law school and residents from Ermelo Mpumalanga was held at the Wits West Campus in Braamfontein Johannesburg, to deliberate upon the multifaceted issues and consequences faced by marginalised communities that are borne out of mining operations and closures. Lawyers, activists and community members from Ermelo, a mining town in Mpumalanga gathered to discuss the extent to which mining operations and land rehabilitation for closed mines have a socioeconomic impact on communities of which the cost most often has to be carried by community members.
Voices of marginalised community members
Community members were provided with the platform to voice out their frustrations about the real life consequences that are borne from residing in close proximity to coal mines such as people losing their lives as they walk into sinkholes, susceptibility to air-borne diseases such as asthma and an overall continued exposure to danger. Some of the damages that residents find themselves at the mercy of is the ever present risk of their houses falling into the ground because of the extent to which the environment is damaged.
Processes that come with mine closure that tend to drag on, do so at the expense of the communities in which they operate because legal structures of governance fail to protect residents and their lives in. Activist and Ermelo resident Zethu Hlatshwayo, member of the National Association of Artisanal Miners was one of the vocal residents who narrated about how members of his community were compromised and how he himself found himself injured when he was treading on the outskirts of a closed mine.
Mining and the law
The long standing battle with legislation about the rehabilitation processes stems from a South African mining culture that had no scruples with exploiting community dwellers and suffering no consequences for their actions. Among the solutions that were proposed was reversing the flawed machinery that the old system used that did not involve consulting the community when a mine is opened, affirming that the system is flawed by design. Assembling the relevant stakeholders to organise and lobby against the mines to form an alliance that can participate in any policies and amendments to mining laws and consequently activities that have a direct bearing of which its burden has to be carried by community members was another solution proposed.
The sheer lack of accountability and not even a remote sign of any form of corporate social responsibilty shown by the mines continuing a mining tradition in a country that does not have a pleasant past does not do any justice to residents and lives lost. Mining is a lucrative sector and Ermelo residents lamented that mining companies have to be brought to book because it appears to them that funds set aside for projects meant to assist the community end up dissappearing into corrupt political hands who end up doinng a good job at squandaring the funds or barely doing a half job.
