People and machines. At Malahleni, Mpumalanga of South Africa.In the short-term, communities need to address some
of the most pressing issues they face. They cannot always afford to wait for
laws to be changed or amended. This is why community empowerment is so
critical, particularly in the mine-hosting communities of Southern Africa,
where community members endure many harmful mining conditions.
It is through action that change emerges. It is still the case that meaningful
interactions between mining communities and the mines only come about as a result of protest or demonstrations. To find alternatives to mining in the
long-term and to address pressing issues in the short-term, civil society needs
to invest resources into countering power through more coordinated resistance
and solidarity. This starts with building a strong community voice aware of
community level issues.
The
legacy
The continuing legacy of mining in South Africa as
it relates to the well being of mine-hosting communities necessarily presents
us with contradictory perspectives. Mining, main source of the country’s wealth,
contributed significantly to developing South Africa into one of the leading
economies in Africa and the Third World. But mining has also caused
considerable destruction to black communities and sowed divisions between white
and non-white populations. Black Africans had been mining South Africa’s natural
resources before the arrival of whites. But whites industrialised and
corporatised mining, stifling artisanal mining practices in the process of introducing
advanced machinery. As their land was appropriated and exploited, the only role
for blacks was to provide the labour to mine it. The wealth of whites like
Cecil Rhodes and Ernest Oppenheimer was built on this exploitation, while
blacks became landless. However, the transition from artisanal to
industrialisation was not smooth.
Resistance has always been a significant feature of
the South African socio-economic landscape. It was not the colonial wars over
land, which alone shaped modern South Africa. The allocation of the proceeds of
gold and diamond mining also gave rise to resistance. The Anglo-Boer War, the
rise of a white Afrikaner working class, and the emergence of Afrikaner capital
that competed with English corporations – all these pivotal events shaped the sinister
system of Apartheid. The consequences of mining were numerous, including: the
migrant labor system that helped destroy African peasant life; the destructive
“location”, the urban and rural settlements created for black populations that
persist today; and the creation of a white poor who rose rapidly up the class
ladder and ever since have feared that they will fall and become like “the
native”, “ bantu” or “the black”, whom they were taught to fear as they feared
the devil.
Current realities of the mine-hosting communities
in South Africa
All the mining areas today suffer a range of
problems, one of the first being the ongoing land dispossession which is
supported – whether directly or indirectly – by government officials and
traditional leaders. The Royal Bafokeng is one of many examples. In provinces
such as North West and Limpopo, there are a number of conflicts between the
people and traditional leaders. People’s traditional economic practices have
been severely disrupted by mining. Moreover, the moving of ancestral graveyards
and the destruction of traditional plants serve to illustrate how the cultural
and spiritual aspects of community life also fall victim to this process.
Vale Mining Corporation fence at Tete, a coal-mining village in Mozambique. Children playing.The disruption of family life and community cohesion combined with
a mass of unemployed youth has opened the way to serious drug, alcohol and
crime problems. The large increase in teenage pregnancy is one of the outcomes.
Young women live in a state of permanent violence. Mining areas show the
highest incidence of HIV/Aids. The disruption of villagers over 100 years by rapid
unplanned mining development brings in a large number of migrant workers, many
of them casuals seeking work. Competing pressures on social services lead to
gruesome crimes.
Then there is the environmental damage: the
destruction of soil so that no agriculture will be possible in the future in
areas such as Rustenburg, once a regional food basket. Health problems from air
pollution are now reaching serious proportions, together with the destruction
of the wetlands, pollution of rivers and over-use of water in a water scarce
country.
The successful export of raw materials earns large
returns – enough for a society to purchase from outside the country and neglect
to develop its own manufacturing base. The leadership elite and big mining
corporations have become very powerful and estranged from the people.
Corruption grows rapidly because the wealth is held within the company and this
money is not spread across the large working base. It is almost as though ‘if’
we did not have such large mines, our conflicts would have been easier to resolve
because the stakes would have been easier.
But the end of gold mining is devastating in once
thriving towns in the Goldfields and West Rand, such as Welkom and
Dominionville. In 50 years, we will have serious problems in places like
Rustenburg and Mokopane when platinum has run out. Opportunistic political leaders
only live in 5-10 years mindsets, around what wealth they can accumulate while
they are still in office. According to estimations made by The South African
Institute of International Affairs, it would cost the government R40-billion to rehabilitate all the abandoned mines.
Resistance
and the future
Mining-affected communities are poor, with high
rates of youth unemployment and they are very divided. Mines and governments
since 1994 have urged communities not to resist mining, promising that it would
bring jobs and development. This has not happened and the people are angry. The
protests that have followed have been mainly about jobs, with other issues such
as environmental pollution and social insecurity coming second.
Trucks carrying mining waste to be dumped at Motlhontlho, South Africa, where it encroaches on the fields and homes of the community.There is a continuing resistance against threats to
land ownership and mining community trusts which politicians, traditional
leaders and businesses have captured for their own benefit. The Bafokeng Land
Buyers Association (BLBA) has been waging a significant legal battle to regain
their land and there are many other communities taking such routes. Then there
are small groups of young people in every mining area who organise. The
Community Monitors, for example, work in 10 areas with an average of 10
activists. As another example of grassroots activism, MACUA is a network of
mining-affected communities.
We need more than superficial reform in mining, a
radical programme that removes mining from private corporations and government
elites in order to remove it from the dictates of the market. Our strategy must
start with the community. We have to build a strong community advocacy that is
aware, informed and progressive, but not populist. We have to develop a body of
highly skilled community activists who are able to investigate problems,
document them, and effectively communicate both within the community and
globally.
In this way, they will be able to tell their own
story, as opposed to that of the corporations or elites. Our tactics must
entail the skilful use of the tools available to us, such as the wealth of new
information and communications technology. Above all, we need to free the minds
of young black people; not in an abstract way, but for them to extricate
themselves from a context in which they are brutalised by capitalist regimes.
Civil society must support this future. If it is
committed to a truly open society, it must give support to local community
resistance, because it is at the grassroots level that one can determine
whether society is open or not; not in the laws and institutions alone. The
oppression and exploitation of mining communities means that even within our
democracy, the legacy of the apartheid and colonial era mining regimes
continues. Only through such a resistance can we slowly building the
alternative.
A board at the entrance of the open pit of Mokgalakwena Platinum Mine, Limpopo, South Africa.
Photographs are from the author's research into the region's mine-hosting communities.