Sunday Tribune May 13, 2007 Edition 2 
As an Australian mining company plans to plunder the dunes of the Wild Coast, Leon Marshall ponders whether the lure of jobs and wealth creation will overcome pressing environmental concerns
by Leon Marshall
Shades of St Lucia are hanging heavily over the Wild Coast, where dune mining is causing divisions in the community. Even the arguments are the same, as are the rising tensions that have led to allegations of threats and acts of violence.
Dr Ian Player, doyen of South African conservationists, said, “I have been a miner in my life, and so have my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, and I know the value of mining. But to mine coastal dunes is a desecration of our country.” [Read more…]
Posted on May 13th, 2007 by admin
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Sunday Tribune May 13, 2007 Edition 2
by Myrtle Ryan
As the battle surrounding the mining of dunes in the Xolobeni area of the Eastern Cape rages on, the South African Human Rights Commission has also entered the fray.
Human rights workers are insisting that in addition to the required scoping and environmental impact assessment reports and public participation process (which Australian mining company Mineral Resource Commodities (MRC) will have to follow) an equally important issue needs to be addressed.
This is the human element and the negative impact mining could have on the local communities for generations to come. [Read more…]
Posted on May 13th, 2007 by admin
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Engineering News
By: Mariaan Olivier
Published: 11 May 07 - 12:00
Environmental group Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC) has urged the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (Deat) to block the controversial N2 toll road, linking the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, suggesting that the process was “flawed” and that the final scoping study was “full of contradictions”.
The final scoping report for the controversial N2 Wild Coast project was released last month, after independent environmental consultants CCA Environmental completed the study for the 560-km route.
CCA Environmental handed the report to Deat, which will either approve or reject the project, or ask for further investigation based on the information provided in the final scoping report. [Read more…]
Posted on May 11th, 2007 by admin
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Allegations of Harassment, Intimidation and Violation of Basic Rights Will Be Heard
by Pasika Nontshiza, Qokolweni Mission, Mthatha
The lodging of the complaint with the Human Rights Commission by the Xholobeni communities over the application to mine sands deposit in their area is a brave and courageous action which needs to be supported by those who still have got conscience.
The lodging of the complaint couldn’t have come at a better time when those who claim to be ‘developers’ of the people are actually perpetrating acts of injustice against the locals. [Read more…]
Posted on May 3rd, 2007 by admin
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By ROUX VAN ZYL
Finance Reporter - Dispatch Online
THE Australian stock exchange-listed miner that plans to mine titanium along the Wild Coast has cleared another hurdle - the national Department of Minerals and Energy has accepted its mining right application. [Read more…]
Posted on May 3rd, 2007 by admin
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2 -5 -2007
While SWC welcomes the fact that the FSR admits to a need to further investigate deviations to the SANRAL ‘preferred’ route that would pose less of an environmental risk, and welcomes the call for more specialist studies in numerous fields, SWC cannot in any justification condone the report or its recommendations.
SWC are of the opinion that the report does very little to address major legitimate public concerns raised in the last EIA or in the Draft Scoping Report, and that the report is so full of contradictions and inconsistencies that it can hardly be taken seriously, and resembles more a poor quality justification process for SANRAL’s preferred route than a legitimate and neutral assessment of whether another EIA conducted along what is basically the same route would serve the best interests of the region or of state financial expenditure. SWC are of the opinion that unless the fundamental planning flaw that underlies the whole project is addressed (namely the lack of any regional development plan that supports the need for a toll road or major new highway through the Pondoland Centre of Endemism) a new EIA as outlined by the FSR would merely be an renewed process of covering old ground and hence would amount to nothing more than an attempt to plaster ‘cracks in a wall’, when it is ‘faulty foundations’ that need attention. [Read more…]
Posted on May 3rd, 2007 by admin
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