February 09, 2010 Edition 1
Tony Carnie
THE decision on whether to allow sand-dune mining near Xolobeni on the Wild Coast has been put on hold again.
The Minerals and Mining Board was due to hear evidence for and against the mining application in Durban yesterday, but the meeting was postponed to a date still to be finalised.
The Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA president and MP, Nkosi Phathekile Holomisa, who was to chair the hearing and hear legal argument, said committee members had not had sufficient opportunity to study the substantial volume of documentation on the matter and a decision was taken to reconvene at a later date.
Journalists were refused entry to the meeting room yesterday and told the hearing was an internal meeting.
They were later advised that the meeting had been postponed.
The application to mine in the environmentally sensitive Xolobeni area, south of the Wild Coast Casino, had been made by the Australian-based company Transworld Energy, a local subsidiary company Mineral Resources (SA) and the shareholder group Xolobeni Empowerment Company.
The application was approved by the Minerals Department in 2008 but was put on hold shortly afterwards following appeals by a number of groups, including the Amadiba Crisis Committee.
The committee has complained that residents of the area were not consulted properly.
Posted on February 11th, 2010 by Louis
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Tony Carnie
A NEW round of hearings begins in Durban next week to debate controversial plans for dune mining at Xolobeni on the Wild Coast.
Part of the mining venture by an Australian company and local empowerment groups was approved in August 2008, but was put on hold after strong opposition from Xolobeni residents and traditional leaders, who said they had not been properly consulted.
The Legal Resources Centre, which is acting for members of the Amadiba crisis committee, also threatened to challenge the approval process in court.
Now legal advisers for the Mineral Resources Department have confirmed that supporters and opponents of the mining plan would be given the chance to air their views to a panel, which would make final representations to Minerals Minister Susan Shabangu.
The hearing would be held from February 8-10 at 333 Durban Bay House in Anton Lembede (Smith) Street.
It is understood that senior advocate Gilbert Marcus and Legal Resources Centre attorney Sarah Sephton would represent members of the Amadiba crisis committee.
The original mining proposal, by the Perth-based Transworld Energy group, involved removing heavy minerals from a 22km strip of coast immediately south of the Wild Coast Sun casino.
Although Xolobeni is in the Eastern Cape, members of the Amadiba crisis committee requested that hearings be held in Durban.
Posted on February 4th, 2010 by Louis
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“Since the declaration of the State of Emergency throughout East
Pondoland, there has been an almost complete news black-out on this
troubled area.”
Read Full Story
Posted on February 2nd, 2010 by Louis
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Should local destinies be decided locally? That is the heart of the issue around the Wild Coast Xolobeni mining debate.
The Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) has announced that it will hold a legal hearing in Durban to hear oral submissions as to why amaPondo communities are opposed to titanium dune mining along the Wild Coast. DMR say the submissions will be taken into account in the Minister’s decision whether to give the go ahead for the mining application. This sets a precedent for DMR, who do not usually consider oral appeals.
Read Full Article
Posted on February 2nd, 2010 by Louis
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Presenter: The Government has given the green light for the
controversial N2 Toll Road stretching through the Wild Coast to go ahead, this despite objections from the non Governmental Organizations,
Environmentalists, Local Communities and the Kwazulu-Natal
Government. Cooperative Governance Minister; Sicelo Shiceka. Click here to read more.
Posted on July 1st, 2009 by Louis
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The project takes it’s name from that given by the amaPondo people to the Morning star, a powerful symbol in their society. The rise of the morning star heralds the oncoming dawn and is symbolic of lifting darkness, waking those embarking on long journeys, announcing the end of the night, and the start of the working day. Click here to read more
Posted on June 9th, 2009 by Louis
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Guy Rogers ENVIRONMENT & TOURISM EDITOR
RATHER than a profit- driven toll road mega- development, the Wild Coast needs its existing road system and local government capacity improved.
That‘so the view of Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC), the public participation and conservation NGO spearheading opposition against the Wild Coast N2 toll road project, which has been proposed by the SA National Roads Agency Ltd (Sanral).
The controversial project is aimed at building a high- speed link between Durban and East London, with an 80km section between Port St Johns and Port Edward to be routed through a world-acclaimed botanical mecca.
The project was initially approved in 2004 by Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, but after considering appeals the minister judged that there were “inappropriate links” between environmental consultants Bohlweki and the consortium of construction companies who were bidding.
He did not quash the project completely, however, and a new EIA was launched in 2006.
It was finished in November last year and the public were given three months, much of it over the Christmas holidays, to comment.
These comments are now sitting with NMA, the public participation consultant, in Johannesburg.
The company could not be reached for comment this week, but correspondence from it reveals that “thousands” of comments have been received.
They are now being collated and will be passed on, with the EIA, to the department of environmental affairs and tourism.
SWC spokesman Val Payn said one of her group‘s concerns was that the issue of tolling had not been considered in the EIA.
This should have included how much the envisaged tariffs would be and how this would affect use of the road, the movement of local communities and the cost of goods, she said.
“It raises the question we have asked from the start, which is: ‘Who is this road for?‘
“The construction and tolling companies and the company that wants to mine the Xolobeni dunes are the only obvious beneficiaries at present.”
The fundamental flaw in the project was that it did not stem from a regional development plan which identified a need and then looked for the best way to meet that need, she said.
“The Wild Coast spatial development initiative published in the late 1990s refers to the need for improved road infrastructure, which no one disputes. But it also says the Pondoland centre of endemism (PCE) should not be damaged.
“Sanral‘s proposed route through the PCE is an unsolicited bid primarily motivated by profit.”
Payn said the context of a regional development plan was a prerequisite for any proper consideration of the project.
Such a plan would include the need to improve government capacity to cope with the increased management and planning pressures that the road would bring.
It was also necessary to explain how the multiplier effects of the road would be controlled and stimulated for maximum benefits, she said.
“Without it, the N2 is liable to result in increasing environmental pressures on sensitive environments, leading to increasing environmental degradation and a spiral of increasing poverty and inequality.
“What the Wild Coast needs is not a toll road, but improved local road infrastructure and much increased capacity-building at local government level.
“Lastly, we need an investment in the development of local human skills and local economies at grassroots level.”
Sanral spokesman Fanie van Aardt dismissed SWC‘s warning that the project would result in environmental degradation and worse poverty if it was not linked to a regional development plan as being “purely speculative”.
“The implementation of the N2 Wild Coast toll highway would indeed assist in the development of local road infrastructure during the construction period and into the operational period,” he said.
“For the Pondoland area, where poverty and unemployment affect countless people, it is the possible catalyst to the improvement of the community lifestyle.”
Van Aardt said tolling had not been considered in the EIA because this was “a separate process which will get under way once the EIA has been approved”.
He said he did not agree that this approach could result in a skewed presentation in the EIA of the costs and benefits of the project.
“The benefits on some parts of the road will be more than on others, but overall the benefits will outweigh the costs.”
The issue of increasing local government capacity and accountability “is beyond the scope of the EIA”, he said.
Environmental affairs and tourism deputy director-general Joanne Yawitch said the department did not comment on EIAs before they had been considered by the government, and a decision was issued.
Once this decision had been issued, there was an opportunity for appeals to be made and these were then considered by the minister, she noted.
Posted on February 10th, 2009 by Louis
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