Sunday Tribune April 22, 2007 Edition 1

the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) is still attempting to bulldoze through its proposed route for the N2 toll road through the Transkei.

This is despite outraged calls from local and international environmentalists, the eThekwini Municipality, the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry, various community leaders and the public in general.

Consultants last week released the final scoping report, in terms of which it appears the agency is not prepared to consider any of the alternative routes being put forward. Instead, it seems determined to stick to its original route plan on the controversial Durban-East London road.

The consultants employed by Sanral to conduct the latest environmental impact assessment have received 865 written submissions to date.

The fact that Xolobeni on the Transkei coast - near which the road will pass - has the world’s tenth-largest heavy minerals sands deposit plays an important role, many believe, in this seeming recalcitrance.

Nailing his colours firmly to the mast, environmental lawyer Jeremy Ridl, who was involved in the initial feasibility study, said the issue of the toll road had always been approached from the wrong perspective.

Flawed concept

“It started with a fundamentally flawed concept,” said Ridl. “There was no proof that Durban and East London should be linked.”

Driving the whole issue was the fact the road would be the key that unlocked other resources. “There will be no viable sustainable mining without the road,” said Ridl, “so there must be a development initiative that justifies a greater thing than just the linking of Durban and East London.”

Highlighting the thinking that had always been at the root of this emotive issue, Ridl said one of the original driving forces behind the routing of the road had been Vali Moosa (the then national environment minister) who had complained if the road didn’t go close to the coast, he “would not be able to get his Wild Coast foreign direct investment off the ground”.

It was pointed out that impoverished areas of the Transkei were desperate for foreign investment, so any long-term planning should always have an eye on this important ball.

The foreign investor in this case is Australia’s Mineral Resources Commodities (MRC), its South African subsidiary, Transworld Energy and Mineral Resources (TEM), and their black economic empowerment partner, the Xolobeni community empowerment company, which lodged a mining rights application with the Department of Minerals and Energy.

While there was a great need for foreign investment in the impoverished Transkei, the most important issue remained the kind of investment and its long-term repercussions, said Ridl. The thorny issue of mining was going to arise and would become an attractive option, because not enough had been done to explore the conservation or tourism options.

“If we don’t get this much-touted conservation option off the ground, it’s going to be very difficult to wage a war against destructive land use such as mining,” he said.

This issue aside, Ridl felt that the outright dismissal of some of the alternative options such as the Gallagher and Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (Wessa) routes was intrinsically flawed.

In terms of good environmental impact assessment practice one never totally discarded an option at the beginning.

Instead, he said, the latest scoping report seemed to suggest that the role players were using criteria that benefited them personally as the basis for discarding alternatives. In the case of both the Wessa and Gallagher routes these had been dismissed predominantly on economic criteria, leaving Sanral open to accusations that finance was the only card in the deck.

Furthermore, much of the latest scoping report was based on findings made at the time of the original flawed report, which was thrown out by the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk because the consultants had close financial links with the toll road consortium. While the expertise of those initial specialists was not in doubt, Ridl felt to base the latest scoping report on their findings could also lead the public to feel that corners were being cut - again in the name of economics. The entire process should have started on a clean slate.

Nazir Alli, CEO for Sanral, reiterated that the road was not being built to accommodate the mine. People should look at when Sanral had first mooted the road. “They should look at our track record in respect of developments. This (the mine) was the furthest from our minds,” said Alli.

No link

The Tribune was unable to get a response from Mark Caroso, managing director of MRC in Perth, Australia, but John Barnes, managing director of Transworld Energy and Minerals (TEM), its local subsidiary, said it had always been clearly stated there was no link between the mine and the proposed road.

On the question of benefits to the local community, Barnes mentioned that South Africa was eager to attract foreign direct investment and to drive true, broad-based black economic empowerment, particularly of the most disadvantaged rural communities.

“The Xolobeni Mineral Sands Project satisfies both these objectives, with R1.4 billion being invested in the most under-developed part of the Eastern Cape,” said Barnes.

He said XolCo, the community-based black empowerment partner of TEM, would own 26% of the mining project.

Posted on April 22nd, 2007
Filed under: Newspaper and Media