Letter to the Editor: Business Report

The Wild Coast is littered with the wrecks of grandiose development plans that have come to grief in one of the most inaccessible and beautiful parts of the country.

The Xolobeni sand mining plan is just the latest. At the turn of the twentieth century, the march of colonialism faltered against the Pondo uprising. In mid-century, the ‘betterment’ schemes were a half-hearted state attempt resented by the people to shift them from their fertile valleys to the hilltops.

In the new dispensation, the government’s Wild Coast SDI or Spacial Development Initiative ran itself into the ground with little benefit to show for ordinary folk for all the millions that was spent on it.

So it may be with the mining project. The unforgiving land and its hardy people have a way of resisting top-down schemes dreamed up in boardrooms and approved in committee chambers, when their own needs such as clinics, schools, and well-kept roads remain unmet.

One of the local sayings is “Outsiders come in, throw bones and then watch as the dogs fight over them.” This is not said in jest.

The assault on one of the chiefs who sided with the mining company after the day-long event hosted by the department of mineral and energy affairs recently may just be the first in a long battle over rights and uses to the land, some of which is sacred to the coastal communities and justly so.

The Pondo King Mpondombini Sigcau has now warned that forcing it through without the consent of his local people will be ‘nothing less than invasion’ of their land.

Million dollar machinery in a remote area is an easy target too and must be seen as high-risk assets. The mining company itself is already in the red and its share price has not risen since the granting of the licence. Maybe investors are canny to the old Scots proverb, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley’”

Hugh Tyrrell
Cape Town

Posted on September 8th, 2008
Filed under: Letters