Guy Rogers

A COMMUNITY group and an environmental organisation have issued a joint call for “political leadership” to resolve the tense stand-off around the disputed Xolobeni mine site on the Wild Coast.

Amadiba Crisis Committee and Sustaining the Wild Coast spokesman Nonhla Mbuthuma was commenting following last week’s hearing on the issue, at the Johannesburg offices of the Human Rights Commission (HRC).

Mbuthuma says the two groups are disappointed that the ministers of land, environmental affairs and tourism and minerals and energy sent officials to represent them, although they had been subpoenaed personally by the HRC.

“But we welcome commissioner Leon Wessel’s decision, as chair of the hearing, to reserve the right of the commission to adjourn the meeting and reconvene it at a later date.

“In order to ensure a properly informed and fully contextualised decision-making process we further call on the HRC to reconvene the meeting in the Amadiba Tribal Administrative Area, where the proposed mining site is, so that the ministers…. can experience first hand the Amadiba coastal area of the Pondoland Wild Coast, and can meet the five affected coastal communities face to face.”

Mbuthuma says the aim of the two organisations she represents, together with the SA Faith Communities Environmental Institute, is to “create a climate conducive to the development of sustainable livelihoods for residents on the Wild Coast”.

Besides the ministers subpoenaed to the Johannesburg hearing, the minister responsible for the implementation of the new local economic development sustainable investment programme should be compelled to attend the reconvened meeting, she says.

“The highly tense situation requires political leadership, as well as HRC mediation, to support our joint efforts.”

Mbuthuma says the organisations she represents are urging the commission “not to lose sight of the substantive complaint lodged by the Amadiba Crisis Committee, and to make a finding in respect of these allegations one way or the other”.

The HRC launched a probe in August last year into allegations by the committee that the Xolobeni mining applicant, Transworld Energy and Mineral Resources (TEM), was not complying with SA mining law on the need for public participation with all stakeholders, and that opponents of the project were being intimidated.

HRC spokesman Vincent Moaga says, meanwhile, that the commission will be considering the submissions from government made at the April 22 hearing, as part of its probe into the allegations by the Amadiba Crisis Committee.

He says no deadline has been agreed on as to when the commission will finish its deliberations. Asked if this is not a concern considering that the process involving the environmental assessment of the project and a decision by minerals and energy is still in progress, he says that whatever steps are taken at this level, “they have to bear in mind our engagement with them”.

A subsidiary of Australian mining company Mineral Commodities, Transworld has applied for a licence to mine Xolobeni’s coastal dunes for titanium feedstock, including rutile, ilmenite, and leucoxene and, as well as zircon.

If the HRC upholds the complaints filed against the Xolobeni mining project and our government vetoes the project it will be a triumph for the New South Africa, I feel. It will show we have shaken off the political nonsense that “environmentalists care only for plants and animals at the expense of the people” and that we have, as a nation opened our minds to the possibility of doing things differently.

It will be a triumph not so much for the “anti-mining lobby” but for human rights, and the realisation that they are intertwined with, not at odds with, environmental rights.

Posted on May 6th, 2008
Filed under: Newspaper and Media