A few years ago, when I was an honours student at in the department of geography at Rhodes University, I received funding from the Canadian government to research the anti-mining struggle in Xolobeni in the Eastern Cape province.
The research undertaking culminated in a dissertation and an article published by the Journal of Public Administration, titled: “The peasants revolt: Analysing the role of the democratic state in the struggle for land and environmental justice in Xolobeni, Eastern Cape, South Africa”.
I argued that the SA government, in collaboration with Mineral Commodities Mineral Ltd (MRC), an Australian mining company, which the state had unlawfully granted a licence to mine titanium in Xolobeni, was undermining the constitution and the right of the Amadiba people to a safe environment.
The anti-mining struggle in Xolobeni has been ongoing for decades and has claimed a significant number of casualties. Nomhle Mbuthuma, the spokesperson for the Amadiba Crisis Committee, which represents community members in five villages of the Amadiba Tribal Authority region that are working together in opposition to destructive mining projects, has survived assassination attempts and to this day, continues to receive death threats.
The former chairperson of the committee, Sikhosiphi Bazooka Rhadebe, was brutally assassinated in front of his son five years ago. His killers remain unidentified.
The SA government, theoretically the custodian of the constitution, has been collaborating with private companies that are seeking to engage in destructive mining activities in the Wild Coast. This, despite these being Marine Protected Areas in which, by law, no harmful mining activities should take place.
The government and its private sector partners claim that this is about development. Environmental justice activists and geographers like myself are asking a critical question: development at what cost?
We once again find ourselves dealing with a collaborationist state that is allowing Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company, Shell, to conduct a seismic survey in the Wild Coast. This will require the use of ships towing an array of air guns that transit a grid pattern on the ocean.
The guns emit a very low frequency but loud blast of sound directed at the seabed. Because the sound waves are very long, they can penetrate deep into the earth’s crust. Marine biologists have pointed out that whales, dolphins, porpoises, turtles and almost all marine mammals and reptiles navigate and communicate using sound. The blasts of sound emitted from the air guns have the potential to damage the hearing of marine animals.
In addition to this, seismic exploration could also result in a complete marine ecosystem collapse which would have disastrous effects on marine biodiversity and local indigenous communities and their livelihoods. Shell knows this.
It is for this reason that the company consulted stakeholders in the commercial and recreational fishing sectors but ignored small-scale fishing communities, which include Amadiba, Cwebe, Hobeni and others. Instead of demanding that Shell engages with these communities, the SA government approved its environmental management programme that has been deemed to not even meet the requirements as defined in the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act. This is exactly what happened with MRC.
The government is proving to be the greatest danger to environmental justice in our country. The pursuit of profit at the expense of the environment and people is calamitous and should not be allowed to continue. This is not about development.
Development that rests on destroying the land and making it unusable in the future is regressive and dangerous no matter what the short-term benefits may be. Government will do well to internalise this proverb by Native Americans: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”
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