Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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Livestock owners have complained that the Somkhele coal mine has caused problems for their animals. Photo: Rob Symons


Pietermaritzburg judge grants leave to appeal to environmental groups.

19 September 2019 By Fred Kockott

Top environmental lawyers have thrown their weight behind a bid to force one of South Africa’s largest coal producers to comply with environmental legislation.

Tendele Coal Mining operates the Somkhele coal mine on the fringes of the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park. The historic game reserve has provided a sanctuary for rhino, lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and a diverse range of other wildlife for 110 years. It attracts thousands of local and foreign tourists every year.

Situated 5km from the park, the mine has been operating since 2007 amid opposition from people living in neighbouring communities and a growing number of environmental organisations.

Despite this, the Department of Mineral Resources granted Tendele an additional 222km² mining right in 2016.

Last year the Global Environmental Trust (GET) and two other applicants, including a 24-year-old resident from a neighbouring community, Sabelo Dladla, sought a High Court order stopping Tendele from carrying out its current mining activities in Somkhele until it complied with relevant laws.

They argued that the mining was unlawful in that it was operating with no environmental authorisation, no municipal planning approval, no waste disposal licence and no permits to shift ancestral graves.

GET further argued that the mining operation caused serious environmental harm, contributed to water scarcity and had adverse health effects in neighbouring communities.

In his supporting affidavit, Ddadla said the mining area, previously used for livestock grazing, was polluted with massive stockpiles of coal discard and rock. What was once a quiet rural setting alongside a wilderness area was now a vast industrial rock dump with coal dust adversely affecting the environment, crops and livestock in the area.

He said several homestead structures were cracking because of regular dynamite blasting at the open-pit coal mine. Life had changed forever, with many local residents forced to leave their land and homes to make way for mining.

Several of his livestock had also died or disappeared after wandering into mining land that had not been fenced off adequately, said Ddadla.

But Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Rishi Seegobin dismissed the interdict application, arguing that the applicants had not given authorities the opportunity to fully investigate these complaints.

“It is one thing to allege a statutory breach. It is quite another to provide proof of non-compliance,” said Judge Seegobin.

Seegobin also accepted Tendele’s argument that there was no need for environmental authorisations in terms of the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) as the mining operations took place under valid mining rights and environmental management programmes granted by the Department of Mineral Resources in 2007.

He said if the department was not satisfied with the mining operations at Somkhele, it would have requested Tendele to upgrade its environmental management programmes along the lines required by the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act.

There was also no evidence that the applicants had sought to engage meaningfully with the relevant authorities about Tendele’s alleged contraventions, said Judge Seegobin.

While Judge Seegobin acknowledged that Tendele had never obtained municipal permission to mine in the area, he said the remedy for this was for the municipality to serve a contravention notice on the developer, and ultimately, if necessary, a prohibition order restraining illegal activity.

He said nearly 1,000 people would lose their jobs if the mine was forced to close.

At the time of the judgment last year, attorney Catherine Horsfield, representing the Cape Town-based Centre for Environmental Rights , expressed concern that the ruling “may open the door” to companies to disregard environmental laws and safeguards in the Constitution. She also criticised the judge’s punitive costs order against the applicants.

This, she said, had a “chilling” legal effect that would scare other vulnerable people from instituting public-interest litigation against powerful mining companies.

The centre subsequently applied to be amicus curiae (friends of the court) in an application for leave to appeal. Led by attorney Kirsten Youens, GET’s legal team was also bolstered by mining and human rights law specialists, Johan Lorenzen of Richard Spoor Attorneys and advocates Mawande Mazibuko and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi.

Delivering judgment on GET’s application for leave to appeal this week. Judge Seegobin said: “I have listened intently to the submissions advanced by all the counsel… In view of the various pieces of legislation involved and questions of legality that might arise, I am persuaded that an appeal would have reasonable chances of success.”

The decision has been welcomed by the Centre for Environmental Rights as an opportunity to get support from the courts for greater compliance in the mining sector.

“This important court case marks an opportunity for South Africa’s courts to make it clear to the coal mining sector that they do not support companies that are in breach of the country’s laws,” reads a statement from the centre .

“With the Global Climate Strike taking place, there is strong evidence of increasing momentum to hold companies and governments to account and to put pressure on them to reduce fossil fuel expansion and dependence in order to prevent the increasing threat of devastating climate impacts.”

Youens also said it was also good to “finally see the tide turning” for her clients, in particular 4,000 community members who make up the iMfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation (MJECO).

Besides seeking the interdict to force Tendele to comply with relevant legislation, Youens is challenging the Department of Mineral Resources’ decision to grant the additional mining right in 2016.

“The support we are getting from public interest lawyers and organisations around the world has been very encouraging for us but especially for MCEJO who have felt alone in their battle for a very long time,” said Youens.

A spokesman for Tendele Coal Mining, and its parent company, Petmin, was not available for comment at the time of publication.

Tendele is South Africa’s largest producer of high-quality metallurgical anthracite. Somkhele has capacity to mine in excess of 1.2 million tonnes a year of anthracite and also produces energy coal from discard.

In 2015 Petmin announced an agreement for a R350-million black empowerment transaction giving the local community and employees a 20% stake in Somkhele. DM

Produced for GroundUp by Roving Reporters.


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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Marloth SM Group


MINE UPDATE: Richard Spoor, Jan Engelbrecht, and myself had a very informative, and quite frankly in our opinion, a very successful meeting with the Manzolwandle mining directors, and their newly appointed professor (Andre) and their newly appointed mining expert (Charl) yesterday afternoon. Our understanding is that Elliot Ngwenya has a 51% share, and Philip Mkhatshwa has a 49% share in Manzolwandle. Their funding is derived from a person named Sipho. The prof and mine expert admitted that the previous EIA and scoping/assessment reports were a joke, and that they had informed their clients that they would have to drill a lot more than 8 holes, and that a proper EIA, and scoping/assessment reports would have to be done from stratch as they are not even sure that a mine would be viable in the proposed area.

The mining company tried to reassure us that they have now cut it down to 10 000 hectares instead of the 17985 hectares and that it no longer includes Marloth Park or Ngwenya, but Richard told them that 10 000 hectares is still ludricious and that he cannot take their application serious in any way as to the huge area proposed and what it would entail. We all suggested that they withdraw the application and start afresh on a MUCH smaller scale, and informed them that they would still have a huge fight on their hands near the bufferzone of the KNP and from the farmers, as the agricultural sector brings in the majority of income and jobs in the Nkomazi area. The meeting was adjourned with them informing us that they will let Richard and myself know within 2 weeks if they are going to withdraw the application or amend it.

I discussed it with Richard after the meeting, and he proclaims that they still do not have a proper understanding of mining and the appropriate procedures that have to be followed. He also agrees with me that we are going to go ahead as to building a case against the DMR (Department of Mineral Resources) in the high court, to fight this mine application in its present form, and to put pressure on the DMR to think twice about issuing permits in the original proposed area, and subsequently to prevent mine applications like these reoccurring every 2 years, and the fight has to start all over again.

A huge thank you to Jan Engelbrecht for getting the "mine party" together and for the professional manner in which he and Richard (who was the nominated chair) handled the meeting. Needless to say that I held no punches, as per normal, and reminded them of ALL aspects such as water shortage, traffic impact, blasting under the N4, impact on tourism etc. and I was well backed by Richard. I have also been contacted by a representative of the Human Rights Court as to the case that I made against the DMR with the help of our D.A. councilor Mariette Preddy. I promise to update ALL as to any new or further developments.


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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Richard Spoor is right! The Department of Mineral Resources should never have given the permit in the first place and I would very much like to hear their reasons for doing so :twisted:


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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Normally someone in the Department gets a "gift" for approving things, or the beneficiary is a colleague/family member. ;-)


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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I would never have thought so =O: =O:


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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OUR BURNING PLANET

Rise of the snake: Illegal mining threatens Venda’s sacred mountain


By Kevin Bloom• 16 February 2020

Lake Fundudzi and the Thathe Vondo Forest are recognised South African treasures, protected by the government under the National Heritage Resources Act. But since April 2018, with the approval of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, a mining company has been prospecting for diamonds, gold, coal and platinum — which it has now apparently found. The local community knows next to nothing of the prospecting licence, a fact that renders it doubly illegal.

“It is very important to us to jealously guard this place.”

With these words, His Majesty Mailausumbwa MPK Tshivhase and the Tshivhase Royal Council declared their intention to halt the mining project on the shores of Lake Fundudzi and in the Thathe Vondo Forest. Two weeks after Our Burning Planet first had sight of the prospecting licence, which came to us via a whistle-blower who had submitted a Promotion of Access to Information Act request, we finally received a response from the office of the traditional authority that controlled the land.

The substance of the response was clear: the Royal Council aimed to “conserve biological diversity” by “strengthening sound ecosystem management”. In terms of poverty alleviation, they would “equitably” share the benefits of ecotourism between local communities and indigenous people, which would be achieved by “obtaining their informed consent and full participation” in planning and management.

As a statement of purpose, this was about as good as it got in rural South Africa. All over the country, from the platinum belt in the former Bophuthatswana to the Wild Coast of the former Transkei, mining companies have been exploiting apartheid-era customary laws by bribing officials and paying off chiefs. The standard method, as perfected by Pallinghurst Resources with the Bakgatla Ba Kgafela, was to fill the traditional council with members who were amenable to selling out their people for a fee. In this context, where the vast majority of rural South Africans were reporting “zero benefit” from the mines that had been sunk on their land, the Tshivhase Royal Council was a refreshing outlier.

But, as Our Burning Planet had learnt from indigenous healers in the region, there was another reason that the licence to prospect for minerals around Lake Fundudzi and the Thathe Vondo Forest was unique.

These two sites, situated a few kilometres apart in the high Soutpansberg, had been held as sacred since long before the white men arrived with their science and their maps. The customary guardians of Fundudzi and Thathe Vondo, who had always been chosen from the same local clans, had never needed ecologists to tell them that starvation would follow if the sites were desecrated or destroyed. From the central farmlands of the plateau to the untamed bush in the low-lying east, Fundudzi and Thathe Vondo had served for countless generations as Venda’s regenerative spring.

“We have no less than four river sources in the area,” Khosi Muelekanyi Tshivhase informed Our Burning Planet on behalf of his regent and the Royal Council. “These are rivers which give day-to-day livelihoods to the population of Venda. Our main task is to preserve biodiversity in totality.”

Then, after laying out how the protection of biological and cultural diversity went hand-in-hand, Tshivhase came to our specific questions.

In response to our first question, which concerned the Royal Council’s prior awareness of the documentary evidence that Our Burning Planet had obtained, Tshivhase claimed only partial knowledge.

“The Tshivhase Royal Council has not seen the mining prospecting licence granted to Mammba Metal Group,” he wrote, without once denying that the document was authentic. “Lake Fundudzi falls within our territory and we are here to protect [the] national heritage buffer zone as declared by the government in 2014.”

To the second question, which inquired whether the local community had given its “free and informed” consent to the licence, he was forthright and blunt.

“The answer is NO. Mammba Metal Group might have selected [a] few individuals for consultation without our approval as Tshivhase Royal Council.”

Evidently, despite not having seen the licence, the Tshivhase royal family had been following the matter for some time. Which was hardly surprising, given that in October 2018 a strange series of articles had appeared in the Limpopo Mirror, regarding the boast of Thinawanga Ernest Mammba — the chief executive of the Mammba Metal Group — to be building a giant mine.

“There is no mine that is bigger than this one in our country,” Mammba said at the launch event in Thohoyandou. A businessman associated with Mammba had informed reporters that De Beers was funding the mine, but in a follow-up article, the diamond conglomerate distanced itself from the entrepreneur and his plans. Although the journalists at the Limpopo Mirror were unable to confirm whether an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) had been drafted, it was taken for granted that prospecting had begun.

On 5 February 2020, following a week of background research and source verification, Our Burning Planet was ready to call up Mammba himself.

“We have just finished drilling,” he informed us with no hesitation. “We found all the minerals that were mentioned in our prospecting rights.”

Indeed, the prospecting licence had listed these riches in alphabetical order: “Chrome Ore, Coal, Copper Ore, Diamond (General), Gold Ore, Iron Ore, Manganese Ore, Nickel Ore and Platinum Group Metals.”

The licence, signed and awarded on 4 April 2018 by Bongani Hlatshwayo of the directorate for mineral regulation in Limpopo, also stated that the regional manager would “approve the relevant Environmental Management Plan and sign the right on 25 April 2018”.

We had intended to ask Mammba whether he would forward us a copy of the EMP, but, after inquiring when he planned to start mining and who his investors happened to be, he said he was driving and promised to call us back.

He never did.

*****************************************************

“The name ‘Fundudzi’,” it stated in the Government Gazette of 7 February 2014, where the lake and its surrounds were first declared a National Heritage Site, “resulted from a cultural ritual to be observed by anyone approaching the lake for the first time. This involves bowing in a special way [and] removing a strand of hair from one’s head, which is then thrown into the water as a way of respecting the ancestors.”

According to Mpatheleni Makaulule, a Venda healer and the founder of an organisation called “Dzomo la Mupo” — which means “to speak for the natural world” — the ancestors had now been disrespected in the worst possible way. Her severely underfunded organisation managed 11 so-called “sacred sites” in the region, but the threat to Fundudzi and Thathe Vonde was by far the greatest challenge she has ever faced.

“Thathe is the highest peak of the Soutpansberg,” Makaulule told Our Burning Planet, “so it’s a very important catchment area. But with Lake Fundudzi, which is right there, it is also the most spiritual place in the whole of Venda. It’s the home of everything, the source of holistic life. If they mine in that place, we will have to give up.”

Makaulule, aware of the weight of her words, asked that we speak to others — she put us in touch with a pair of elders, two men from the clan responsible for protecting the sacred forest. Neither of the men had heard of the prospecting licence awarded to the Mammba Metal Group; from their reactions, it was clear they were having a hard time processing the information.

“Mining?” said Nelson Ramudingane, “no, Thathe Vondo, I don’t want mining inside.”

Aaron Netshilungwi was equally shocked, his voice trailing off into despair as he considered the possibility that what we were saying was true.

But Mashudu Dima, an 80-year-old healer who has worked with Makaulule for many years, was fully up to speed. The mine would almost certainly poison the rivers that flowed down from the mountain into the Kruger National Park, he said, as well as draw water from the Thathe Vondo dam and the lake itself, which would intensify the suffering in a region ravaged by drought. He also mentioned the dismal efforts at mine rehabilitation in Venda, noting that Exarro’s open-cast Tshikondeni coal mine had permanently destroyed the soil, water and housing of the surrounding community.

“At Tshikondeni, everybody is crying,” said Dima, “I told them, ‘No, you people have allowed this’.”

By Our Burning Planet’s reckoning, when it came to the legality of Mammba’s licence, this was the crux. While the licence was in evident breach of the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999, given the clear overlap between the 13,043ha earmarked for prospecting and the heritage buffer zone as demarcated in 2014, it was the apparent lack of community consent that situated the matter within a much larger struggle.

Whether they knew it or not, as part of the former Bantustan of Venda, the Fundudzi and Thathe Vondo communities were entitled to the safeguards offered by the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act, which had been ratified by two high-profile judgments in 2018 — the Xolobeni judgment in the North Gauteng High Court and the Maledu judgment in the Constitutional Court.

In both of these cases, where compliant chiefs had sided with well-heeled mining conglomerates, the courts held that the “informed consent” of the entire community was paramount. How much more would the safeguards apply when not even the Royal Council had been adequately informed, let alone ordinary members of the community?

This was the question that Our Burning Planet posed to Aaron Kharivhe, director of enforcement and compliance in the office of mineral regulation at the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy. After asking Kharive whether DMRE was aware of the overlap with the heritage buffer zone, whether an EMP had in fact been granted and whether the Department of Water and Sanitation had been kept abreast of the implications for Venda’s water sources, we put to him the following:

“Daily Maverick is led to believe that the local community has not given its ‘free, prior and informed consent’ to the prospecting for minerals in the area, which would make the licence illegitimate as per the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act of 1996. Does DMRE dispute this claim?”

On 31 January 2020, a few hours after receiving our questions, Kharivhe responded.

“The matter is hereby referred to Mr Azwihangwisi Mulaudzi (Regional Manager, Limpopo Regional Office) and Ms Ayanda Shezi (Communications) for further consideration. The matter will be considered further by communications in liaison with our Limpopo Regional Office. The relevant colleagues are copied herein and you may liaise with them further.”

On 4 February 2020, following days of radio silence, Our Burning Planet did liaise with these DMRE officials further. We copied Kharivhe on the mail, who again referred us to the “relevant persons”. As of this writing, no response had been received.

Whatever was going on, the buck was being passed — in the end, DMRE did not dispute that the prospecting licence granted to the Mammba Metal Group was illegitimate. But would Mammba really go ahead with the mining phase now that he had found the wealth in Venda’s most sacred ground? Would he secure the investors? Had he secured a few already?

A Lexis report requested by Our Burning Planet revealed that Mammba Metal Group was registered in August 2013, with Thinawanga Ernest Mammba as the only active director. The company website, while it promised a range of mining-related, agricultural and tourism services, showed no evidence of any business actually having been done. But that didn’t mean Mammba himself was ineffective — as president of the International Revelation Congress, a small political party that ran on a Christian evangelical ticket, he merged with Agang to contest the 2014 general elections and was part of a coalition that won two parliamentary seats.

From the brief statement that Our Burning Planet managed to glean from Mammba, it was apparent that he had every intention of converting his prospecting licence into a major mining payday. Assuming he could raise the finance, with DMRE’s “enforcement and compliance” people happy to sit on their hands, that left only the Tshivhase Royal Council to stop him — and yet, here too, ranking members of the family had been implicated in serious improprieties, raising the possibility that their word was not their bond.

Meanwhile, for the Venda healers and the indigenous guardians of the sacred sites, it was as if their Vatican or Jerusalem was at real risk of being destroyed. And in a world without Lake Fundudzi or the Thathe Vondo Forest, it would not only be them that would mourn.

As Makaulule told Our Burning Planet when we first met her in August 2018: “Our zwfihos, our sacred sites, have been chosen by nature, not man.”


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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Illegal mining of stichtite still ongoing
Stichtite, a mineral believed to have “healing vibrations” in crystal healing circles, has been mined by locals in the area for quite a while.
33 mins ago
Desiré Fourie



Image

MBOMBELA – The illegal mining of stichtite in the areas around the Kaapsehoop Road seems to have no end in sight.

According to SAPS’ Capt Pieter Smit, some alleged illegal miners had been arrested before, but the court procedure had been unsuccessful and the suspects had to be released.

According to Brian Morris, manager of protected-areas expansion at the MTPA, the mining is taking place on land owned by Sappi and Komatiland Forests as well as in the road reserve alongside the road itself.

“The miners are locals – people staying at an informal settlement called Stella Mine, about 10 kilometres before Kaapsehoop on the road from Mbombela, as well as illegals from Mozambique. The miners sell the stichtite to a middleman, who then takes it to Johannesburg,” Morris told Lowvelder.

“The miners are digging a lot of trenches and pits, which can pose a danger to animals that may fall into these excavations. The areas being excavated are also on serpentine geology, which is very brittle.

“The natural grasslands occurring on this type of geology are generally very high in plant biodiversity. Mining should not be taking place in such a sensitive area. No mining permits have been issued for this area.”


According to Elsabe Coetzee, regional communications manager for Sappi, the company is aware of the illegal stichtite mining activities.

“We have identified two places on our land where the illegal stichtite mining has taken place. We have engaged the illegal miners on this matter and they confirmed that they do not have licences to mine stichtite on our land,” Coetzee said.

“They are trespassing, conducting illegal activities and causing unquestionable harm to the environment by mining in open areas which Sappi is managing for conservation of biodiversity. Their illegal mining activities are also a safety hazard, which is another serious concern for us.

“We have informed the miners of the legal process that they have to follow to apply for mining rights and we have asked them to cease all activity on our land.


Image

“Sappi is monitoring the situation and it is our hope that the illegal mining activities in the area will cease.”

Coetzee went on to say that security personnel have been patrolling the area, including the Safcol borders, in an effort to curb the illegal mining.

Lowvelder contacted Safcol to get its comment, but at the time of going to press it had not yet replied.

https://lowvelder.co.za/529477/illegal- ... l-ongoing/


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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“healing vibrations” :O^

0- 0-

Everybody just sitting there watching 0=


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

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Notice the difference between the two articles. In the first the locals bemoan the mining as it is on "their" site. In the second the site belongs to others and the locals have no problem at all. O**


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Re: Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

Post by Lisbeth »

They are two very different things though. But taken as a general attitude, isn't it always like that? O**


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