Battle to stop 22km long mine on Wild Coast

[Lisbeth]

By Daniel Steyn and Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik• 28 July 2021


The discovery of rare minerals in the sands has divided the Xolobeni community. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

Community members are deeply divided over a proposed mining project, initially spearheaded by Australian firm Mineral Sand Resources. Despite a lack of evidence that the community will benefit from mining development in the area, the project has buy-in from some high-ranking community figures.

First published by GroundUp.

Without land, we are nothing.” Bekeni Danca, 40, was born in Xolobeni village and fears that if the project of an Australian-based company to mine the mineral sands along the coast of her village goes ahead, she will lose everything.

“We use the land where they want to build the mine,” Danca says, referring to the indigenous forests along the Wild Coast. “There are guava and banana trees. We fish in the sea. Traditional healers find their muthi there. Sometimes I find plants there for my stomach or menstrual cramps. If they build that mine all that will be destroyed.”

Her garden is big, with sweet potato, amadumbe, onion, maize, tomato, carrots, spinach and beetroot. She also has banana trees.

“We build our houses here and most of us have cows that rely on this land for grazing.”

“This is all I know: waking up and going to the garden,” says farmer Neliswa Mdukisa. She is 52 and was born in Xolobeni village. She was taught how to farm by her parents.

“We eat our own vegetables. The only thing we buy from the shop is cooking oil and spices,” said Mdukisa.


Farmer Neliswa Mdukisa tends her garden in Xolobeni. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

In 2002, rare minerals were discovered on the Xolobeni coast. Mineral Sand Resources (MSR), a subsidiary of Australian company Mineral Commodities Ltd (MRC) applied to mine them. Over a lifetime of 22 years, the mine would extract nine million tons of ilmenite, titanium-iron oxide, rutile, zircon, and leucoxene.

Although mining rights were initially granted by the Department of Minerals and Energy in 2008, the decision was suspended after legal interventions by the Amadiba Crisis Committee and the Legal Resources Centre (LRC). The rights were revoked in 2011. But in March 2015, MRC filed another Mining Rights Application, through a subsidiary, Transworld Energy and Resources (TEM).

In 2016, after violent incidents in the area, MRC announced the sale of its 56% share in the Xolobeni mining project. However, this does not seem to have taken place and in 2018 MRC told shareholders that the government supported the Xolobeni mining project, although this was disputed by the Department of Mineral Resources.

After an application by the LRC and Richard Spoor Attorneys, representing members of the community, the Pretoria high court ruled in 2018 that mining developments can only take place with the full and informed consent of the Xolobeni community. If consent is not obtained, no mining may happen unless the state expropriates the land.

Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe applied for leave to appeal the ruling but, to date, the state has not pursued the appeal. Since a 2019 meeting in Xolobeni, which ended with teargas and rubber bullets, Mantashe has not been back to the area.

Meanwhile, the community is divided about the mine. Many residents are frightened by the very idea of mining development in their community.

MRC’s mining right application reveals that it would require about 13 to 15 million tons of fresh water a year.

“We all know the mine uses a lot of water,” says Mdukisa, who fears that the mine would threaten her water source.

Nontsindiso Ndovela is the mother of eight children. She lives in Mtentu, near Mtentu lodge and campsite. She cleans and cooks for tourists at the campsite and sometimes hosts tourists in her mud rondavel.

“This is not a development,” she says of the mine, “It is going to kill us. If we agree to this we will be letting our children down.”

Ndovela fears that after losing her current source of food and income, she will have to resort to sex work to feed her children.

MRC told GroundUp that the Xolobeni mining project “has been paused”.

But Danca is not convinced. “We are living in fear that the mine issue might come back,” Danca says. “Our lawyers are working hard, but with this government, you never know.”


Farmers from Xolobeni walk home, with the titanium-bearing red sand dunes in the background. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

According to Johan Lorenzen, an associate at Richard Spoor Attorneys, 68 out of 72 homesteads within the 1.5km x 22km mining area oppose the mine and are their clients, but some members of the Xolobeni community who do not live within the exact mining area support the mine, and the issue has led to bitter fights. It is suspected by many to be the reason for the assassination of Sikhosiphi ‘Bazooka’ Radebe, a fierce opponent of the mine who was chairman of the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC), which opposes both the mine and the N2 Toll Road project. No one has yet been arrested for his murder.

Five men are currently facing charges for other violence in the area, including attempted murder. Court appearances have been repeatedly postponed for various reasons.

ACC spokesperson Nonhle Mbuthuma, chairman Sibusiso Mqadi, and a third leader received a death threat in July 2020. A community member said that he had been approached by a gang of seven who demanded Nonhle be killed. In November, Mqadi died in hospital after experiencing abdominal pain. Some people in Xolobeni believe he was poisoned. Mbuthuma received a second death threat in November 2020. She currently travels with a private bodyguard.

The Amadiba Crisis Committee has accused the Australian mining company of bypassing the community and dealing instead with elite shareholders and politicians in the area, including local businessman and former Mbizana mayor, Zamile Qunya, and the Amadiba chief Lunga Baleni. Qunya and Baleni are shareholders in a black empowerment company called Xolobeni Mining Company (XolCo) which owns part of the mining project through a complicated structure.

XolCo also has shares in MRC’s Tormin West Coast mine, of which Qunya is a non-executive director.

MRC has distanced itself from all incidents of violence but did not comment on its community engagement strategy.

“This community used to be one, but now we are divided and it’s not even a secret,” Zanele Mbuthuma, ACC member from Sigidi, told GroundUp.

One of the topics which divide the community is the issue of possible jobs from the mine. The executives, politicians, and project managers that visit the area to campaign for support for the mine and a toll road insist that the developments would create opportunities for jobs.

Richard Mtwa, who opposes the mine, says that by running after jobs his fellow residents are taking what they have for granted.

Mtwa says his piece of land acts like an inheritance and can benefit countless future generations. Any threat to the land is a threat to his livelihood.

“A healthy person who begs for food is an insult to God,” Mtwa says. “We are refusing to become beggars while we have land to use.

“They are saying these projects will create jobs but for who? Agriculture and tourism are what fed our families and it continues to feed them. As you see, some people just came out of their gardens. They were harvesting sweet potatoes to sell at the market in Durban,” subsistence farmer Thembekile Dlamini told GroundUp.


Not all homesteads have access to fresh water. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

But not all homesteads have access to roads, water, and fertile ground. The villages that are not by the coast do not benefit from ecotourism or biodiversity in the same way. There are fewer streams, and only a few houses have running tap water.

The residents of this area are desperate for a source of income. Only one in five people in the area receive water from a regional or local service provider, and even fewer have electricity. The average monthly income is R1,250. The unemployment rate of those between the age of 15 and 65 is 52%.

One resident, who asked not to be named, told us that he supports the mine, although he would not declare it publicly. He said that his family members are in need of jobs and the mine would be one of the only opportunities for them.

“Besides,” he told us, “our brothers and sisters are working in mines in Johannesburg. Now they can work closer to home.” He said that development is necessary, and he does not support the ACC because they are against development.

But the environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the 2007 mining rights application, conducted by Groundwater Consulting Services on behalf of MRC, found that the loss of farmland would not be compensated for by job-creation in the mine. “The potential direct employment opportunities for the local community are likely to be limited,” the report said, because of the lack of required skills.

In its environmental management plan (EMP) MRC said: “The community who will be most severely impacted by the proposed development are unlikely to benefit significantly from the permanent employment opportunities associated with the mine.”


Some residents of the area are hoping that the mining of the red sands will create jobs. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

Chairperson of Xholobeni Youth for Sustainable Development, Fanele Ndovela is concerned that the ACC has too much power in discussions at the Komkhulu (Great Place). “We have seen even white people participating there and this is really concerning. At this stage, that place no longer has the credibility it used to have. Back in the days, it was the place that was making pro-development decisions, [such as] to build the Xolobeni School.” [The group spells Xolobeni in its name with an “h”. – Editor]

Ndovela says that Komkhulu is no longer equipped to make development decisions for the whole community. He says the conversation has been polarised between anti-mining groups and pro-mining groups and the role of government should be to consult with both objectively.

“As the youth of Xolobeni, we are the future of what should happen in the area,” Ndovela says. But he says no one from the government, or the mining company has asked what his opinion is on the mining issue. He agrees with the high court ruling that the community should give consent.

Ndovela says that mining, tourism, and agriculture can co-exist, “as is the case in different places like Richards Bay and others”.

The mine in Richards Bay Ndovela refers to is similar to the one proposed for Xolobeni. It has similarly divided the local communities there and has experienced much violence. Several activists and politicians have been killed and in July 2021, the mine declared force majeure after the assassination of its general manager.

Nonhle Mbuthuma says that Xholobeni Youth for Sustainable Development is a pro-mine group supported by Zamile Qunya. Several of their members, including Fanele Ndovela, work at MRC’s Tormin mine.

Regarding the presence of white lawyers at Komkhulu, she agrees it is unusual. But she says that when they first approached Richard Spoor, “we were not looking for a white person”. The lawyers are at Komkhulu because they understand the human rights threat to the Xolobeni community, Mbuthuma says. DM

This is the first in a three-part series on Xolobeni, where members of a small community have been battling for years against a road project and a mine project. Tomorrow: Xolobeni: the N2 toll road may be a bridge too far.


https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article ... nd-murder/

[Richprins]

This really is an unspoiled area!

[Lisbeth]

Nobody is listening! We must stop abusing the planet

[Lisbeth]

Sanral’s N2 toll road development on Wild Coast fuelling community division (2)

By Daniel Steyn and Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik• 2 August 2021


Members of the Amadiba Crisis Committee hold a meeting at the exact site where a bridge for SANRAL’s N2 Toll Road is planned. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

Some argue it will bring economic opportunities while others worry it will destroy their way of life.

Sigidi village is not easy to access. The simplest way to get there is to avoid the long, barely navigable access road, and to cut through the Wild Coast Sun casino, on the border between the Eastern Cape and Port Edward in KwaZulu-Natal, towards the mouth of the Mzamba River.

Here, a suspension footbridge, built in 2015 by an Austrian organisation, runs across the river. This is the local residents’ main access route to shops and job opportunities.

Women laden with groceries make the trip without breaking a sweat. Elders brave the approximately 200m climb, stopping to rest on their knobkerries every few metres.

The Mzamba River mouth marks the start of the proposed Wild Coast mining development, which would span 22km along the coast in a 1.5km-wide strip. It is also where, according to the plans of the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral), the Wild Coast N2 Toll Road will cut through the Sigidi community, leading to an enormous suspension bridge to be built just a few metres away from the current footbridge.

On a Sunday afternoon in June, a group of at least 20 residents came out to meet GroundUp in Sigidi village. Among them were old and young people, men and women. They are all part of the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC), an advocacy group formed in 2007 to oppose both the mine and the road developments.

The ACC is represented by Richard Spoor Attorneys, and supported by various human rights organisations, including Amnesty International South Africa. The group has become a powerful force against the mine and road, in favour of sustainable development such as eco-tourism and sustainable farming.

Leaders have faced death threats, assassinations, and violent attacks.

Read part one of this three-part series: Battle to stop 22km long mine on Wild Coast

“Both these projects will disturb our peaceful lives,” 68-year-old Thembekile Dlamini told GroundUp. Dlamini was born in the village and has survived through subsistence farming.

“At this age, I’m supposed to be in one place and not be moved up and down. We will be forced to leave our houses that we built for our families. We live healthy lives. At this age, I still plant vegetables and I enjoy doing that.”

The ACC members said they oppose the road because it will cut the community in half, and pollute the environment they depend on for their livelihoods. They want the road to run at least 10km inland, where it will not disturb their way of life. They say that this was the original route when the Wild Coast N2 Toll Road project was first proposed in 1978, as a more direct route between Lusikisiki and Mzamba, and that the route was changed to accommodate the needs of the controversial mineral sands mine along the coast.

Sanral denies that the route was planned to serve the mine. But the Australian mining company with a 56% share in the Xolobeni mining project, Mineral Commodities Limited (MRC), said in its mining rights application that the N2 Toll Road will be used to transport minerals.


The proposed N2 Toll Road will cut through Sigidi village. (Map: Lisa Nelson)

Sanral’s project manager, Craig McLachlan, insists that the N2 Wild Coast Toll Road project, which starts in East London and ends in Durban, will benefit rural communities by encouraging tourism and opening the area to economic opportunities. It’s part of the National Development Plan which is supported by all parliamentary political parties, McLachlan says.

“The new shorter, flatter, faster and safer N2 route will directly reduce traffic-cost, saving approximately R1.5-billion per annum for freight and other road users,” McLachlan told GroundUp.

He says a route 10km from the coast was indeed considered but it was found to be unfeasible. The current route has fewer environmental and technical challenges and will involve minimal relocation and social disruption, he says.

But ACC members at Sigidi village say they don’t want big developments: they want proper municipal access roads, houses and toilets.

“The last time we had proper service delivery in this village was between 2006 and 2007. They built us a few RDP houses and toilets. After that it has been nothing but empty promises,” says Zanele Mbuthuma, a resident of Sigidi and ACC member.

Proper municipal access roads would unlock more opportunities than the N2 Toll Road, they said.


Where SANRAL plans to build a bridge for its N2 Toll Road, a footbridge currently offers the only access from Sigidi village to the closest shop. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

Sinegugu Zukulu, an environmental activist from Xolobeni, says that the N2 Toll Road and the developments it will attract are incompatible with the way of life in the area.

“People say the road will bring about development, but my question is: Whose development? Who will be the owner of that development?”

Zukulu says that the customary land will become privatised, enabling wealthy people to profit from large tourism developments, while the local residents will be employed as labourers. Tourism developments should instead be owned by the communities themselves, he says.

In terms of the Interim Informal Land Rights Act, Sanral has to get consent from the community.

A 2011 survey of the communities along the route between Port St Johns and Port Edward, conducted by the Human Science Resource Council, showed that 98% of residents supported the development. Sanral says it has obtained Community Access Agreements with all the communities along the route, but has faced challenges in the villages of Mdatya and Sigidi, in the Umgungundlovu area.

The ACC says that consent should be sought at Komkhulu (Great Place) on the coast, a traditional forum presided over by the community’s iNkosazana (head woman) where all community members can voice their concerns.

One ACC member told GroundUp that he is still on the fence about the road development, but maintains that the decision should be made at Komkhulu out of principle.

In 2020, says McLachlan, a meeting was held at the Dangeni Komkhulu (Great Place) where the Amadiba Traditional Council, including the Umgungundlovu traditional leaders, had “resolved that the project should continue as planned.”

But the ACC says that is the wrong forum to discuss matters affecting the Umgungundlovu community and the decision should be made at the coastal Komkhulu. The committee says if other communities within Amadiba want the road, that is their right, but the community of Sigidi should have the right to say no.

They accuse Sanral of dealing with the leaders of the traditional council in a top-down approach, rather than engaging with community members.


Sigidi village, where the N2 Wild Coast Toll Road will cut through the village towards Port Edward. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

In Amadiba, iNkosi (“Chief”) Lunga Baleni initially opposed the Toll Road development but changed his position after becoming a director of Xolobeni Mining Company (XolCo), the black economic empowerment beneficiary of the mining project. GroundUp tried to contact Baleni but he did not respond.

On 7 June, a meeting between Sanral and the Sigidi community took place, arranged by the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Municipality. The meeting was held at the local school, not at Komkhulu as the ACC had asked. The aim of the meeting was for Sanral to seek the permission of the community, in the form of a Community Access Agreement, to conduct investigations and surveys within the community area.

McLachlan arrived two hours late, citing the bad access roads as a reason, along with project liaison officer Zeka Mnyamane, and Eastern Cape MEC for Public Works Babalo Madikizela. Mnyamane is a former spokesperson for the Xolobeni Mining Company (XolCo). iNkosi Baleni also attended.

The ACC told the meeting (1) that they want the route to be changed so that it does not run through Sigidi, and (2) that the community meetings should take place at Komkhulu.

Community members informed Madikizela of what they deem to be a “history of intimidation, fake meetings, and disrespect”. Madikizela apologised to the community members, adding: “I can see on your placards. They don’t say the N2 should not be built. They say ‘Move the N2 away from the coast.’”

It was then agreed that delegations would meet to discuss the matter and return to report back to the community at Komkhulu on the coast. McLachlan says the MEC, Mayor, and Sanral will meet the ACC’s leadership to find a way forward.

Johan Lorenzen, an associate at Richard Spoor Attorneys representing members of the Xolobeni community, says customary law requires that consent is given by community members and not elite partners.

“Sanral works with all recognised and legitimate stakeholders,” said McLachlan. “According to their legitimate leaders, the overwhelming majority of people in the Amadiba area are frustrated with the very limited number of local residents that are delaying the N2 project.”

Fanele Ndovela of Xholobeni Youth for Sustainable Development supports the road because it will unlock new opportunities for subsistence farmers to sell their produce at the markets. But he says that Sanral’s engagement with stakeholders is flawed. “Any agreement should be with the community”, he says.

Ndovela also accused the ACC of exercising undue influence over the coastal Komkhulu, making it an unwelcome space for those who support the road.

One member of the ACC admitted that there have been incidents in which pro-road advocates have been intimidated and chased away.

Nonhle Mbuthuma, spokesperson for the ACC, says that the organisation does not encourage such behaviour and that Komkhulu is a place for all. She said that pro-mine community members are not coming to Komkhulu because they know they will be in the minority.

If the project does go ahead, the next step for the ACC would be to ensure that those residents who would have to be resettled are protected.

In nearby Jama village, which falls outside of uMgungundlovu, construction on Mtentu Bridge started in 2017 and several residents have been resettled to make way for the new road. Some are happy with the process, some are not.


Sanral’s site at the Mtentu River, where construction has started on a mega suspension bridge. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

Winnie Mdolwana, a 37-year-old woman from Jama village, was resettled with her family of 12. She is satisfied with their new arrangement, saying that she now has two extra rooms in her house and that Sanral gave the family two water tanks. She was also employed as an office assistant at the Mtentu bridge construction site. There was also cash compensation, but Mdolwana did not want to disclose the amount. All nine of the family’s graves were moved and they are still able to farm.

But a 72-year-old woman, who asked not to be named, told GroundUp that those who questioned the resettlements were told that the land belongs to the chief. “I had a very big farm. They promised to move my farm here and fence it. It’s been four years waiting for them,” she said.

She said that she was only given R45,000 for her land. “The money was not enough but I had to accept it, because the land belongs to the chief,” she said.

McLachlan says that for land acquisition and relocation processes, Sanral complies with the Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform’s procedures and that residents are “placed in an equal or better situation through the relocation process”.

“To our knowledge, no Jama resident who has been relocated has complained about their new houses or situation,” McLachlan says.

“Most local residents’ primary livelihood are a combination of social grants and remittances from family members working elsewhere which are completely unaffected by a relocation. Any non-structural subsistence farming improvements such as a kraal or ploughed land are also either compensated for or replaced depending on the agreement made,” McLachlan says.

He says that Sanral’s resettlement action plan was accepted by the Department of Environmental Affairs.

Some people support the N2 Toll Road, in the hope of jobs as a result of its construction.

McLachlan said small businesses, mostly from the OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo districts, would earn income of “over R4-billion” from the project, and construction work would create approximately 8,000 jobs, paying wages of over R750-million to local labour. “An estimated 21,300 and 28,100 indirect jobs will also be created,” McLachlan told GroundUp.

But construction on the Mtentu bridge in Jama village was halted in 2018, as a result of protests linked to local procurement and employment. McLachlan said the suspension of the work was lifted in January 2019, but when GroundUp visited the sites there was no activity at all. DM

This is the second in a three-part series on Xolobeni, where members of a small community have been battling for years against a road and mine project. On Thursday we will publish: is there a future in eco-tourism on the Wild Coast?

[Lisbeth]

It is not called the Wild Coast for nothing. It's a beautiful untouched area, because no main roads pass through

We once stayed for a month at Port Edward and toured the whole area quite a lot.

[Richprins]

The traditional leaders are very easily bought, unfortunately!

But a road is better than a mine!

[Lisbeth]

They build the road in order to get to the mine

[Lisbeth]

Activists urge Ramaphosa to move N2 Wild Coast Toll Road

By Daniel Steyn• 22 September 2021


Members of the Amadiba Crisis Committee hold a meeting at the exact site where a bridge for Sanral’s N2 Toll Road is planned. (Photo: Daniel Steyn)

First published by GroundUp.

The Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC) has sent a memorandum to President Cyril Ramaphosa, urging him to support their battle against the planned N2 Wild Coast Toll Road, which they say will lead to developments that will disrupt their way of life.

The Presidency announced that on Thursday 22 September, Ramaphosa would visit part of the road already under construction in Lusikisiki. In its press release, the Presidency says that the N2 Wild Coast road will “catalyse economic growth at a national, provincial and local level.”

The ACC, which has its roots in a battle against a proposed sand mine in Xolobeni, has members from across the Umgungundlovu coastal area. They say the road will divide the community, threaten the livelihoods of community members, and subsidise the proposed mine and other developments. The toll road, they say, will bring unwanted development that threatens the current use of communal land for subsistence farming and will destroy the sustainable ecotourism in the area. They want the road’s route to be moved at least 10km from the coast.

According to the ACC, the Eastern Cape MEC of Public Works Babalo Madikizela told Amadiba community members at previous meetings that they were “sitting on gold” and that the coast would be transformed to become a “smart city”, with reference made to Dubai. The ACC sees this as a direct threat to the community’s way of life.

The activists claim that the MEC even expressed an intention to build his own hotel on the coast. The local municipality’s planning documentation does indeed refer to a “city on the coast” and foresees future mining activities in the area.

Madikizela did not respond to GroundUp’s questions.


The proposed N2 Toll Road will cut through Sigidi village. (Graphic: Lisa Nelson)

Other community members and local stakeholders are in support of the road, which they say will bring jobs and economic development. We previously reported on community members’ views on the road and mine.

The ACC’s current fight centres on Sigidi village, which the planned N2 Toll Road would cross. Sigidi is the only village within Amadiba still to make a community access agreement with Sanral. Meetings between the Sigidi community and Sanral have been disrupted by the ACC.

At a meeting in Sigidi on 10 September, called by MEC Madikizela, the police used teargas and stun grenades to break up a fight between the ACC and supporters of the road. Although a community vote had originally been planned, after the disruption by the ACC, Madikizela instead held a smaller “stakeholder meeting” with Sigidi residents, traditional leaders, Sanral delegates, members of the ACC, and other stakeholders.

Sanral told GroundUp that at the meeting, two families who would be directly affected by the road were in support of the project.

According to preliminary aerial surveys conducted by Sanral, four homesteads in Sigidi are within or just next to the road reserve and the land of a further six households would be affected.

There are a total of 107 households in Sigidi, with on average 15 people per household, the ACC says. The committee says those in favour of letting the N2 cross the village are in a small minority in Sigidi and the “stakeholder meeting” held by the MEC on 10 September was not representative of the community’s will.

The law

The committee’s legal argument relies on the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act (Ipilra), which says that where land is held communally, as in Umgungundlovu, the community must give consent to be deprived of the land “in accordance with the custom and usage of that community”. The “custom and usage” of the Amadiba community, the ACC’s legal team says, relies on traditional courts called Komkhulu (“great place”), which meet every Thursday to discuss matters that affect the community.

The ACC says that although Sanral agreed in the past to attend meetings at Komkhulu, the road agency has instead opted to hold meetings in areas where it enjoys support, or to seek majority votes outside of Komkhulu, which the ACC says is incompatible with customary law.

Decisions at Komkhulu are not made on a majority basis. Instead, when community consensus is not reached, the issue is laid to rest. “Sanral and the municipality refuse to acknowledge the Umgungundlovu Komkhulu because the Council and the headwoman follow the will of the community,” says the ACC.

According to the committee, the MEC and Sanral have chosen to engage with those who will in some way profit from the mine and other developments, with local politicians, and with Chief (iNkosi) Lunga Baleni, who is an executive of the mining company which hopes to extract minerals from sands in the area.

But Sanral says that Ipilra applies only to land acquisition and not to community access agreements, which are only for surveying purposes. These community access agreements are not legally required and were introduced “for transparency and as good practice”. Community access agreements are generally signed between Sanral, Baleni and the elected ward councillor.

Sanral also disagrees with the committee’s interpretation of previous resolutions that meetings would take place at Komkhulu. The roads agency says it adheres to customary law based on consultations with traditional leaders. The provisions of Ipilra are followed during land acquisition, which involves community meetings that usually end with consensus, Sanral says.

And, says Sanral, most people in Amadiba are in favour of the road.

The headwoman of Umgungundlovu, however, has not approved the road, and it is on her affidavit that the ACC bases its argument that the community access agreement should be taken at the coastal Komkhulu. The previous headman of Umgungundlovu had approved of the road, with the condition that it runs 10km from the coast.

The ACC also says that because Sanral’s surveyings involve the digging up of land and installation of steel rods and concrete blocks, they do amount to land deprivation and therefore Ipilra should be followed when making a community access agreement. In addition, says the committee, the Sanral Act requires Sanral to get consent from a landowner before entering a property for surveying.

When asked by GroundUp to respond to this, Sanral maintained that the community access agreements are not legally required.

In response to an affidavit by Mpumelelo Mdingi, a resident of Umgungundhlovu, which tells of an unannounced meeting held between Sanral and mine supporters and alleged trespassing by Sanral’s delegates, the agency says that the ACC “are known for prompting local supporters to sign misleading, speculative, and incomplete affidavits”.

Sanral insists that its public participation process, starting in 2001, has been extensive and constructive. Although the Environmental Authorisation for the whole road was challenged in the Pretoria high court by local environmentalist Sinegugu Zukulu, it was upheld by the court and Judge Cynthia Pretorius commended Sanral on the public participation process in her ruling.

Consequences

Sanral says that the N2 Toll Road will bring economic development and provide access to markets. Under/overpasses will be provided at regular intervals, safe interchanges for access and improved local access roads will increase accessibility, mobility and connectivity.

Sanral also claims that “the proposed route through Sigidi only affects a limited area of grazing land and does not affect any ploughed fields”. In addition, a biodiversity offset programme is planned to create over 15,000 hectares of new protected areas. The road will thus create new opportunities for eco-tourism adventure tourism and conventional tourism, Sanral says.

But the ACC is not convinced. The committee says that Sanral’s Environmental Impact Assessment “foresees consequences for the community including landlessness, homelessness, joblessness, economic and social marginalisation, increased morbidity and mortality, food insecurity, loss of access to common property resources, and social and cultural disarticulation/disruption”.

According to the ACC, Sanral has not followed the experts’ advice to lessen these effects by developing a resettlement action plan in line with best-practice set by the International Finance Corporation and World Bank. “There is no mitigation of the devastation their own experts foretold,” the committee says.

But Sanral says though its resettlement action plan does not align with World Bank guidelines, it has been approved by the Department of Environmental Affairs.

In response to the ACC’s proposal for an alternative route for the road further inland, Sanral says this was found not to be feasible for a high mobility freight route in 2008. “The route approved by the Department of Environmental Affairs is the best route from a combination of economic, social, and environmental factors,” says Vusi Mona, Sanral’s general manager of communications.

“There is nothing in the documents submitted as part of Sanral’s environmental authorisation application that suggests the inland route is infeasible,” the ACC says. “What is most disappointing about Sanral’s falsehoods about the alternative route is that a process was previously initiated by MEC Madikizela to engage with the Umgungundlovu Community about why we think the old route is both preferable and feasible. These engagements never happened. Instead we were told by MEC Madikizela that the decision about the route had been taken and is final.” DM

The headline on this article was amended for accuracy on September 22, 2021.

[Lisbeth]

FISH TALES
Where kings swim: Fears N2 Wild Coast Road project will threaten giant trevally migration while paving over residents’ histories


The Mtentu river in Mpondoland where the kingfish make their way upstream, 12 October 2021. (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee)

By Dennis Webster for New Frame - 19 Nov 2021

Kingfish have been swimming up the Mtentu River every year for aeons, but some residents fear their migration may be under threat from Sanral construction, along with livelihoods.
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Like most restless wanderers, the giant trevally has many names. In the Pacific Ocean, some call the mighty fish “ulua”. The Hawaiian Islands were said to be formed from the body of a colossal ulua, broken into eight. When one was pulled from the Red Sea in 1775, and became the first to be scientifically described, it was given the Latin name Ignobilis — ignoble.

One place where the trevally, which grow to the size of a person, received a new name was on South Africa’s southeastern coastline. There, it arrived every year, as the spring turned into summer, to swim up a wide river in Eastern Mpondoland with deep green banks, darker than dark. By the 19th century, the river, like the fish, was still waiting to be named. But that was about to change.

AmaMpondo soldiers, battered by their wars with amaZulu, had failed to find medicine along another river further north, which they called Umuthi awuvumi (“the medicine doesn’t agree”). Beleaguered and bone-weary, they stumbled into the lush valleys around the river where the trevally made their annual pilgrimage. The banks were abundant with the healing plants they needed to treat their wounded. Not yet aware of the fish religiously coming and going below, amaMpondo christened the healing river Umthethu, “our medicine”.


Local woman fetching water from a nearby river in the village of Sigidi, 10 October 2021. (Picture: Ihsaan Haffejee)

Since garbled in the mouths of governments and tourists, Umthethu became Mtentu. But, no matter the river’s name, the fish always returned. Every year, in the summer months, great shoals of giant trevally made their anonymous passage deep into the Mtentu’s fresh waters until, generations later, Mpondo fishers eventually baptised the fish for their ferocious fighting strength: inkohla — a name describing an aggressive cruelty.

Always punctual, inkohla have arrived every year since, bearing silent witness to generations of drama playing out on the hills around the Mtentu River. Now, a new highway might threaten the land and livelihood of many of the people living there, and, perhaps, even the fish themselves.

Coast of kings

Giant trevally, or inkohla, are now more commonly known as kingfish. If nature is governed by immutable laws, the annual odyssey of the kingfish up the Mtentu — one of the planet’s last great unexplained migrations — remains a bizarre oddity. Scientists do not know why the kingfish leave their salty hunting grounds every year for fresh water, although they suspect the fish may be cleaning themselves. They also can’t explain why it is the Mtentu’s fresh water that the kingfish seek out so faithfully.

Off the 100km of coastline between the Maputo River and Mozambique’s border with South Africa, thousands of the apex predators, with their broad, scaly flanks and torpedo-like dorsal fins, gather to spawn. They swim together in giant, pelagic spheres that weigh a combined 30,800 kg. Many of the kingfish that visit the Mtentu River every year begin their journeys in these fishy planets, suspended in the warm waters off the Mozambican coast, before negotiating the billowing mass of the Indian Ocean off South Africa’s Wild Coast.


A giant trevally spawning aggregation in southern Mozambique. (Photo: Ryan Daly)


A giant trevally spawning school in southern Mozambique. (Photo: Ryan Daly)

They have swum below that ocean when it was calm, and they swam below it when it became the Sea of Galilee; when breezes turned into storms, and gale winds above the water’s surface combined with the continental shelf and Agulhas Current below to create freak waves that towered more than 20m high. Some have called the deep spaces between those waves “a hole in the ocean”.

The kingfish will have also swum among the countless victims of those holes.

They swam beneath the São Bento, for instance, one of Portugal’s many colonial vessels overladen with loot from India, when it sank off Mpondoland’s coast in 1554. The fish swam among the 150 bodies who drowned around them, and they might even have seen the 322 (98 of them Portuguese crew and 224 who had been enslaved) who survived the wreckage to emerge, apparently amphibious, on the beaches of Mpondoland. (Only 20 of the Portuguese crew and three of the slaves survived their delusional walk back to Delagoa Bay, where they arrived so famished that they rushed to stuff live crabs off the beach into their mouths.)

Sometime in the middle of the last century, the kingfish swam by a young Vumelephi Mnyamane, face bunched in concentration as her mother taught her to dive for crayfish (never open your eyes underwater and always keep your shoulders outside of the sunken crevices where they hide), collect mussels (best when the moon is full or new), and make a curry with her shoreline spoils. Rinse the mussels of sand, boil them in a pot with no water (they will produce their own), fry together with onions and spice, and serve with pap.


Vumelephi Mnyamane was trained as an inyanga by her grandfather and finds an abundance of plants and roots in her village of Sigidi which she uses to help heal people, 10 October 2021. (Picture: Ihsaan Haffejee)

The kingfish have swum by lives filled with incident and texture. Past young boys and the wild bananas they eat while tending herds of cattle. Past suitors being told that their proposals are in vain until they can knot a blade of grass using only their mouths. Past partners being told they will only be given expensive gifts if they are able to catch a shadow in their hands. Past families united in marriage. Past others divided by disagreement and debt. They have swum by at night, when drunks stumbled the road home with nobody but the spirits, malign and benign, for company.

In the late 1970s, they swam past Mnyamane and her mother again. This time, their frightened faces stretched in devastation as they were forced from their home in Lurholweni to make room for Sol Kerzner’s garish new casino, the Wild Coast Sun. Now 70-years-old and stoic, with eyes black as a keyhole and wrinkles that run the breadth of her forehead, Mnyamane remembers the homeless aftermath of that eviction as a time she was “forced to sleep in the dirt” and wake “with soil in my mouth and in my eyes”.

Since being trained as inyanga by her grandfather, Mnyamane has rebuilt her homestead in the village of Sigidi where, to her eyes, the otherwise uniform, pea-green hills are alive in a thousand shades and shapes. There she sees svuba, which can be steamed and inhaled to help with a blocked chest. Here she sees plate, which has been the comfort of countless pregnant women and newborns. There are the yellow flowers of cikamlilo, which she prescribes for knee problems. And there is ibhulu, whose roots she administers for bad dreams and whose carrot top-looking leaves are burned to ward off lightning.


The home of Vumelephi Mnyamane lies in the path of the proposed N2 highway in the village of Sigidi, 10 October 2021. (Picture: Ihsaan Haffejee)

Old man and his sea

Soon after passing Mnyamane’s home in Sigidi, the kingfish reach eMalwalweni, a stretch of flat rocks that have always been happy hunting grounds for unomgqojana — the limpets with holes in their shells that make for the best crayfish bait. From there, they pass Shark Point, Pebble Beach and Skate Bay before eventually reaching Salmon Rock, where the Mtentu River flows into the Indian Ocean, staining it, like a water mark on a table.

The kingfish swim by the river’s southern bank where, in 1920, they may have passed families being forced from their homes en masse before the then minister of native affairs declared the land a leper colony two years later, robbing the villages of swathes of grazing land. A few decades on and they might have seen the same land being declared a nature reserve and turned into a holiday bonanza for white people.

It was near this point that the fish once swam by seven-year-old Kenneth Sonjica, where his father was teaching him the safest fishing spots, and to always tie on his sinker (back then, Sonjica used rocks) before his hook if he wanted to feel a fish’s bite. In those days, the Mtentu ran deep, from bank to bank, and the kingfish arrived as a tempestuous caravan, their many hundreds of heads breaking the surface of the water and causing such pandemonium that Sonjica and his friends would flee in fear.


Local resident and master fisherman Kenneth Sonjica at his favourite place where he fishes almost everyday, 12 October 2021. (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee)

When the young boy eventually plucked up the courage to cast his line in front of the marauding shoal, he was almost pulled clear off his feet. And he watched one summer as the river lapped at the chin of a despondent Matushele, one of the famous local fishers brave enough to fish for the kings. Robust as he was, Matushele had been pulled deep into the river by a powerful kingfish before it ran all the line from his reel and then snapped it.

Kingfish were not called inkohla for nothing, and Sonjica vowed never to be so foolish as to try catching one again. Ordinarily, kingfish gleam a metallic blue-white. But they have been known to turn liquorice black when they hunt. While there is something about the alchemy between fresh and salt water that turns them passive further upstream in the Mtentu, shoals in full flight in the open ocean are brutish to behold. Rapid and competitive, they work themselves into a frenzy — a pod of man-sized piranhas.

But Sonjica did try to catch another. In fact, he caught many. Once deadly afraid of them, Sonjica went on to become an expert fisher of kings, sometimes pulling in fish so big that their tails nearly dragged on the floor when he hoisted them over his shoulder (an exceptional measure, even for someone as short as Sonjica). He eventually guided fly-fishers who came from around the world to hook them.

Over troubled waters

As the kingfish pass Salmon Rock again this year on their way up the ancient river, they might find Sonjica, now 63, in his favourite place – that saline borderland where earth meets the sea, and all the world is behind him. He will likely be standing beneath banks of summer cloud, wearing rubber boots and carrying the rod and reel that have become as familiar to his personality as the way he points to the ocean whenever he speaks about it.

Since returning from a 15-year stint as a winch operator on the gold mines of the Witwatersrand, the old man has developed a reputation of fishing every day. All year around, bronze bream, galjoen and blacktail mull about the gullies off the coast near his home, while black steenbras and white musselcracker make their homes in the lightless pits of the deeper reefs. In winter and spring, garrick, shad, yellowtail and white steenbras make the journey from the Cape. Sonjica has caught them all. But the kingfish remains his most prized quarry.

Now, nearly a lifetime since he first ran at the sight of kingfish, Sonjica is worried that their migration may be under threat.


Local resident and master fisherman Kenneth Sonjica became an expert at catching the massive kingfish that swim upstream at the Mtentu river, 12 October 2021. (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee)

A few kilometres up the Mtentu River, the aborted construction of a mega bridge, stalled by community resistance, lies dormant while the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) re-awards the contract. Once it is complete, the bridge will be South Africa’s biggest and will form a crucial link in the new and upgraded N2 highway running through Mpondoland, which, according to Sanral, is set to save the South African economy more than R1.5-billion every year. But some are concerned that the bridge’s construction is damaging the fragile ecosystem over which it will one day tower.

Since Sanral began building the bridge, its internal monitoring of the water quality in the Mtentu River has shown “no concerning trends” and found that what changes have happened to the water as a result of the bridge are “well within normal expected water quality fluctuations”. Sonjica disagrees.

During heavy rain a few years ago, which he says brought debris and silt down from the bridge, Sonjica apparently found many kingfish either dead on the river banks, or confused and dying on its surface. People from nearby homesteads were carting them off by the wheelbarrow-load. There were so many dead fish, he says, that he thought the river had been poisoned.


A few kilometres up the Mtentu River, the aborted construction of a mega-bridge, stalled by community resistance, lies dormant while the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) re-awards the contract, 11 October 2021. (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee)

At Mnyamane’s home in Sigidi, concerns over the potential impact of the highway run deeper than the future of the kingfish. The inyanga, who says she has not been consulted by Sanral regarding the likely impact the N2 will have on her, is gripped by visions of the past. After she looked on as her mother was forced from her land without notice, Mnyamane has feared nothing more than losing her own.

Craig McLachlan, Sanral’s project manager on the N2 Wild Coast Road Project, does not believe that Mnyamane’s concerns “reflect the views of the majority of Sigidi residents”, where, he says, the roads agency has conducted “extensive consultations”.

The N2, however, remains a source of discord more than consensus in Sigidi. If the highway is yet to physically arrive, its spectre has cleaved deep divisions into many of the village’s families.


Sanral working on upgrading the N2 in the Eastern Cape, 9 October 2021. (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee)

Some see the road as a herald for a future of opportunity — the “skills training, development of local construction goods, services and subcontracting businesses and … community-based businesses outside of the construction field” McLachlan claims will be the highway’s by-products.

For others, however, history is as much at stake. Mnyamane, whose entire livelihood depends on the lessons she learned from her grandfather, for instance, fears the N2 will turn her fertile land fallow. She is more concerned about what she stands to lose than what she might gain from the highway.

Many of the families who have built their homes for generations in Eastern Mpondoland, along with the kingfish who have quietly watched them build, are poised for fundamental change. The mega bridge over the fish’s migratory home, and the highway it forms a part of, will both eventually be built. But on whose terms remains to be decided. DM


A local homestead at the village near the Mtentu River mouth in Mpondoland, 11 October 2021. (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee)

First published by New Frame.