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From Mabuza’s meteoric rise to mining disasters: Mpumalanga’s eventful year

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David Mabuza and Cyril Ramaphosa congratulating each other after results announcement at the ANC National Conference at Nasrec. Picture: Elizabeth Sejake/Rapport
David Mabuza and Cyril Ramaphosa congratulating each other after results announcement at the ANC National Conference at Nasrec. Picture: Elizabeth Sejake/Rapport

Mpumalanga has had an eventful year, culminating in the province’s premier, David Mabuza, being elected deputy president of the ANC at the party’s elective conference last week.

Mabuza was catapulted to the national stage, after ruling the province since 2009. His premiership has been marred by allegations of political killings and rampant corruption.

The man known as “The Cat” now truly appears to have nine lives. He increased the ANC’s membership in his province to such an extent that Mpumalanga became the party’s second largest province after KwaZulu-Natal, and qualified to send 726 delegates to the ANC national conference in Nasrec to vote him into power.

Here are some of the province’s other highlights, and lowlights in 2017.

• Legendary musician, Ray Phiri, succumbed to lung cancer at the Nelspruit Mediclinic in the early hours of July 12. He was 70 years old. Phiri was born in Mpumalanga and moved on to Johannesburg where his music career blossomed. He was a founding member of the Cannibals in the 1970s.

The group was later renamed Stimela and had created gold and platinum-selling albums like Fire, Passion and Ecstacy (1991), Look, Listen and Decide (1992) as well as the controversial People Don’t Talk So Let’s Talk.

Phiri’s career highlight was when he performed with US artist, Paul Simon, in 1986 during his Graceland Tour. Phiri also produced the Graceland album. He was sent off in a provincial state funeral and was buried in the Heroes’ Acre in Mbombela.

Ray Phiris Son Pholo Randy Phiri, giving a brief of his father and how important he meant to them as a family. Picture: Lwazi Raul

• Lily Mine remains closed since it collapsed on February 5 last year.

Business rescue efforts to get investors to re-open the gold mine, owned by Australian company Vantage Goldfields, in Louisville near Barberton have yielded no results.

Three workers – Yvonne Mnisi, Pretty Nkambule and Solomon Nyirenda – were buried underground when a container office they were working in sunk. Their bodies were not retrieved.

More than 1000 workers were laid off. The mine needs a R300 million injection to re-open.

Scenes of the collapsed mine showing the extent of the damage and the rescue operations at Lily mine in Barberton. Picture: Vantage Goldfields Mine

• Former Mpumalanga premier and ANC secretary-general Mathews Phosa finally threw his hat in the ring to contest the ANC’s presidency.

Buoyed after successfully defending himself against a R10 million defamation suit by current premier, David Mabuza, for releasing a report branding Mabuza an apartheid spy, Phosa launched his campaign in the Eastern Cape.

Phosa was among seven contenders vying for the position of ANC president, but campaigns by current deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa and former African Union chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma proved too strong.

Mathews Phosa. Picture: Theana Breugem

• Environmental organisations struggle to fight unbridled coal mining in Mpumalanga gained momentum with a number of court challenges.

Coal mining and Eskom’s coal-powered power stations in Mpumalanga’s Highveld region have irked green activists for decades because of their threat to polluting water sources, sterilising farming land and making people sick because of contaminated air.

The push for green renewable energy will continue into the next year.

Hendrina power station in Mpumalanga. Picture: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

• Although the 50-year old Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium plant outside Emalahleni was shut down due to a debt exceeding over R2 billion, it is now re-opened to benefit the community.

The assets standing on 400-hectares of land would have been scrapped as business rescue plans failed but former Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium management came up with a novel idea and turned the plant into an industrial park.

The new industrial park is a beacon of hope that is creating much-needed jobs and providing skills to the community. It also benefits some of the 1 800 workers who were laid off.

There are 21 businesses that are renting space in the plant and seven start-up business have been established. A total number 758 people, 316 of which were retrenched from Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium are working in the business. 

When Highveld Steel shut its doors more than 1000 people were left unemployed. Picture: Nelius Rademan

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