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A community pressure group, which has backed the establishment of a coal mine within a key fresh-water source in Mpumalanga, has accused environmentalists opposing the mine of being racists.
The Voice Community Representative Council (VCRC) has stood by Atha-Africa Ventures, the mining company granted a licence by the department of mineral resources to extract coal from the Mabola Protected Area, near Wakkerstroom in Mpumalanga, in 2015.
VCRC member Thabiso Nene accused the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) – a coalition of eight environmental organisations – of doing nothing about the white-owned Loskop Coal Mine but of trying to stop the establishment of the proposed Yzermyn underground coal mine because it would develop the poor black people in the Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme Local Municipality in Volksrust.
“There is an open-cast mine just 4km from the proposed new mine and they find it acceptable because it is owned by a white man,” Nene said.
But CER executive director Melissa Fourie said: “We are aware of one mine inside the Mabola Protected Environment, which is a small coal mine that started in the 1980s and has been mined sporadically since then. It is currently in business rescue.
“The coalition has told the business rescue practitioner that it is opposed to the continuation of any mining inside the protected environment.
“In fact, to assist authorities and to improve environmental quality inside the protected environment, the coalition has started to conceptualise a labour-intensive, environmentally sound rehabilitation project for this mine, primarily to stop and treat any acid mine drainage leaching from this mine into our precious water resources.”
Nene said the CER had refused to meet the community.
However, Fourie denied this, saying the CER had invited the VCRC to a tour in Emalahleni so that its members could have first-hand experience of the environmental damage that coal mining inflicts.
“You only have to look at the conditions that people in this area live under,” Nene said. “There must be a mitigation plan. We believe that coexistence can happen between mining and environmental protection.”
The area where the mine is planned is an important water resource, argue environmentalists, who claim it serves as the source of four rivers: the Usuthu, Tugela, Vaal and Pongola rivers.
If endangered, they warn, the availability of clean water for communities will be hampered.
On January 22 2014, Mpumalanga’s department of environmental affairs cushioned the 8 772-hectare area under the Protected Areas Act, citing its biodiversity and being a wetland that generates critical water supplies for agricultural, industrial and human use.
The CER has been vehemently opposing both the decision by the department of mineral resources and the environmental authorisation granted by the department of environmental affairs, nationally and in Mpumalanga, given that the land was declared a protected area.
The CER’s application was scheduled for review in the Pretoria High Court this week. Vusi Shongwe, Mpumalanga’s MEC for environmental affairs, tried unsuccessfully to get the case postponed after he issued a notice of the intention to exclude the farms identified for the Yzermyn development from protection.
This process will need public consultations.
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