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Nelly Nkosi walks wearily towards the motlopi (shepherd’s tree) where her colleagues are taking a break in the shade, sharing a lunch of bread and atchar washed down with cold drink.
The group of 20 women and two men are clearing a 2-hectare piece of land with their bare hands, hoping to turn it into a profitable agricultural business venture.
Their village is under economic strain. Many lost their jobs after Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) decided to place the Twickenham Platinum Mine under care and maintenance in July 2016.
Nkosi and Alucia Kopotja hope the agricultural cooperative they are starting will help bring some relief.
All the people on the project are unemployed and depend on government social grants to provide for their children.
“We are struggling a lot since the mine closed down,” says Kopotja, a widow. “Many of us are single women. We cannot leave our children and go look for work in far-away places. So we must do something here.”
The remaining 199 employees working on the care and maintenance project joined the unemployed when their contracts expired on Friday.
Their village, Mswazi Mnyamane, is among a number between the Bokoni and Twickenham mines owned by Amplats in the Sekhukhune district of Limpopo.
The area forms part of the platinum- and chrome-rich Bushveld complex which experienced a mining boom in the early to mid-2000s.
Amplats placed Bokoni under care and maintenance when it fell out with its BEE partner, Atlatsa Resources, which it said had accumulated a debt of R4 billion, leading to a further 3 000 job losses.
Anglo’s spokesperson, Jana Marais, says care and maintenance activities at Twickenham will continue until a decision is made on the mine’s future within Amplats’ portfolio of assets.
“There has been no decision on a closure,” she says.
But the villagers believe the mine will be shut. Speculation is rife that Anglo’s decision to place it under care and maintenance is in fact a veiled plan to replace human labour with machinery.
Anglo chief executive officer Chris Griffith told the company’s indaba in 2015 that Twickenham mine would be the first mechanised mine to demonstrate low-profile technology.
Marais says the company’s “intention is not to simply replace workers with machinery”.
The company has an overall modernisation programme in place and feasibility studies have shown that, for Twickenham mine to be viable, it would need to be fully mechanised.
“It is important to note that Twickenham was never a fully operating mine, but a mine project under development,” says Marais.
But the effect of boardroom decisions is now being felt in villages such as Mswazi Mnyamane.
Many villages were transformed from self-reliant farming communities and instead they became heavily reliant on income derived from mining.
With Anglo’s decision to lay off workers, the community is now struggling to adjust to life after mining.
A fortnight ago, as tension about the future of the mine rose, arsonists burnt down Anglo’s social performance office at Moopetsi. Marais says the company is working with police to investigate.
Taeya Hlongwa, chairperson of the Community Engagement Forum which represents at least 40 000 people from nine villages close to the mine, says the residents want Twickenham reopened.
“Before the mine was opened people here were farming. Life was better before the mine [started operating] because people did not depend on money. Now the mine is closed and there’s no more money. People are stranded,” says Hlongwa.
“We want them [Anglo] to reopen the mine [because] they have changed the way of life here.”
He says communities here can no longer farm as they used to because most of the boreholes are dry and land for ploughing and grazing has either been destroyed or taken up by mining operations. He accuses Anglo of dragging its feet about consulting the community. Anglo denies this, saying it is “still on course to engage further”.
“It is important to note that following the completion of the elections, there have been several incidents of violence and instability which have affected the planned engagements, thus resulting in no road shows at present,” says Marais.
Former mine employees, such as Evans Baloyi, a rock drill operator who was retrenched in 2017, remain in the dark waiting for news. He says the reason he was given when laid off work was that “the company is introducing machines”.
His family now relies on the social grant for his 13-year-old child and sometimes, if he’s lucky, he earns R30 for each taxi he washes. He’s had to sell his car and adjust to life without a stable income.
Chances of getting a job, especially in mining, are unlikely. Recently Stats SA revealed in its Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the first quarter of this year that the official unemployment rate had increased to 27.6%.
It indicated a decline in employment in all sectors, with mining shedding 20 000 jobs. This spells disaster for areas such as the Fetakgomo Tubatse municipality where mining remains the biggest employer.
A research paper by North-West University concluded that “mine closures, in general, have a devastating effect on the surrounding mining communities as well as on the employees”.
The paper, titled Potential socioeconomic consequences of mine closure (Ackermann, A, Botha, D & Van der Waldt, G 2018) concluded that mine closures “gradually depleted the mining communities’ livelihood assets and resulted in the collapse of their coping strategies and livelihood outcomes. It generally affected the communities’ nutrition, health, education, food security, water, shelter, levels of community participation and personal safety.”
With families relying on state welfare for survival the growing unemployment was breeding other social ills, including the escalation of crime, particularly theft.
Toka Marule, whose family’s livestock was stolen recently, hopes to join the police service once he makes it through his matric supplementary exams. He hopes his contribution can help restore his village, Mongatana Swaale, back to the peaceful place it once was.
He earns R10 for every trip he makes transporting goods, which include firewood, groceries, building sand and other goods on a donkey cart with six others.
Back at the field, which the women of Mswazi Mnyamane hope to transform into a prosperous garden, Nkosi says although many are reeling from Amplats’ decision she has not derived any benefit from the mine.
“No one in my family worked on that mine. What I hoped for was that the mine would take our children for training so they could start their own businesses. Working on the mine is short term but when you run your business you can do it for a long time. We want to work here and sell vegetables and hope our children continue with this for a long time,” says Nkosi.
Marais says Anglo is committed to honouring all “Social Labour Plan” (SLP) obligations and that social impact mitigation plans have been implemented.
“We plan to complete all current SLPs by the end of 2021. During the implementation of these SLPs, employment is sourced from local host communities. Equally, local entrepreneurs are contracted to build the infrastructure as well as supply materials and equipment,” she says.
It is hard going and the times are tight for Nkosi and her fellow villagers. – Mukurukuru Media
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