An explosive report on alleged human rights abuses by Anglo Platinum has jump-started a South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) probe into rights abuses throughout South Africa’s mining industry.
International human rights organisation ActionAid released the report last Tuesday. Entitled Precious Metal: The Impact of Anglo Platinum on Poor Communities in Limpopo, it immediately hit the international media, with the BBC broadcasting a special report on the issue.
It is packed with accusations by communities living around Anglo Platinum’s mines in Mokopane and Burgersfort in Limpopo, who say the company forcibly removed them and cut off their basic services.
One of the report’s key findings is that about 17 500 poor people have lost agricultural land because of mining in Limpopo’s Bushveld Complex. It also alleged nitrate pollution in villages surrounding platinum mines.
Tseliso Thipanyane, the SAHRC’s chief executive, said that business had not been among the commission’s focus areas. However, the time had come to investigate how mining affected the human rights of neighbouring communities. Pondoland’s Xolobeni community also lodged a complaint with the SAHRC last year about Australian-based Mineral Resource Commodities, which is seeking to mine titanium from the dunes in their area.
The commission is to investigate allegations that the community’s right to free expression and environmental rights had been violated, while the company was also accused of stoking conflict in Xolobeni.
SAHRC chairperson Jody Kollapen said the commission had already scheduled a meeting with Anglo Platinum this week.
Said South Africa’s ActionAid director, Zanele Twala: ”Communities, especially women, have lost their main means of survival — access to land and water. We believe this constitutes a violation of their basic human rights. Some of the poorest people on earth are paying a heavy price for the global platinum boom.”
Even before the report was released, the Anglo Platinum mine outside Mokopane was a hotbed of conflict, with violent protests erupting around removals. In 2001, the company started moving residents of Ga-Pila and Mohlohlo to other villages, as their former residential area was deemed too dangerous.
Villagers interviewed by the Mail & Guardian claimed they were offered ”Canaan”, but instead were moved to sub-standard settlements such as Sterkwater, with little farmland and no grazing for cattle. About 7 000 villagers were moved.
”I hate this place, my community hates this place,” said the induna of the Ga-Pila community, Isaac Pila (72), who was moved to Sterkwater. Gesturing at a huge crack in his house, he complained: ”These houses are falling apart. I know we can’t go back, but we don’t want to live here any more.”
Some Ga-Pila villagers have refused to move to Sterkwater and 28 families have remained. They claim the mine has cut off their electricity and water.
”I live in a ghost town,” said one of them, Rose Dlavela. ”We’ve got no say, we’ve just been told by the mine what to do.” She said more than 40 police vans showed up on the day the die-hards decided to plough their land, which Anglo Platinum had told them not to touch. ”We can’t do anything. But we will not leave. This is our ancestral land.”
The ActionAid report found that the community was generally offered little compensation and insufficient ways of making an alternative living.
”The result is not just increased hunger and poverty; it is also the destruction of a traditional way of life,” it said. ”Villagers have been removed from their homes in relocation agreements signed with associations that the company claims represent the community, but which have actually been established by the company itself.”
Anglo Platinum highlighted factual inaccuracies in the report, denying that it had cut off power and electricity to the old villages, pointing a finger at the local municipality.
”The BBC and ActionAid reports have grouped both relocations and interviewed only those with a negative stance,” the mining company said in a statement. It said the relocations had taken place amid complex negotiations with the communities involved. It welcomed the SAHRC investigation.