Donwald Pressly
The debate about hydraulic fracturing had turned racial as wealthy whites wanted to maintain their pristine environment in the Karoo and the region’s mostly poor black community lived in the hope of development and jobs from the process, the Karoo Shale Gas Community Forum said this week.
Addressing the Cape Town Press Club where activists from the forum debated, spokesman Chris Nissen agreed with community activist Ralph Stander, who said it seemed that in general, whites wanted to prevent drilling for shale gas but most poor black people backed it.
Noting that the forum had branches in major Karoo towns where extraction was likely, including Graaff Reinet, Oudtshoorn and Beaufort West, he said community meetings were representative of the voices of the people. “The majority of black people, both coloured and African, want to know more about the project, the economic benefits and what it is going to mean for their lives.”
Nissen agreed that human life was cheap in the Karoo. “If you murder someone you get five years (in jail), but if you steal a sheep you get 20 years,” he said.
The majority of whites, “mostly landowners”, argued about protecting “the landscape” of the Karoo, Nissen said, and were concerned about environmental issues such as the scarcity of water and the potential pollution.
When one member of the audience, Jeremy Taylor of grey water recycling company Water Rhapsody, pointed to the potential contamination of water resources in the Karoo, Nissen said that former Water Affairs director-general Mike Muller had indicated that the Laingsburg aquifer, for example, did not provide suitable water for drinking or farming.
“The aquifers are useless for crops,” he said.
Taylor also objected to the ANC’s indirect interest in Royal Dutch Shell – the principal company interested in extracting gas – while being “a player in the industry, judge, adjudicator and executioner”.
Nissen said it was a reality that the ANC governed and it was the practice in many countries that political parties had business interests as long as transparency prevailed. Pressed on whether he had any financial interest in Shell, Nissen said he had none whatsoever.
He argued that it was important that the feedstocks of the industry would use the rail system, which would take traffic off the roads and trigger the now defunct freight rail lines back into life. He was referring to the potential supply of water and chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing procedure to extract the shale gas.
Nissen said it was key to set up a monitoring body of experts who would ensure that the process of hydraulic fracturing was carried out with the care the environment needed. “What we believe is that there should be a balanced approach… prospecting for gas in the Karoo should be responsible and sustainable… keeping the people and the environment together.”
Lorna Levy, who said she was an ordinary ANC member, said the fracking issue “should not be racialised”. The concerns about the environment needed to be balanced against the need to explore the economic benefits of the process.
While Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu has promised that the cabinet will take a decision on a fracking task team report in July, Energy Minister Dipuo Peters has expressed support for it, noting that Africa was entering “a golden age” of gas extraction.