MINING is a lucrative business venture and has for many years yielded vast wealth for mining executives in far-off capitals of the world. This process has enriched the what is now 1 percent who are said to hold more than 48 percent of the world’s wealth.
On the other hand mining has continued to destroy the lives of the communities that live in mining areas, who in most cases are forcibly moved to make way for mineral exploration.
For the last five years these mining-affected communities, supported by civil society and not-for-profit formations have gathered and mobilised themselves putting pressure on governments and the mining entities by staging their own Alternative Mining Indaba (AMI).
The rationale being to display and express their own live’s experiences without any fear or intimidation from the powers- that-be. The stories told are harrowing, livestock lost to contaminated water from dam tailings; forced removals from fertile land to uninhabitable patches that cannot sustain long-established methods of farming.
Some removals have been violent, sudden and mostly under- or uncompensated at all and have often included the trampling of a multitude of rights of the communities. Voicing concern to the government tends to elicit harsher treatment, worsens the tenuous relations between communities and their traditional leaders and produces a litany of broken promises from government.
Compensation
Communities are sent from pillar-to-post if they have the assertiveness to make an official inquiry about relocation compensation. Disrespect of their cultural and other rights by insensitive mining companies in some cases lead to expulsion from their land by traditional leaders who are often in the pocket of mining companies.
Invariably the testimonies that are to be shared are about mining companies that start prospecting on community land without first talking to the community for obtaining prior informed consent from the community. This means they begin looking for minerals without getting the permission of the community first. Or they simply get the permission of the traditional leaders with promises of employment and infrastructure development, which in the end only benefits the traditional leaders and those nearest to them.
The outcomes of mining companies starting with the construction work on the mines lead to confusion and conflict among community members. Even if the intention was good, because the process is flawed it results in unwarranted poverty and dependence which always leaves the most vulnerable members of our communities in distress.
Where mining companies do consult with communities, they do not seek consent, instead they use such consultations as evidence of engagement so as to obtain prospecting or mining licences. This happens in many African countries, including South Africa.
Even more devastating, where mining companies do consult they do not make the required information available to communities in order to make an informed decision. Thus they deny communities access to Environmental Impact Assessments; Environmental Management Plans; Social Impact Assessments; Social Management Plans; hydrological impact information, information about the energy consumption, health and safety information, financial information and disaster management plans, leading to disastrous relations with the communities.
At best the media has been sympathetic, reporting on the significant gathering of the disaffected in Cape Town that seek to force the mining establishment to live beyond its ambiguous honour code enshrined in corporate social responsibility or to at least force governments to be more accountable and transparent regarding the revenues derived from extractives.
From February 9 to 12, 2015, more than 300 participants from 37 countries will again gather for the 6th edition of the AMI. This event is convened by the Economic Justice Network of the Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa, the Bench Marks Foundation, Norwegian Church Aid, Oxfam America, Open Society Foundation, the Southern Africa Resource Watch, among others.
Since its launch five years ago in Cape Town, with about 40 participants representing faith leaders, CSOs, the media and community members from mining countries in the SADC region, the AMI has rapidly grown into an event to be reckoned with globally and has given birth to nationally organised similar events in seven countries: Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Speakers this year are drawn from a wide cross-section of experts and activists on mining and extractives and include Alexander Yearsley, the founder and director of Stanley Global Services, a business intelligence and political risk consultancy with focus on Africa, the Middle East, Far East and the former Soviet Union; Khadija Sharife, an African investigative researcher and writer who helps co-ordinate the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting, Investigative Dashboard (Africa), and the EU-funded Environmental Trade and Liability; Caspar Fithen, a specialist on the political economy of sub-Saharan Africa and with more than 20 years experience advising across a broad range of political, economic, financial and business issues for the UN Security Council, the European Commission, governments and commercial entities; and International Council on Mining and Metals president Tony Hodge as well as mining-affected community activists.
The four-day AMI will be punctuated with testimonies of lived experiences of the mining affected communities, capacity building and training sessions on: corporate engagement and influence; tax justice as well as discussions on mining reforms in the region; environmental issues and community monitoring; tracking mining impacts; small-scale mining and land; extractive industries and women; mining, health and labour; mining revenue governance; taxation and illicit financial flows (IFFs); initiatives promoting transparency and accountability and access to remedy, litigation and mining. The AMI will enable mining affected communities to attend a legal clinic supported by legal practitioners from different countries to provide solutions to remedy injustices in communities.
Memorandum
The first day of the AMI on Monday, February 9, will be marked with a march to the Cape Town International Conference Centre (venue of the Mining Indaba), led by faith leaders to deliver a memorandum to the business and government delegates gathering there. On Wednesday, February 11, the AMI delegates are waiting in anticipation to be addressed by a great icon for African people, Graça Machel.
The purpose of the AMI has inherently been firstly to discuss and understand the social impacts of natural resource exploitation, secondly to demand accountability, transparency and good governance of revenues derived from mining and lastly to seek effective means and strategies for effecting the implementation and adherence to ethical policies governing the value chain of the extractives sector.
The extraction of mineral wealth in Africa has always had two harshly different sides of a coin: the very rich and pampered executives of the mining companies, and the increasingly impoverished and unhappy communities and workers of mines.
An article that appeared in Business Report of February 6, 2014, sums it up accurately: “Employees, contemplating garnishee-gouged payslips and difficult working conditions, seem easily lured into strike activity. And community members struggle to cope with the environmental damage wreaked by mining activity.”
Both the mining executives and workers and communities keep looking for a better deal from African governments.
Mandla Hadebe is a member of the Alternative Mining Indaba Steering Committee.