President Zuma’s State of the Nation address pinpointed mining and tourism to deliver economic growth for SA. In Mtunzini, however, decades-long disputes over the proposed Fairbreeze mine show how difficult it can be to negotiate a win-win situation when they conflict. Patricia McCracken reports
Time could be running out for the town that’s given so many happy memories to so many families around KZN and SA. Mtunzini, called “the place in the shade”, is instead in the spotlight.
A critical ruling is now overdue from the national Department of Water Affairs on a water-licence for Tronox’s Fairbreeze mine on the town’s boundary. This could open the floodgates for mining development, turning this well-loved ecotourism destination – “the jewel of Zululand” – into a mining town.
That may have been brought closer in mid-February, when the uMlalazi Municipality executive committee approved a land-use change from agriculture to mining. But three key safeguards recommended by their own consultant professional town planner were rejected, and this brings the proposed mine boundary within 100m of homes.
“We are dismayed and disturbed,” says Barbara Chedzey, chair of Mtunzini Conservancy, which co-ordinates national and international mining opponents. “In the UK, the standard buffer between a mine and a residential area is 500m, and there are countries with even wider buffers.”
Mtunzini mining opponents are fighting on the beaches and in the boardrooms, struggling to preserve everything from jobs to the special character of one of SA’s prime ecotourism spots.
The opening of King Shaka International Airport in 2010, 104km south, made it much more attractive to overseas visitors buying SA holiday homes.
Mining, SA’s traditional strongman, and tourism were the two economic drivers particularly highlighted in President Zuma’s State of the Nation address. He noted how foreign tourism had dramatically quadrupled in the past 20 years.
“We will continue to grow this industry, given its potential for job creation,” he pledged.
Mtunzini’s tourism businesses and staff, though, feel they’re being forced to give up one for the other. Their town was unlucky enough to be built on a fortune. Underneath and around it lies a bed of valuable mineral sands – zircon, rutile and ilmenite.
From next year, international mining giant Tronox plans to extract up to 2 200 tons an hour through open-cast mining here, eventually producing as much as R2.4-billion worth of titanium. Tronox is the world’s second-largest zircon producer and third-largest titanium feedstock producer.
Day-to-day applications of this “lifestyle” mineral range from paints that renovate our homes to many of the sunscreens worn by the visitors to beaches at Mtunzini and around the world. Not that there will be many tourists in Mtunzini if the Fairbreeze mine goes ahead as planned, believe opponents.
They foresee its impact on the natural environment that draws worldwide visitors forcing them to close their businesses for the mine’s 15-year life – meaning goodbye to their thriving ecotourism industry.
Mtunzini usually attracts about 70 000 visitors a year. Within walking distance of the town centre are fishing, fish eagles and shy bushbuck at Ezemvelo-KZN Wildlife’s uMlalazi lagoon and reserve.
The wide sweep of beach is a family favourite, while birders and tree-spotters flock to the five ecosystems that converge here – estuary, dune scrub, dune forest, coastal riverine bush and coastal forest.
Raphia palm
Beyond a patch of raphia palm at the edge of town, near a regular perch for the rare and endangered palmnut vulture, stands Twinstreams Environmental Education Centre.
South Africa’s first environmental education centre, now more than 60 years old, it was founded by renowned local farmer turned environmentalist Ian Garland, who planted more than 60 000 indigenous trees in the area.
The centre now draws about 4 000 pupils a year. Garland is recognised with Ian Player as one of Zululand’s conservation pioneers. But both Garland’s legacy and the centre itself are at stake as mining is proposed within 200m of its doorstep.
“I believe mining could change Mtunzini’s fate for generations to come,” says local tourism marketer Bruce Hopwood.
“I’m a founder member of the uMlalazi Tourism Association and we’ve followed Mtunzini’s strategy of marketing itself on natural attractions, which make this an unspoilt and safe environment with pristine coastal dune forest, lagoon, mangrove swamps and kilometres of undisturbed beach.
“We’ve seen tourism services grow remarkably in the past 10 years. Accommodation establishments have more than doubled and include B&Bs, hotels, lodges and self-catering facilities, as well as at least eight good restaurants.”
Right now, the most immediate worry for these local tourism businesses is how long visitors will continue to choose to arrive. Last year, Mtunzini Conservancy’s online survey found 80 percent of visitors responded they wouldn’t return if mining happens. Already ,visitor numbers fell in 2013.
In October 2012, after receiving one water-licence – with another still outstanding, as well as municipal planning permission to change land use – Tronox sent in bulldozers to clear the site at the town’s entrance. It was developing roads and foundations for slimes dams and platforms for the plant that would be transferred from Tronox’s worked-out Hillendale mine, 27km north, outside Felixton.
Work was stopped in Nov-ember 2013 after Mtunzini Conservancy appealed against the water licence.
Existing small tourism businesses remain conscious that any visitors and customers have already chosen to drive past the raw, red earth of their corporate neighbour’s building work to reach them.
In the past you would arrive through vistas of gum plantations or, stretching to the Ngoye forest hills in the distance, sugar cane interspersed with patches of indigenous trees along the banks of streams.
But if mining goes ahead, for the final 12km of their journey from King Shaka International Airport, visitors will be flanked by open-cast mining on one side. On the other side will be two slimes dams, each about 12 stories – or up to 37m – high. Those approaching from Empangeni and the north might spot some of the 160 truck-journeys a day planned by Tronox to ferry ore between Mtunzini and Tronox’s main plant.
In the high-stakes battle over the site of Tronox’s proposed Fairbreeze mine, key current SA issues of mining rights, water availability, how we value our environment and local needs are being fought over.
Ebb and flow
Over the past 30 years, interest in mining in the region has ebbed and flowed. The Fairbreeze mine is now proposed to be about four times bigger than Tronox’s Hillendale mine. In fact, mine supporters say it will be one of the biggest titanium mines in the world.
It’s not just the fact that Tronox wants to mine Fairbreeze. It’s how they’re planning to do it and exploit legal technicalities that worries opponents.
“We’re following all the legal channels and will go to judicial review if necessary to appeal the different licenses and approvals – or get the best mine we can,” says Mtunzini Conservancy chair Barbara Chedzey.
“But with our recent water-licence appeal, for example, Tronox hasn’t engaged with the Department of Water Affairs process – it’s petitioned the minister direct.”
The water licence under appeal would give Tronox permission to build its two giant slimes dams over catchment areas for the Amanzinyama and Siyaya rivers. These extend under the existing N2 freeway into the area to be mined.
This sensitive wetland area will be burdened with a heavy industrial process using 48 million litres of water a day, points out Doggie Kewley, chair of the Twinstreams Trust.
A critical second water licence would allow Tronox to extend Hillendale’s water pipeline to Fairbreeze, pumping those 48m litres a day from the Umhlatuze river system.
Though this isn’t drinking water, it’s still something of a bitter irony for the residents of uMlalazi Local Municipality, where tens of thousands of municipal households current-ly have little or no safe access to water.
Opponents also generally criticise Tronox for clinging to their right to produce only basic assessment reports for most of the site, now used for small-scale projects, instead of a full environmental impact assessment. This was possible because mining rights were registered under the old Minerals Act.
Mining critics were surprised when this was apparently rubber-stamped in just 10 days in September 2010 by the KZN Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Development Environmental Services Directorate. But now this key record of decision has lapsed and opponents believe this means proper envir-onmental assessments should be required.
Without Fairbreeze, says Tronox, its whole Zululand operation would become unsustainable. That could mean more than R800m a year in salaries, service and product purchases possibly lost to the regional economy.
Opponents ask if there isn’t more room for give and take with Fairbreeze – part of a broader, post-Hillendale corporate succession plan eventually involving mining most of the coastal belt between Mtunzini and Empangeni.
Admired
The area’s tourism has a long heritage.
Businesses have been slowly built up since the area was first admired in the 19th century by the likes of Cetewayo’s supporter, John Dunn.
“In our era’s three-decade stand-off over mining, one of many disputes has been the extent of environmental and regional feasibility studies,” says Hopwood. “But what can’t be denied is ecotourism’s recognised place in Mtunzini’s local business scene since the early days of the mining saga.”
An “ecotourism strategy for the greater Mtunzini region” was commissioned by Iscor Heavy Minerals from Guy Nicolson Consulting and released in 1988, Hopwood notes.
If the “greenest town in SA” becomes a mining town, with what that can mean visually and socially – and the tourism tide dries up – how would the town and the tourism industry be rehabilitated once mining has decamped in 15 years?
“Tourism is an extremely fragile economic sector, easily destroyed, rapidly changed [and] subject to perceptions… Should there be even a suggestion that travellers’ first choice would offer an experience that would not fit the usual leisure-based criteria, they have any number of other options,” said a Tourism KZN 2011 research report.
The tourism market is “fiercely competitive”, as tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk has noted. Holidaymakers want to enjoy themselves and they want it now. It isn’t thought possible to put tourism on pause successfully for up to two decades – tourists would simply have moved on elsewhere and developed new favourites.
If Mtunzini’s tourism businesses were to be mothballed for the life of the mine, market memory is so short that at best they would be rebuilding from scratch – as well as facing the challenges of living with land rehabilitation and rebranding a mining town. That could be a death knell to the town rated in the district municipal report as “a quality residential and eco-tourism destination”.
Beyond purely environmental issues, similar concerns are also on the agendas of communities, such as the Karoo, where heritage, literary and agri-tourism make useful contributions to the local economy.
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JOBS IN THE BALANCE
Tourism is SA’s “sleeping giant”, minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk has said. And given his feisty statements last year that tourism creates more jobs than mining, Mtunzini’s two-dozen tourism-related small businesses find it difficult to understand why mining should overshadow them.
They know that tourism, along with agriculture, is one of the two pillars of Mtunzini’s economy.
Tronox CEO Trevor Arran, though, prefers to talk about local businesses that will benefit from mining.
“We have to take the broader picture of unemployment, job creation and poverty alleviation into account,” says Arran. “We’d be more than happy if tourism could supply all the jobs needed.”
But mining won’t either. Tronox workers will be transferred from the Hillendale mine to Fairbreeze, so no permanent new jobs would be created. Tronox has establish-ed some local supply contracts and about 1 000 temporary construction jobs will be provided.
Jobs are welcome in an area with about twice the national unemployment rate. But they won’t solve the problem of out-migration highlighted in the 2012 uMlalazi Local Municipality annual report.
The current workforce would need significant training for mining – but can work well with the flexible opportunities offered by tourism.
The population is more female than male and combines very young with about 44 percent pensioner-headed households. Only 12 percent of adults in the district have matric, and there is 48 percent functional literacy (defined as Grade 7), compared to 60 percent provincially and 65 percent nationally. Commercial farming employs about 2 260 people, 10 times more than those employed in mining.
“The proposed mining activities will have a cumulative negative impact on employment in the area,” concluded a 2011 social impact assessment by Golder Associates.
Once the bean counting begins, Tronox’s local contribution falls short in other ways, according to opponents.
It’s suggested, for example, that Tronox will make a R1.2bn annual profit from the Mtunzini mine. Earlier, it was estimated it might pay only R1.6m per annum in rates to the municipality, but current discussions include doubling the rate for mining.
By contrast, the municipal rates contribution from current residents and small businesses is R12m.
“Our concern remains that the authorities and neighbouring communities are putting all their hopes in one basket – mining,” says Mtunzini Conservancy chair Barbara Chedzey. She wonders what will happen when mining ends “in 15 years’ time”?
It seems Mtunzini’s is be-ing asked to buy into mining’s traditional supremacy. This means trading existing jobs and income and putting regional and national interests above local municipal ones – instead of developing all these sectors side by side.
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RISKING THE PULLING POWER OF TOURISM
The power of tourism was demonstrated after the Greater St Lucia (now Isimangaliso) Wetland Park, once itself threatened by mining, was declared a World Heritage Site.
Within 10 years, about 3 000 new jobs were generated there and in the broader area, including Mtunzini, according to Tourism KZN (TKZN). Foreign air arrivals went up by 29 percent.
Mtunzini is the tourism drawcard in the broader uThungulu District Municipality, attracting 70 percent of all tourists compared to Eshowe, Empangeni and Richards Bay. It’s also a feeder for tourists to local battlefield sites, the Zululand game reserves such as Hluhluwe-iMfolozi, and World Heritage Site Isimangaliso Wetland Park.
This is the pattern envisaged by the Department of Tourism’s rural tourism development plan, dating back to a 1996 government white paper and finally approved as national government strategy in April 2012. Its aims of job creation and development create a core of “community beneficiation”, Van Schalkwyk has said.
In 2013/14, the Department of Tourism’s R1.5bn budget covered promoting SA’s natural beauty, both nationally and internationally, and driving rural tourism development.
Another way in which tourism contributes significantly to economic development is by acting as a “silent export industry”, according to TKZN research. Just as mining can work to empower broad-based black economic empowerment, tourism allows small, medium and micro enterprises access to external and foreign markets through visitors’ spending.
Then there’s the possibility of damage to South Africa’s reputation as an international tourism destination if mining projects are allowed to impact on too closely on ecotourism.
Sustainability is one of Brand SA’s “five brand pillars or values”, according to deputy chair Chichi Maponya.
“So far SA has had generally good environmental controls, but there could be problems if exploitation happens in an uncontrolled manner alongside tourism or conservation,” says Brand SA CEO Miller Matola.
The damage to perceptions is already being done, according to tourism expert Paul Bannister of Ignite. Despite SA’s internal campaigning on sustainability when we spent R200m in 2011 to host COP17, SA is rated surprisingly poorly for environmental sustainability on the 2013 World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index, he says.
“We’re dragged down by our rating for enforcement of environmental regulation, 60th out of 140 countries, and our rating for terrestrial biome protection, 95th,” says Bannister. “We ought to be in the top 20 across the board.”
Bad publicity over environmental degradation can backfire. Canada, once considered “America’s better half”, has now been called a “reckless, rogue petrostate” for its approach to exploiting the bitumen in its oil sands.
According to SA Tourism’s profiling, SA’s potential tourists are environmentally enlightened and quick to spread their views on social media, in turn potentially redoubling the impact on the local tourism industry.
The Mtunzini mine received attention on TripAdvisor in October 2012, as well as on a Canadian water-protection website, for example.
The money and time needed to fight legal wars of attrition against corporates have daunted many communities in the past. Often locals feel abandoned, having only their own comparatively meagre resources and skills to match against the determined and powerful international corporate negotiating machines.
Even though lines have been drawn in the sandy Zululand soil, there’s still time to redraw them.
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MINING V TOURISM: A GAME WORTH PLAYING
SA placed high in the very competitive world of international tourism, according to the 2013 World Economic Forum rankings of 140 countries:
* 4th for extending business trips
* 5th for World Heritage cultural sites
* 10th for World Heritage natural sites
SA’s travel and tourism export earnings exceed exports from automotive manufacturing, chemicals manufacturing, agriculture, financial services, education and construction, according to tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk. Only mining beats tourism’s share of total exports – while tourism beats mining on GDP contribution.
In the balance
Biodiversity’s significant contribution to SA’s economy is significantly undervalued, noted minister of water and environmental affairs Edna Molewa in May 2013.
Overall, Molewa estimated biodiversity’s contribution to GDP at 7 percent, translating to R73bn per annum, supporting more than a million jobs. Tourism also contributed 7 percent in 2012 and mining 6 percent.
Fairbreeze mine by numbers
24/7 operations
2 200 tons produced per hour
48m litres of water used per day
160 truck journeys per day between Mtunzini and Empangeni
475 000 tons of ilmenite produced per annum
60 000 tons of zircon produced per annum