JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The near-mine community at Taung in North West province is worse off now than under the despised Bophuthatswana regime, says Kgosi Nyoko Motlhabane.

Motlhabane, who was addressing the fourth of six AngloGold Ashanti/Motjoli Resources’ Mining for Change seminars chaired by AngloGold Ashanti’s government relations manager Zandie Mlambo, recalls that the then Bophuthatswana president, Lucas Mangope, and members of his family, would regularly help themselves to diamonds from the area, without any benefit for the local community.

Synergy director Paul Kapelus, the meeting’s keynote speaker, describes the politics of land ownership in South Africa as “a ticking time-bomb” that is linked to the development of near-mine communities.

“Nothing’s flowing down from the social contract philosophy that we have at the national level.

“We’ve got another 50, 80, 100 years of mining in South Africa and we need to figure things out, now,” Kapelus urges.

National Union of Mineworkers general secretary Frans Baleni says that where there is a healthy relationship between mining operations and near-mine communities, wealth is generated and communities and infrastructure are developed smoothly.

Baleni warns, however, that criminal elements are infiltrating near-mine communities to advance their own political agendas and that these elements are also enforcing localised job reservation.

Employee share scheme adviser and Esop Shop CEO Gavin Hartford says that instead of the mining industry being an economic blessing, it is contributing to South Africa being the world’s most unequal country, with the gap between rich and poor worsening since 1994.

Creating a culture not of ‘I want’ but ‘I am prepared to put this in’ would lay the foundation for the creation of competitive near-mine communities, Hartford believes.

He says that the architecture of the mining industry’s social partners is ideal for the establishment of a “fantastic” social contract.

“The only thing absent is the will to do it,” he adds.

Motlhabane, who drove from Taung at two in the morning in order to be in Johannesburg in time for his presentation, recalls that under Bophuthatswana rule military helicopters would land to collect the diamonds, mined along the Hartz river.

“We knew that when we saw the military helicopter landing that a big diamond was out, but we never benefited at all,” he says.

The community was too afraid to complain at the time: “We were in a police/military state at the time and if you complained, you were dead.”

After 1994, the community hoped that there would be positive change, but the new “big shots” were “worse” than Mangope.

“Big machinery came on to our land. I tried to speak to the people, but they couldn’t speak English. They were Russians. I told them that they had never consulted with us. They told me that they had papers,” Motlhabane recalls on the attached video.

After the local community presented its case to the parliamentary minerals portfolio committee in 2009, Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu visited the community in August and subsequently cancelled the prospecting rights, over which the previous holders are going to court for a review of the Minister’s decision.

The Bophuthatswana Territorial Authority was created in 1961, and in June 1972 Bophuthatswana was declared a self-governing state.

The apartheid government of South Africa granted this “homeland” independence on December 6, 1977.

Mangope remained in this position until 1994, when the country was reincorporated into South Africa.

On 10 February 1988 Rocky Malabane-Metsing became Bophuthatswana President for a day when he took over government through a military coup. The situation was quickly reversed by the following day by the intervention of the South African government and Defence Force.
 

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