JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Civil society organisation, the Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua), will march to the offices of the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) on Tuesday to hand over a memorandum of demands, including that the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) be scrapped.
It is also seeking a moratorium on “persecuting zama-zama miners”.
The organisation stated on Monday that the blanket ban on artisanal mining that is enacted in the current legislation of the MPRDA contradicts the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – a binding treaty signed by South Africa in 1994 and ratified in 2015, which, among other things, requires the South African government to recognise the right of its citizens to work.
It added that the African Union’s African Charter on Human and People’s Rights similarly recognised the right to work, as does South Africa’s Constitution.