Local people say they weren’t consulted when the government decided against mining, reports Eddie Koch
People living in the Dukuduku forest on the outskirts of St Lucia are threatening to blockade the holiday town in peak season over the Easter weekend in protest against the Cabinet’s move this month to ban titanium mining in the nearby nature reserve.
Local plans to organise a “strike” over the government’s decision could embarrass African National Congress ministers Derek Hanekom and Kader Asmal, along with National Party minister Dawie de Villiers — all three have committed themselves to consulting widely before taking important government action.
On March 6 a ministers’ committee — made up of Hanekom from Land Affairs, Asmal from Water Affairs and Forestry, De Villiers from Environment Affairs and Tourism and Ben Ngubane from Arts, Culture, Science and Technology — issued a statement saying dune mining would not be allowed so that “the great tourism potential of the area can now be fully exploited”.
A broad alliance of some 200 environmental organisations under the umbrella of the Save St Lucia Campaign has waged a protracted battle — probably the longest and biggest green protest in the country’s history — to stop Richards Bay Minerals from stripmining the rare coastal dunes north of St Lucia dunes.
They are delighted at the Cabinet’s move, saying mining would have devastated a rare combination of ecosystems and that nature- tourism is bound to bring in more jobs.
But representatives of the two Dukuduku communities told the Mail & Guardian that the government made its landmark decision without speaking to them — even though their livelihoods will probably be the most seriously affected.
Some of the elders who live in the Dukuduku forest were forcibly removed from the proposed mining site on the eastern shores in the mid- 1950s and feel they should especially have been consulted as formal claims for restitution have been lodged by their representatives.
These people live a marginal existence in the forest, growing bananas and other crops illegally. They are among the poorest communities in KwaZulu-Natal and claim that nature conservation and tourism have always been detrimental to their lifestyles (see accompanying story).
A few of the residents told an M&G team, who joined two community meetings in the forest over the weekend, that the government’s announcement was no different to that of old apartheid decrees despite cabinet claims that “amakhosi” from the region discussed and agreed with the move.
“We can be happy if this government can take us back to the land. We should be part of the decision on whether Richards Bay be chased away from there or if we are to have nature conservation and tourism. We are the owners of the land,” said an old man named MS Gumede at a civic meeting held on Sunday this week in a settlement called Dukuduku Two.
The hostility expressed towards Cabinet over its St Lucia move appears to derive from a general perception among the forest communities that a top-down decision was made about how local peoples’ land should be used — thus pre-empting the outcome of formal land claims by two groups who say they used to live on the eastern shores.
“It is all the same story,” said Raymond Nkuni at the civic meeting. “We don’t know if we would have benefited from mining. We don’t know if we would benefit from tourism and conservation. All we know is that nobody has spoken to us. Now that we have applied to get our land back, they are telling us what to do with it.”
Most people spoken to expressed general support for mining because “you can see that we need jobs very badly here” and an overwhelming hostility towards “nature” (the Natal Parks Board) who they blame for arresting people who go into the nature reserve to fish or to visit old ancestral graves.
These sentiments were shared by speakers at another community in Dukuduku One which is made up of settlers who have invaded the forest and subsist there by growing bananas and sweet potatoes through slash-and-burn agriculture and by fishing illegally in the St Lucia estuary.
Dukuduku One is an Inkatha Freedom Party stronghold, while people at Dukuduku Two are politically non-aligned. The latter is a more settled area made up of people who agreed to move out of the forest in return for proper housing sites and the promise of development services.
It thus appears that disillusionment in the forest at the Cabinet decision crosses political lines. Speakers from both meetings said they would back an Easter-time blockade during the peak tourist season at St Lucia — – although formal threats and plans to organise the protest have come only from the IFP’s Youth Brigade in the nearby town of KwaMbonambi.
Two groups of people who claim to be the legitimate owners of the eastern shores, one led by Chief Mineas Mkhwanazi and the other by Chief Phineas Mbuyaze, have lodged official claims for the eastern shores with the Land Claims Commission in KwaZulu-Natal.
The St Lucia area was annexed as state land to the colony of Natal in 1897. People continued to live in the area and were removed in the mid-1950s after the area was declared a state forest.
The ministers’ committee said in its statement that the decision to ban mining on the eastern shores had to be made urgently because “the uncertainty had a detrimental effect on development” and that it was taken only after discussing the matter fully with the KwaZulu- Natal government and the “amakhosi”.
It added: “It was also decided that an application to register St Lucia as a World Heritage Site would go ahead urgently … The Cabinet also decided that consultants be appointed to investigate and advise on an optimal strategy for sustainable development at St Lucia … It was agreed that acceptable alternatives to the restoration of the land would be further explored with the affected amakhosi.”
Hanekom’s office failed to comment at the time of going to press when asked about the apparent discrepancy between his committee’s claim that it had consulted the chiefs and popular attitudes expressed at the community meetings.
Asmal’s office referred similar queries to the Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism. De Villiers’s office replied by saying: “The debate surrounding the future of St Lucia has dragged on for many years and during this time interested parties and stakeholders have had ample opportunity to make an input.”
De Villiers’s officials, in turn, referred the M&G to NJ Ngubane, MEC for Traditional and Environmental Affairs in the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government, for details about which chiefs had apparently endorsed the Cabinet decision.
Ngubane’s office had failed to reply to repeated queries by the time of our going to press.
But representatives from some of the environmental organisations that ran the campaign to save St Lucia from mining admit that they found it difficult during the five- year campaign to recruit support from rural communities who have a stake in the future of the eastern shores.
“The only solution is action now with local communities coming into new ecotourism lodges around the estuary as full partners. We need to show in a concrete way that they can benefit more from mining than they would have from tourism,” adds Wally Menne, a supporter of the Campaign to Save St Lucia.