The murder of Fikile Ntshangase in KwaZulu-Natal was not an isolated incident. Around the globe, from Nigeria to Brazil, environmental activists are similarly being silenced, and it is our duty to continue this struggle. (Oupa Nkosi)
A year after her death, the real threat of more violence has caused the organisation of slain environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase “great difficulty” in opposing mining expansion where they live in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
On the evening of 22 October last year, human rights lawyer Kirsten Youens’s tweet about the murder of Ntshangase, mere metres away from her 13-year-old grandson, laid bare the danger faced by land defenders in rural South Africa.
The fact that Ntshangase, 63, had six bullets pumped into her body by unknown hitmen when she was chopped onions for supper, brought into focus how land activists endure a perilous existence.
Ntshangase, who lived in Ophondweni village, was the deputy president of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation (Mcejo), which is a staunch opponent of Tendele Coal Mining’s operational expansion near the border of the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve in the far north of KwaZulu-Natal.
Tholakele Mthethwa, another environmental activist, survived a hail of 19 bullets with her two-year-old granddaughter in April last year.
No arrests have been made in either cases, which were opened at the Kwamsane police station in Mtubatuba.
Two Mcejo members, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, said the fear of death the organisation has had to contend with over the past year has affected them badly, but that they would fight on to prevent mining from “disturbing” their agricultural way of life.
Youens said the “real threat of more violence” had caused the legal team assisting Mcejo in fighting coal-mining expansion to rejig how they met and organised meetings to give feedback and take instructions from their clients.
Somkhele mine, which is a subsidiary of Tendele, was granted rights by the government in 2016 to expand its operations beyond the 22 000-hectare licence it initially received in 2006.
Youens said Mcejo’s legal team would meet KwaZulu-Natal Deputy Judge President Mjabuliseni Madondo on 26 October to try to get a date for their high court application to set aside the 2016 expansion licence.
Youens said last year’s violence had necessitated extreme caution in preparing for the legal fight ahead, including not meeting once a month, which was the case before Ntshangase’s death.
“We have to meet less often and we have to invest in meeting further away [from Ophondweni] and transport people to the venues. The venues themselves have to be safe; they have to have fences, gates and security,” Youens said.
“We had to make sure that the people getting on the buses were actually Mcejo members and not infiltrators from somewhere else. So, suddenly, things became logistically quite difficult. But … we did it. The Mcejo members did not hide; they rallied, they came to the meetings. They continue to fight in spite of the dangers, and they want the court case to carry on.”
A Mcejo member said, had the organisation cowered after last year’s violence and the subsequent death threats many of them had received, it would have been a betrayal to Ntshangase’s memory.
Place of mourning: The home where environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was killed while children played outside. (Oupa Nkosi/M&G)
“Ms Ntshangase openly spoke about being prepared to die to protect our way of life. We have buried our parents and forebears on our homesteads, and cannot just accept to be moved so that people can make profit. So, difficult as it has been, we will forge ahead with the fight with the knowledge that any of us could be next,” said the member.
When the M&G visited Ophondweni last year, under the protection of two armed guards, women had sought shelter with their neighbours at night and men armed themselves in anticipation of an attack.
In a statement released in March, Tendele said that should the mining expansion continue to be opposed, the company would have to retrench a further 600 workers after already having laid off 522. A further 478 employees will lose their jobs when the mine closes in June next year.
“This will be a tremendous blow to the area where the mine is the main employer, to economic development in the area, and in KwaZulu-Natal and to South Africa’s ability to create jobs and attract foreign direct investment,” Tendele stated.
This balance between job losses and environmental protection is not unique to South Africa, as detailed in a recent Global Witness report, which said that 2020 was “the most dangerous year” for land defenders worldwide, 227 of whom were killed for their activism.
Ntshangase was one of them.
As her life is celebrated this weekend with a march on Friday to the KwaMsane police station to demand justice, and a webinar on Saturday hosted by Global Witness, a peaceful resolution to the impasse is a matter of life and death.
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