Former Anglo underground mine workers in Newtown, Johannesburg. Photo: Brian Sokutu
The Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) has launched the 100-Year Debt Campaign — a national and global movement to demand accountability and reparations from mining conglomerate Anglo American.
Former Anglo employees — some recovering from injuries sustained while working underground at the company’s mines and others being treated for tuberculosis and silicosis — recently marched to the Old Johannesburg Stock Exchange in the Johannesburg central business district in protest.
Macau has called on the mining giant to “take full responsibility for unpaid debts and abandoned communities”.
For over 100 years, Anglo American has extracted wealth from the deep gold shafts of Johannesburg to the platinum belts of Rustenburg and the coalfields of Mpumalanga, Macau’s Christopher Rutledge said at the launch of the campaign.
“Founded in 1917 with the backing of British and American financiers, Anglo built its global empire on the backs of black South African workers, who were denied wages, rights, and safety in pursuit of profits that shaped the modern economy of London,” Rutledge said.
He noted that Anglo transferred its primary listing from the JSE to London in 1999, retaining only a secondary listing in South Africa, and that over the past decade it has sold off key assets, including coal, platinum, and manganese operations, to foreign buyers or shell subsidiaries.
Anglo’s proposed merger with Canadian group Teck Resources was another step in its withdrawal from South Africa, he argued.
“The proposed Anglo–Teck merger will create a new Canadian-based entity called Anglo Teck, effectively completing its geopolitical relocation. This is not a mere business decision; it is a national crisis of economic sovereignty,” Rutledge said.
“Anglo’s departure will strip South Africa of future tax revenue, jobs, and leverage over one of the most historically significant extractive entities in our nation’s history. This is the economic blueprint of capital flight: wealth generated in South Africa is being reinvested elsewhere, with no restitution for the people and communities left behind.”
He accused the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which manages nearly R3.9 trillion in public funds and remains Anglo American’s second-largest shareholder, of failing to act in defence of South Africa’s national and public interest.
“The PIC’s silence as Anglo relocates its assets and restructures abroad, represents not only a dereliction of fiduciary duty but also a betrayal of the workers and pensioners whose savings built the company’s empire,” said Rutledge.
“The PIC’s passivity has allowed Anglo to shift capital offshore under the guise of global restructuring, even as the social and ecological costs of that wealth remain unpaid at home.”
International organisations supporting the Macau campaign include MiningWatch Canada, whose national programme co-lead Jamie Kneen expressed solidarity and support for the parliamentary petition presented by Macau on “mining accountability, capital flight, community abandonment and for the relief requested”.
“We are concerned that the present initiative to merge Anglo American with Teck Resources will not only bring diminished accountability to Teck’s operations, but will facilitate Anglo American’s abandonment and abrogation of its obligations to South Africans for reparations and restitution of the harms generated through its century-long history,” Kneen said.
“The impacts of Anglo American’s extraction of South Africa’s wealth and exploitation of its people’s labour is carefully documented in the Macau petition, as are the impacts and impunity of its operations in other countries. This has happened in several other countries — from Zambia to Chile.”
“As highlighted in the petition, the Anglo-American case points to the pressing need across the mining sector for binding legal and financial obligations to FPIC (Free, Prior, Informed Consent), mine closure and rehabilitation. There should be corporate reparations for historic harm, ecological debt, stronger oversight of corporate disinvestment and transnational mergers,” Kneen said.
The merger between Anglo and Teck Resources will only benefit Canada and not South Africa, economist Duma Gqubule argued in a recent report.
“Anglo’s takeover of Teck will mostly benefit the Canadian economy and Anglo’s executives, who will move to Vancouver and get large bonuses if shareholders accept an incentive plan that also rewards them for concluding the transaction,” he wrote.
The PIC had not responded to questions from the Mail & Guardian by the time of publication. Still, Anglo American described the claims about the company’s proposed merger with Teck as “factually incorrect — risking misleading the public about what this transaction does and does not change”.
“The merger with Teck is about building a stronger global critical minerals company that is even better positioned to invest and grow, including in South Africa. As we have made clear repeatedly, South Africa and our world-class Kumba Iron Ore are central to our strategy,” Anglo American South Africa senior vice-president Nevashnee Naicker, adding: “Anglo American is not exiting South Africa.”
“Anglo-Teck will continue Anglo American’s listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as a very much larger global company, providing direct investment access for our substantial shareholder base in South Africa — led by the PIC that invests on behalf of millions of South African workers,” she said.
“Anglo American has been UK-domiciled and primarily listed in London since 1999. That does not change under the proposed merger. What will change is that our London headquarters will move to Vancouver.”
Naicker said no South African assets, licences or companies would move anywhere as a result of the merger.
“All mining rights that relate to Anglo American’s businesses in South Africa are in South African companies — subject to tax and regulation in South Africa. Claims of ‘capital flight’ ignore 25 years of transparent, regulator-approved restructuring where assets remain in South Africa under South African owners such as Thungela, Seriti, African Rainbow Minerals and Valterra — great South African success stories,” she said.
“Rehabilitation, closure and compensation obligations are attached to specific operations and licences. They remain fully enforceable in South Africa regardless of where the group head office is based or what the top listed entity is called.
“This includes the [Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act], environmental legislation, [Social and Labour Plan] requirements and all worker-related obligations. The merger does not, and cannot, extinguish those obligations.”