Eddie Koch
A COALITION of environmental organisations will launch a supreme court challenge to force the Department of Trade and Industries (DTI) to divulge details about hazardous waste still coming into South Africa, despite repeated assurances from the government that it will ban all toxic imports.
Last month Green Party politicians in the Europe Union told the Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF) — a coalition of more than 180 labour, green and civic organisations — that South Africa was conducting an ongoing trade in hazardous materials from other countries in the region.
“We have been trying to communicate with the DTI to obtain details about what kinds of materials are coming into the country but have failed to obtain any response. Should they continue to be unco- operative and withhold information, we will go to court to enforce our rights under the new Constitution,” EJNF co-ordinator Chris Albertyn said.
The EJNF and affiliates of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Coastu) this week staged a protest in Brits outside a United Nations workshop being held in the town for delegates from various African countries to discuss the Basle Convention, which imposes controls on the international toxic waste trade, and other issues relating to the handling of hazardous materials.
The alliance of green organisations and trade unions accused the government of “double-speak” by stating it was opposed to the trade in industrial waste while, in fact, allowing hazardous materials to come into the country for processing.
“We want the Cabinet to commit to an immediate ban on importation and exportation of toxic waste. Workers and the environment are being sacrificed for profit. The Thor Commission of Inquiry (set up to investigate how massive amounts of mercury waste imported into South Africa in the 1980s can now be disposed of) has uncovered corruption and incompetence in government and we cannot trust officials to tell the truth to the rest of Africa about our own situation,” said Richard Worthington from the Johannesburg branch of Earthlife Africa.
“South Africa has a waste crisis and government is misrepresenting our capacity to handle even our own waste. Workers have died and groundwater has been poisoned at both Thor in KwaZulu-Natal and Vametco near Brits. There are 1 200 known waste dumps, of which 200 operate without any permit or government control.”
Albertyn said his organisation was frustrated by lack of response from senior DTI officials to demands for full details about the kinds of waste coming into South Africa for treatment and processing at unknown plants in various parts of the country. “We don’t want to be unnecessarily confrontational but will escalate the challenge by going to the supreme court and arranging further protests around this matter unless we get the details we want from the department.”
The Mail & Guardian has also struggled to obtain information about the ongoing hazardous waste trade despite repeated requests to officials in the office of Trade and Industry Minister Alec Irwin. More than two weeks after the paper asked for the details, the following response arrived from the DTI:
“With regard to the importation of hazardous waste for recycling, your attention is drawn to the South African Revenue Services who collate South Africa’s import data. Your inquiry will be greatly expedited if you could supply the HS Code (eight digits) of the goods with which you are concerned, or a reference from the descriptions in Annexes 1, 2 and 3 of the Basle Convention.”
Albertyn said the court action would aim at breaking this kind of “bureaucratic stranglehold” on information about a trade that could have a serious impact on the country’s environment.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, this week denied South African negotiators were refusing to endorse clause 39 of the Lome Convention, which bans the movement of hazardous materials between Europe and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and is much tougher than the Basle Convention. “South Africa is committed to sound environment policies. We are a signatory country to the Basle Convention, a multi-lateral agreement which involves numerous countries including member states of the European Union, which prohibits and regulates the international flow of hazardous and dangerous waste,” said Mlambo-Ngcuka.
“South Africa is presently engaged in a series of broad complex negotiations with the EU, including negotiations on South Africa’s access to the Lome Convention. The EU has insisted on “linkages” between various trade-related issues and consequently our position on Article 39 is part of ongoing negotiations which have not been finalised as yet.”