Despite Cabinet assurances of a ban, there is evidence South Africa is still trading in industrial poisons. Why, asks Eddie Koch
A high-powered team of parliamentarians was this week set to probe disclosures that South Africa continues to import toxic material for recycling — – even though the Cabinet has assured the public it will ban such consignments.
A joint meeting of Parliament’s portfolio committees dealing with health, trade and industry, and the environment was this week planning to hear evidence that South Africa is still trading in toxic waste with other countries in Africa.
Chris Albertyn, national co-ordinator of the Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), was due to brief the team of MPs about information his organisation has collected to show that the government is still allowing shipments of hazardous materials to come into the country.
After the briefing, African National Congress parliamentarians will quiz Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin in Parliament about his department’s policy regarding toxic imports. They will also demand details about the kind of poisons that have been brought into the country since the new government took office in 1994.
”South Africa has told the European Union [EU] that it intends to continue importing toxic wastes from non-Organisaton for Economic Co-operation and Development [industrialised] countries, particularly via its African neighbours. This controversial position was communicated in July this year in a seven-page written statement from the South African embassy to various parties in the EU,” said an EJNF statement.
”By adopting a policy of permitting the importation of hazardous wastes, South African negotiators with the EU are contradicting the public position of this government, as well as the policy of the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.”
The EJNF made this information public after Green Party politicians in the European Parliament informed local environmentalists that Pretoria’s embassy in Brussels had acknowledged South Africa still imports ”hazardous waste for recycling from a number of countries in the region”, and that its government was reluctant to endorse clauses in the Lome Convention that would outlaw this.
A South African negotiating team recently visited Brussels to negotiate the terms of the country’s access to the Lome Convention, which governs trade and development relations between European states and ACP (African, Carribean and Pacific) countries. The Green Party politicians say it was these talks that revealed South Africa is involved in an ongoing trade in industrial poisons.
Diplomats from the South African embassy in Brussels reportedly told European officials they were disturbed by sections of Article 39 of the convention which stipulate ”the ACP states shall prohibit the direct or indirect import into their territory of such waste … ”
They added that South Africa currently imports waste for recycling from a number of countries in Africa, and that a viable industry would be destroyed if Pretoria endorsed this article of the Lome Convention.
After the portfolio committees have been briefed on the growing controversy, ANC parliamentarians will demand that Erwin answer a series of tough questions in Parliament about the nature and extent of this country’s involvement in the international toxic waste trade since 1994. They will also quiz Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo and Environment Minister Pallo Jordan about whether officials in their departments knew of or approved such shipments.
South Africa has signed the Basel Convention, which will ban all movements of toxic waste between industrial and developing countries from January 1998. But this international agreement does not prohibit trade in toxins between countries in Southern Africa.
EJNF officials fear overseas waste is being routed into South Africa via neighbouring states and that Department of Trade and Industry officials are reluctant to accept the Lome clauses because they would close this backdoor route for bringing in the dangerous but lucrative materials.
Said the EJNF: ”The argument of Trade and Industry negotiators to the EU is that South Africa needs to do our Southern African and African neighbours a favour by importing their wastes. They argue that if South Africa accepted Article 39 of the Lome Convention, ‘unscrupulous concerns’ dumping toxic waste in neighbouring countries would have no option but to continue doing so.”
The statement notes, however, that South Africa does not have waste-processing facilities to handle its own waste. ”If South Africa was serious about assisting its neighbours with their toxic waste problems, we would engage in activities that build our mutual capacity to handle our own problems.”