waste
Eddie Koch
AN African National Congress senator acting as an official observer in the European Parliament (EP) last week persuaded African and Caribbean countries not to support a resolution from the Green Party demanding that large amounts of toxic mercury waste dumped in KwaZulu-Natal be returned to Europe for disposal there.
The Green Party managed to steer a resolution through the EP in Brussels last week calling on its members states – especially the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain – to take back consignments of more than 500 tons of mercury waste sent by these countries to the Thor Chemicals plant in South Africa.
But ANC observer Cheryl Gillwald convinced African countries not to support adoption of the resolution in a joint assembly of European and ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries, according to sources in Brussels.
“It appears Cheryl Gillwald was not feeling too comfortable with the subject and maybe does not know what the South African government’s position [on the question of importing toxic wastes] is at the moment,” said an EP official who deals with North- South relations.
“She convinced the other ACP states to take a negative attitude towards the resolution. In order not to have the resolution voted down, the Greens withdrew the proposal (from the joint ACP-European Union assembly).”
But the resolution pushed through the EP notes that more than 20 workers have either been killed or disabled at Thor’s Cato Ridge plant where the imported toxins were simply stored instead of being properly reprocessed.
“The case is classified by Greenpeace as the worst incident in the waste trade yet discovered, as no other case investigated by that organisation showed `such abuse of an economically dependent, under-educated workforce’.”
Apart from demanding that the material be sent back to Europe, the motion calls on all European countries to help provide South Africa with the technology needed to “cope with its present toxic waste crisis”.
It also calls on South Africa to support Article 39 of the Lom, Convention, which imposes a tight embargo on movement of hazardous wastes between ACP and European countries.
Green organisations in South Africa are up in arms because South African negotiators in Brussels have been reluctant to endorse this article during talks with European countries about becoming members of the convention, which governs terms of trade between Europe and developing countries.
Green Party politicians in the EP say that Pretoria’s embassy in Brussels had acknowledged South Africa still imports “hazardous waste for recycling from a number of countries in the region”.
Chris Albertyn, national co-ordinator of the Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), says his organisation is disappointed by Gillwald’s apparent effort to block support from developing countries for the resolution.
Albertyn says Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin has not responded to repeated requests to meet with the EJNF – an umbrella body that represents more than 280 environmental, union and civic organisations – to discuss his ministry’s reluctance to end imports of hazardous waste from the rest of Southern Africa.
“The minister appears to be giving us the run around and is being extremely elusive. Despite months of effort trying to obtain clarity from Trade and Industry about its policy on the issue of toxic imports and the Lom, Convention, we have to date still not got a satisfactory response.”
The EJNF will make presentations on the issue after parliamentary hearings on South Africa’s entry into Lom, begin on Monday.