A spat between local miners and a poor community near Barkly West in the Northern Cape threatens neighbourhood relations throughout the desolate area.
The black people of Gong Gong and Waldeck’s Plant are up in arms over mining policies they say discriminate against them. Aspirant small-time miners say they struggle to secure licences from the government that are readily provided to white miners.
Before it grants licences, the Department of Minerals and Energy requires miners to deposit funds to rehabilitate the environment where they mine.
Black community leaders say the department does not enforce these regulations before granting licences to established white miners, but will not grant them the same dispensation.
Violence has already broken out between the established miners and the newcomers. Police at Delportshoop confirm that a charge of assault was laid after conflict between the groups in February. The police are still investigating the charges.
The people of Gong Gong lead a simple life on the edge of the Vaal river in a bleak, sun-blasted area. The region is rich in diamonds and many try to scratch a living out of small-time mining. Most struggle to survive.
Waldeck’s Plant lies across the river in the heart of a diamond-rich area. The local church bought the parcel of land in the late 1800s. A gate blocks access to the settlement, whose members have mined the area for more than 120 years. Most of the established local white miners are independents who started small and built their businesses over decades.
Bennie de Munza, a community leader in Gong Gong and a former principal of the local school, says his community is tired of being taken advantage of. He says the diamond diggings cause appalling environmental damage and nothing is done about it. He feels the local black community benefits little from the area’s riches.
Wendy Carvell and her family live in Gong Gong. They are small-time miners who struggle to survive.
“We can’t afford the rehabilitation fee,” she says. “We were required to put up R100 000 for rehabilitating the diggings. It is plain racism.
“The big white miners are not doing any rehabilitation, yet their licences are renewed. The environmental damage is blinding when you cross the river. They will never be able to rehabilitate the area,” she says.
The environmental destruction at Waldeck’s Plant is obvious. Rusted mining gear litters the huge dongas. Tatty signs demarcate the extent of the individual miners’ small domains. There is no obvious evidence of environmental rehabilitation. The banks of the Vaal are littered with discarded mining equipment. Small man-made hills provide the only shade because the miners have uprooted most of the trees along the river bank.
Johan Borman, acting director of mineral affairs in the Northern Cape, says Waldeck’s Plant has been mined for almost 120 years.
“No rehabilitation was done until 1992, when it became law to facilitate rehabilitation in a mining area.”
The Minerals Act of 1991 requires miners to submit an environmental management programme to the minerals and energy department for approval. Once approved, the plan must be implemented throughout the life of the diggings.
Diamond miners must rehabilitate the areas they work for their licences to be renewed. They must also lodge a deposit that can be used to rehabilitate the area after it has been mined.
“We are very strict about rehabilitation,” says Borman. “Every miner, whether … small-timer or big-timer, has to contribute to rehabilitation.”
The government is moving towards relaxing these requirements for small mining companies to benefit previously excluded communities.
Damien Terlien, a master’s student at the University of Cape Town, has studied small-scale diamond mining at Gong Gong and Longlands. She found 35% of the local community are unemployed and 26% of households earn less than R500 a month.
Terlien says most small-scale diamond miners in the Northern Cape are pensioners who use their pensions for start-up costs. “A small-scale miner needs about R24 000 and a medium-scale miner R10-million before mining can commence,” she says.
“Small-scale miners are required to put up between R500 and R5 000 guarantees for rehabilitation and medium-scale miners R50 000.”
Borman says the fees are paid into a rehabilitation fund. But this is not always clear to aspiring miners in local communities, who consider the fees to be merely an obstacle for those who want to establish their own businesses.
“Limited communication between the government and these miners has led to a number of confusing misconceptions over the mining regulations,” says Terlien. “There is a real need for field officers to enforce greater control of mining activities and the rehabilitation of sites.”
Borman says some miners at Waldeck’s Plant may have taken over unrehabilitated old diggings. “But we require the community to help us identify these scoundrels. We have limited personnel and can’t always identify people who are shirking their duties.”
The gate closing off Waldeck’s Plant has caused great unhappiness in the surrounding community, who say it hampers their freedom of movement. Carvell says even ambulances have been held up at the boundary.
De Munza says the black community has failed to have the gate removed. “The best they would do was to give the community a single key to pass through. But that is not good enough.” He says the bridge across the river over which the road runs dams the river and adds to environmental damage.
Carvell claims the miners have dug up the black community’s graves at Waldeck’s Plant. She says the old white graveyard remains untouched, but recent rains washed bones from graves in the black cemetery. “Police forensic investigators have been here and have found human bones.”
Police at nearby Delportshoop confirm that a case of alleged vandalism of graves was lodged against a local miner. Allegations of others irregularities at Waldeck’s Plant were also being investigated, they said.