Desmond D’Sa has been unemployed since he was fired by Sasol in 1998 for trade union activism. These days fighting industrial pollution is his passion.
Ardiel Soeker is slightly more fortunate than D’Sa. He gets paid to fight for people’s environmental rights, although his salary as an employee of Pietermaritzburg-based NGO groundWork is barely enough to keep body and soul together.
When these two humble representatives of South African communities entered the swish headquarters of multinational oil company Royal Dutch Shell last week, they looked and felt out of place. Using an unusual tactic to get heard, they had each become owners of a single shareholding in Shell so that they could attend the company’s annual general meeting.
D’Sa, who is the volunteer chairperson of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, attended the Shell AGM in London. Soeker went to the concurrent meeting in The Hague.
”In south Durban multinationals like Shell seem to be above the law. Multinationals that pollute with impunity have never been prosecuted or penalised in South Africa,” said D’Sa.
At the London AGM, the chairperson of Shell’s committee of managing directors, Sir Phillip Watts, opened the meeting by saying Shell wants to earn people’s trust, to be transparent and to respect communities. The activists were invited to have their say at their respective meetings.
The story they told concerns about 270 000 people living under a fog of air pollution and on top of a crumbling industrial infrastructure in the South Durban Basin, stretching south from Durban’s docks. Shell, in partnership with BP, owns one of two oil refineries in this industrial belt. Engen owns the second refinery.
Members of the south Durban community, who were moved into the area during the apartheid era, have consistently complained of high levels of cancer and respiratory illnesses. Recent research indicates that up to half the community suffers from asthma, as well as a leukaemia rate 24 times the national average.
The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance says the Shell/BP refinery pumps up to 45 tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the south Durban atmosphere every day. Though the refinery admitted in 2000 that it had been under-reporting its sulphur dioxide emissions, regulation by government authorities has been virtually non-existent.
Another gripe the activists placed before the international shareholders concerns 85km of out-of-date pipelines running to the refinery alongside and through the suburbs of Durban. Most of the pipelines are as old as the 40-year-old refinery and are crumbling away.
The poor state of the pipelines has lead to several large leaks over the past few years, including the world’s largest underground oil spill, when more than a million litres of petrol poured into the ground in July 2001.
”Shell refuses to replace the pipeline. According to its South African office, replacement is only needed in some places and there is nothing further wrong with the line. But leaks have occurred at spots that the refinery had tested and found satisfactory, or had repaired,” said the director of groundWork, Bobby Peek.
”This was why we had to get our representatives into the international offices in London and The Hague, to help us negotiate with the local managers. The experience of other NGOs around the world indicates that when Shell’s international office gets involved on the ground, things get sorted out.”
The Shell/BP refinery in south Durban has estimated the costs of replacing the pipelines at â,¬30-million (about R245-million). The activists maintain that, as the world’s second-largest oil company that made a profit of â,¬9-billion (about R73,3-billion) last year, Shell cannot use the costs as an excuse.
One of the obstacles to combating industrial air pollution in south Durban and elsewhere in the country has been the Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Act, an outdated piece of legislation passed in 1965. This law has applied into the new millennium, despite statistics that show South Africa is one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas polluters.
Its replacement this month by the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Bill may help to strengthen the hand of people like Soeker and D’Sa.
”The Bill comes as a breath of fresh air for all those whom the current Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Act has failed to protect,” said Dr Crispian Olver, director general of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. ”The old Act is broadly regarded as outdated and ineffective in dealing with the air quality challenges of a developing South Africa.”
Olver said the new Bill sets standards that will define air quality and once determined, will provide means by which these standards may be achieved, maintained and bettered.
The Bill has been approved by Cabinet for public comment and was scheduled to be gazetted this week. The department said the process of public input is expected to take six weeks.
D’Sa and Soeker, fresh back from rubbing shoulders with Shell’s shareholders overseas, were not in a position this week to comment on the implications of the new Bill.