Transformation and community engagement in the mining industry is a painful but crucial process, the Chamber of Mines sustainable development conference was told on Wednesday.
Richards Bay Minerals’ strategic manager, Thabi Shange, said at the conference in Sandton, Johannesburg: ”Transformation is painful, cumbersome. It is tedious. It does not imply an easy ride of free will.
”Community engagement is not an option, it is an imperative … It is about business. It is no longer corporate social investment. Unless we do it, we are not going to convert or get new mining rights,” she said.
Shange said the challenge for mining companies is getting communities into black economic empowerment deals as investors, and not as passive recipients of charity.
Achieving sustainable community involvement in the mining sector is like birthing pangs. ”In order to enjoy your child you must endure the pain first,” said Shange.
She said transformation has to be a co-creation with the whole community. ”If you go to a traditional leader and say we are giving you 10% of everything, we are messing up.”
Panellists taking part in an earlier discussion about transformation in the industry also raised this concern.
The CEO of the African Institute for Corporate Citizenship, Paul Kapelus, said: ”There is almost a corporatisation of ethnicity where traditional leaders are wanting to take hold of and grab hold of the benefits resulting from mining and using ethnicity as a way of doing it. I think we are at a crossroads in terms of how this is going to play out in South Africa.”
Social justice and trust
The vice-president of mining company Lonmin Platinum, Barnard Mokwena, said the key challenge to transformation in the industry is addressing issues of social justice and trust. Communities are still asking: ”Can we trust you? You did us [wrong] before.”
The transformation task ahead is the ”cleaning, healing and forgiveness of the brand called mining which has an unfortunate legacy from more than 100 years”, said Mokwena.
He also urged mining companies to reconsider their understanding of what a community is when dealing with community participation in transformation.
”It is an intellectual creation that there is a community. [What] you have [is] individuals who have specific interests on the operations of the mines and at times these interests conflict and sometimes they actually unite the people living in the area.”
Mokwena said the sooner companies get away from categorising everyone in an area as, for example, black or Sotho, the better. ”[Then] you can zoom into the real issues … of relocation, of provision of water or roads or education.”
He added it is important to remember that sometimes transformation is not yet even about poverty alleviation, but just about survival. ”Some of the issues are just what people need to move from survival to poverty,” he said.
During a morning tea break, the Chamber of Mines conference was disrupted by a protest.
About a dozen people from the Valley Environmental Justice group barged into the tea room at the luxury hotel in northern Johannesburg, bearing placards reading ”Longmin — provider of corpses” and ”Stop turning our traditional leaders against their communities”.
One of the protesters, Samson Mokwena, said they were representing Limpopo and Eastern Cape communities who had been affected by mining operations. ”They are taking people out of the village,” he said.
Mokwena said mining companies are making false agreements by buying the tribal authorities’ support.
Another protester, Masalesa Abel Makweya, said: ”Even tribal leaders don’t want to listen because they [the mining companies] give them R15 000 a month, but what about the communities? We are hungry and angry.”
Makweya said communities in Mohlohlo in Limpopo are being divided because AngloGold Ashanti is moving them out of their homes. These people are paid R5 000 compensation and built homes that Makweya said have no foundation and are a severe health risk with badly placed septic tanks.
”People are getting sick and dying time and time again,” he said.
Eighteen-year-old protester Kelebogile Mokgatle said: ”We’ve lost our parents. They died at the mines.” — Sapa