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- JSE-listed companies: Northam Platinum | Anglo American Platinum
- Companies and organisations: African National Congress
ANGLO American Platinum’s (Amplats’s) plan to retrench 6,000 workers, and the determination by the mining unions to fight it, would seem to cap what has been an appalling year for South Africa’s platinum producers. But there is another time bomb ticking in the industry. Some of the mining houses’, including Amplats’s, best assets are on properties whose original owners are still waiting for restitution for land they were driven off during the colonial and apartheid eras.
It is almost unbelievable that on the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Native Land Act that dispossessed the African peasantry, communities are still fighting, and losing, these battles. Yet this truth underlies much of the mineral-rich Bushveld Igneous Complex of the former Transvaal, affecting communities in Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo, as new mineral discoveries are made.
The experience of the Pakaneng Choma community of the Groot Dwars River Valley, whose ancestral lands straddle two of the biggest platinum projects in the world, is probably the most startling example of this injustice. In the late 1940s they were bullied off the land they had lived on for hundreds of years by white farmers. The Choma never received compensation for their loss. After 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) government came to power, promising to right the wrongs of the past through the restitution of land rights for those dispossessed by racial laws or practices.
The community applied in 1997 for restitution of seven major properties: Booysendal 43 JT (Northam Platinum) and Helena 6JT — which, together with Der Brochen 7JT, is where the new Amplats mine is under construction.
While the claims were still being sorted, mining companies bought the surface rights in clear violation of the Land Restitution Act, which prevents any party from transacting land over which there is a claim without the permission of the land claims commissioner and the claimant. The mining companies exploited a gap in law and time, obviating the need to consult the claimant community. Even more puzzling is why the government proved so accommodating to the miners, yet so unaccountable to the land claimants.
The claims of the Choma were submitted long before the mining companies even turned the first drill in the soil. The mining projects have moved from start-up to mine to market, clearing permit and regulatory approvals, while the community still awaits notification of its title.
As new platinum projects in the eastern limb of the bushveld complex near completion, each costing more in plant construction and capital expenditure, there is a sense that the communities that inhabit these areas may never see any benefits from operations on their lands.
Once the mining companies have purchased a property that is under claim, they then register servitude over the land without community consent. This allows the erection of power lines, surface and access rights, and water usage, all of which are written into the title deed, usually without having to pay for these rights. Both Northam Platinum’s Booysendal project and Amplats’s Der Brochen project receive power from lines routed over community land without the community’s knowledge or consent.
While no one expects mining companies to take over the responsibilities of the government, there are ways they can assist the Choma and other communities of the bushveld. As it is, the sulphur dioxide emissions from the mining operations will render farming unfeasible. The Choma therefore want to participate in commercial and industrial ventures. There are a two more properties the community is waiting to be handed back that contain open-pit platinum projects. They are well suited to a community mining initiative, demanding less capital investment, and the Choma have applied for the mineral rights. But without the return of the surface rights, the mines are idle.
Between the government and the mining companies, there are relatively easy ways to set the injustices right by providing the title and the wherewithal for the community to participate in mining and commercial operations.
Failing these sorts of interventions, the frustrations of communities that reside on the fringe of mining operations and which, after 15 years, are still awaiting the return of their land rights, could yet precipitate another crisis for the beleaguered platinum industry.
• Van Niekerk is MD of Calabar Africa. Sendzul is an adviser to the Choma community.
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