- Residents of small towns in Namaqualand marched through Springbok on Human Rights Day demanding a moratorium on all new mining applications.
- They want to see mine rehabilitation, proper consultation with communities on new projects, and access to services such as water and electricity.
About 100 residents from Concordia, Hondeklip Bay and small towns in the Richtersveld and Northern Cape marched through the streets of Springbok on Human Rights Day.
They want a moratorium on all new mining applications and the renewal of old mining permits. They are demanding that government departments meaningfully engage with affected communities about new developments.
GroundUp previously reported that the Richtersveld community had won a landmark case in the Constitutional Court in 2003 against state-owned diamond mining company, Alexkor.
A settlement reached in 2007 established the Pooling and Sharing Joint Venture, with Alexkor holding a 51% interest, and the community 49% through the Richtersveld Mining Company.
But the community has to date gained little from the settlement.
Marching to the Springbok sports stadium on Thursday, people chanted: “Nama land is not for sale”, “We have the right to say no”, and “We are the poor millionaires of Namaqualand”.
They were joined by the activist group VVVT Namaqualand (an Afrikaans abbreviation for free, prior and informed consent).
At the stadium, representatives from towns including Nababeep, Port Nolloth, Alexander Bay, Kommagas and others, shareed their experiences from the podium.
Ann Friedberg, a resident of Sanddrif in the Richtersveld, said that the government and mining companies “made us poor millionaires”.
When asked what she meant, Friedberg explained that while the Richtersveld was rich in mineral resources, which could make them millionaires, they “can’t put [their] hands on it”.
Shereen Fortuin, a community leader from Concordia, said that they handed over a memorandum in November to the departments of mineral resources and energy, agriculture, land Reform and rural development, and the Nama Khoi Municipality.
They are yet to get a response.
Fortuin said that the purpose of the march was to demand their constitutional rights to consultation and for their land rights to be respected.
Ann Friedberg, a resident of Sanddrif in the Richtersveld, told marchers that the government and mining companies have made their mineral rich communities “poor millionaires”.
Communities such as Richtersveld and Concordia have communal land ownership through the Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act.
“We want to be able to take decisions over what happens over and under our land,” the group’s memo read.
Despite active mining in Namaqualand, communities face high unemployment, failing infrastructure and poor access to water and electricity, the memo said.
Marchers also demanded that land damaged by mining be rehabilitated.
The protesters want to see proper consultation over the Namakwa Special Economic Zone and the Boegoebaai Green Hydrogen mega-project.
Friedberg said that people of the Richtersveld have been given very little information on the project. “We don’t have a say about our land. But our ancestors’ bones lie there,” she said.
Recently, GroundUp reported how conflict erupted when residents protested against copper mining restarting in Concordia.
Mining is the main industry in the Northern Cape, a province rich in mineral resources. While the memorandum read that communities are not against development, they want it to be done with their consent.
“We are for development that is for the benefit of our communities and not centered on profit,” it read.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy did not respond to our questions at the time of publication.
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Mule Lock
A British man on safari walks into a bar far out in the reaches of a game reserve in Southern Africa, he stays at the bar for a while shooting the shit with the bartender and drinking like a fish, he offer to buy the barkeep a round and since no one else is within 2km of their small oasis of liquor the barkeep obliges. The englishman goes off to the bathroom to have a good old go at the porcelain, he\’s back and ready for a few more whiskeys. He\’s just sat down when suddenly in the distance he hears a scream. He looks over his shoulder and dismisses it as nothing, he turns to the barkeep and orders a drink, takes a sip and hears the scream again. He looks at the barkeep who just shrugs it off. A minute or two later he and the barman hear it again and go outside to take a look. They see a lone figure running towards them screaming, he spots them and lets out a cry, RUN!!!!! HE\”S COMING!!!!!
The barkeep and the Englishman both look at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to calm him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to get a word out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and run away screaming.
A few minutes later the same thing happens with a whole group of men running in and screaming, he\’s coming, he\’s coming the barkeep grabs hold of one of the men as he tries to sprint past the bar and tries to get information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
The barkeep and his customer are starting to get worried, they start to pack up before another group of horrified natives run up to the bar most of them flee but one tries to hide behind the bar, the barkeep pulls out a shotgun and points it at the terrified man\’s face, finally managing to coax some words out of him. \”He\’s coming for us, Vernon Koekemoer is coming for us, we have to hide!!! We have to get out of here.\” He gets up and tries to run but the barkeep grabs him, feeling trapped in a panic he grabs the barkeeps shotgun and blows his own head off. The Englishman and the barkeep look at each other starting to really panic now.
They look out of the window and off in the distance they see a tornado coming towards the bar, at the bottom of the tornado they see the hugest beast of a man they have ever seen, as he gets closer they spot that he is riding a rhinocerous and using a crocodile as a riding whip, with each smack of the crocodile across the back of the rhino the louder is screams and the faster it runs, the tornado following it getting ever larger.
The 2 look at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to run, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can get their hands on to make sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna make it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile paste on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground right outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the make shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men have taken shelter, he grabs a bottle of the hardest liquor on the shelf and down the entire litre in 1 gulp, he peers over the bar sobbing and sees the 2 defenders cowering down behind the crates of beer, they look up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a look of complete and utter hopelessness, he stares at them for a half second and half screams, half sobs, \”Oh my god what are you still doing here!!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”
Coldy
Fun South African Fact: Mandela’s house on Vilakazi Street is now a museum. The man who the street was named after, Dr BW Vilakazi, was a poet, novelist and intellectual. He helped develop the written form of both isiZulu and siSwati and helped put together the isiZulu dictionary.