On approaching the township, flanked on
your left stand heaps of rubbish, barbed wire fences with sordid plastic bags
clinging for dear life on steel razor teeth, and there about you find children
digging methodically in garbage piles.
Rain sheets down from a perfect dome of
clouds dominating the expanse and human noises subside on yet another
thunderous night, but nearby a tavern is in full swing, with revelers spending
lives and wages on rare whisky and cheap cigars.
This is a newly evolving under-class of
mine worker prosperity, with purported affiliations to the affluence of
middle-class life, young men and women who have had a taste of city life
boasting the latest phones and shoes, pouted lips smacking lenses for perfect
‘selfies’.
Raised by strong hands of aimleiiss parents
and aunts worn out by years of kneeling on ceramic floors of mansions while
waking up on piss stained blankets in shanty shacks made of stolen corrugated
steel sheets; these youngsters are living the dreams they missed.
Their wishes are for a better life in the
new imperial cult of world-class lifestyles, where they can vicariously
exemplify success for their parent as well, those who worships their sons for
being the first to buy a car on their dusty street.
After years of being brutalized by their
inadequacies in metropolitan dog-eat-dog games, many have returned, found jobs
through nepotism and corrupt means synonymous with the present political
dispensation.
They become town clerks, managers,
supervisors in gold mines and boiler-makers or construction workers, bred in a
squalid place, left only to dream of the new-pin neatness of designer labels
and ‘bank-owned’ cars of some irrational exuberance, while renting townhouses
from white Afrikaner real estate agents.
But what can be expected of generations forged from the crucible of a
life surrounded by eleven mines, besides an HIV pandemic that spreads like
wildfire in backyard taverns catering for the ‘made’ ones?
It is a known fact that the mining industry
has largely been responsible for some of the most heinous crimes against
humanity this country has ever witnessed, from the poisoning of water resources
to exposing workers to radioactive silicosis causing agents.
Though the industry is highly profitable,
it is also lethal, and has ruthlessly uprooted people from their lands, and in
my region, an extensive collusion between the Merafong municipality and capital
continues to this day, at the expense of lives and livelihoods.
Shopping malls are built to monopolize
business interests, clinics renovated without silicosis and tuberculosis wards,
not even adequate supplies of ARV’s, while classrooms are built among
dilapidated buildings of aging and under-resourced apartheid era schools.
Under guise of political compliance with
state regulations, mining corporations such as Goldfields, Shaft Sinker,
AngloGold (now bearing a suffix Ashanti) and BME pent on wealth beyond any
means, they have managed to fool both the victims and their greedy accomplices
in government offices.
The industry is known to use the judiciary
to amend legislations; they utilize health municipal infrastructure and
personnel to safe guard secret causes of workers’ diseases and deaths.
Research among affected residents has
yielded allegations as scandalous as falsification of medical records of
workers, and editing of pathology reports to conceal traces of cancer causing
chemical agents in mining related illnesses experienced by many residents of
Merafong.
The mines even lobby finance institutions
to concoct financial schemes and contracts which steal benefits from
unsuspecting workers, all done under the auspices of legal practitioners who
throw wool over the eyes of illiterate clients and exploit their situations for other sinister
motives of profiteering.
And
all this harm is done under the condition that mining is an inherently
dangerous industry, which also is bedrock of South Africa’s development and
economic growth.
Though most mines have been revealed to
have financial arrangements that would put its former executives in acute
constitutional difficulties; most legal obligations have been averted through
puny CSI Initiatives hailed as successes in annual reports distributed by these
company at exuberant conferences and gala dinners.
But undeniably, the seemingly irreversible
demise of Merafong and its perpetual decline into extreme poverty is tied to
the perilous history of the mining industry, and its continued disregard for
human life and socio-economic development of communities from which labour is
harvested.
Forced depopulation through ‘random’
squatter camps is also a crime against humanity, and this is staunchly stated
by the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court, but most arable lands are
still usurped from black people in this age of economic apartheid by
corporations pent on mineral monopoly.
Elite loyalties having always been with
their insatiable desire for the accumulation of more capital, social,
environmental and economic justice will forever remain an eyesore for
visionaries of new ways of profiteering.
Since the explosives company BME (Bulk
Mining Explosives) annexed the Losberg hillside, much of Fochville has been
turned into an equivalent of Chenobyl, and no inquest will be held of course
into the deteriorating health of the community, which would determine blame and
therefore compensation.
No research into the health impact of the
company’s close proximity to residential areas has been conducted, nor has
research into the health of mine workers been made public, in spite of the hot,
silica-filled, dusty and insanitary conditions prevalent in the mines.
And considering that today, death from
occupational disease is classified as ‘natural’ in our country; it comes as no
surprise that our government hasn’t shown interest in justice for miners, who
make a majority of the employed citizens of this country.
No inquest has been held into a single
death which occurred as a direct consequence of exposure to excessive levels of
dust and chemicals, no employer prosecuted for exposing workers to harmful substances
in the workplace.
Utilizing and repurposing mine waste rocks
for foundations of a shopping mall is one way of burying a dangerous
environmental liability, while catering for the exorbitant consumerism punted
by media and financed by wages of insecure workers.
No significant reduction in environmental
incidents is visible around Merafong, yet mining companies congratulate
themselves with pronouncements of their so-called ‘management of cyanide and
waste generated during gold production’.
While dust emissions have not been
mitigated in many areas, companies such as Anglo are boasting about plans to
remediate areas impacted by contamination from tailing storage facilities
dotting the West Rand landscape.
But of late, with its Environmental Management
Programmes, the company has managed to ‘develop strategies for rehabilitating
contaminated soil and ground water resources’, only after more than a century
of exploitation and an inexhaustible continuation of degradation of the
environment.
Today, our townships have become
prison-like compounds that enslave the mining and agriculture industry’s
workforce, and reminiscent of the diabolical spirit of the infamous Land Act,
Africans have been driven into a new type of ‘native reserves’, where we are
but a cheap source of labour for pennies.
The self-same ‘native reserves’ of the
cursed apartheid years, which were funded through industry and legitimized through
a rogue judiciary, are now welcoming mining conglomerates boasting names of black
empowerment partners’ on boards and public relations campaigns.
Names of struggle stalwarts such as Sipho
Pityana and Cyril Ramaphosa are brand accolades donned by corporate brands,
bearing the blessings of a ‘struggle aristocracy’ which seems more versed in
latest fashions and automobiles.
While the state’s police force has been
instrumental in sustaining apartheid’s legacy of intimidation, this
‘democratic’ institution is covertly involved in mass incarceration of
thousands of young black men, who now toil daily on white-owned farms as unpaid
labour.
The police force and it’s piggybank prison
system also seems certifiably co-opted to become guardians of elite interests,
and security guards wielding guns at miners protesting for their share of the
golden pie are the same black desperate faces, take Marikana for an example.
Through our townships, prisons are filled
and maize fields tended to by inmates circulated around farms owned by racist
ex-military generals, for the purported benefit of a nation under siege from
all sectors of the corporate world.
I am left to wonder what it would take for
the mining industry to pay reparations to affected communities and individuals,
to compensate not with pittance but capital, for the killing and paralyzing of
local workers on an industrial scale.
Will the growing number of miscarrying
young women who worked at ‘explosives companies’ become another statistic of
corporate neglect, while enduring widows bury their children with severance
packages squandered by incompetent lawyers and funeral societies?
What of the thousands of young men being
recruited by mines to pillage earth’s dwindling resources for unworthy
remuneration, squandering their health in the name of economic growth and
productivity?
These and many other questions require answers,
and we as a community seem complicit in the continuing tyrannical silence that
shrouds our most blatant murder, because generations are passing through
chemical fires and radioactive heat to be forever maimed.
While Zamazama’s are mushrooming around
every mine housing complex, and illegal deals are making fly-by-night
millionaires of the most affluent yet under-educated of generations, the
corporate elite are making exorbitant profits and raking bonuses to buy entire
islands.
And while ‘undetected’ rock falls kill
innumerable youth, I suppose this begs the question, how was this rampant
up-for-grabs attitude engineered, and how does poor black youths fit into the
equation?
