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 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, while classrooms
are built among dilapidated buildings of aging and under-resourced 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 secrets causes of workers’ diseases and deaths.
Research has yielded truths as scandalous as falsification
of medical records of workers, editing of pathology reports to conceal traces
of cancer causing chemical agents in mining related illnesses experienced by
many residents of Merafong.
They 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 Anglo has 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
initiative hailed as successes in annual reports distributed by the 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 is a crime against humanity, this is
staunchly stated by the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court, but
most lands usurped from black people become thieves’ ransom in this age of
economic apartheid.
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, and while 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 President 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
populate white-owned farms as unpaid labour.
This institution 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, 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 now 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 BME 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, while
squandering their health in the name of economic growth and productivity?
These and many other questions require answers, and while we
as a community seem complicit in the continuing tyrannical silence that shrouds
our most blatant murder, 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 this begs the question, how was this up-for-grabs
attitude engineered, and how does poor black youths fit into the equation?
