Accountability ‘needed over graft’
• Mining CEO issues call at Alternative Mining Indaba, underplays gap between industry and communities
The national leadership must be held accountable, Tom Butler, CEO of the International Council on Mining and Metals, told delegates at the Alternative Mining Indaba (AMI) on Monday.
“It’s very important that we [business and community] discuss the issue of corruption and accountability and engage on it,” said Butler. He also said the gap between mining companies and communities was not as wide as the delegates, community representatives, believed it to be.
Butler said the lack of trust between the government, companies and communities was the top theme in a discussion on Sunday convened by the Investing in African Mining Indaba. Last-mentioned indaba involves CEOs of the world’s biggest mining companies and ministers from 35 African countries.
“The biggest challenge identified was the breakdown of trust between the government, companies and the communities and the need for dialogue,” Butler said.
However, John Capel, executive director of Bench Marks Foundation, which is participating in the AMI, said Butler’s underplaying of the gap between the industry and communities was absurd. “That civil society was absent from Sunday’s Investing in African Mining Indaba roundtable is indicative of the huge gap that still exists between the mining industry and communities.… The mining indaba has no intention of … dealing with communities, who it regards at best as an irritant.”
The AMI, held in a Woodstock hotel near the mining indaba at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, is held annually to coincide with the mining indaba. It gives people and communities affected by mining an opportunity to articulate their experiences.
A spokesman for the Economic Justice Network, the main sponsor of the AMI, said the three-day meeting raised issues the mining indaba ignored. “We discuss issues about poverty in communities adjacent to mining activities, the lack of adequate job creation, the environmental impact of mining activities on these communities as well as general sustainability after mining operations.”
In the AMI keynote address, Nonhle Mbuthuma-Forslund of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, which has successfully blocked titanium mining at Xolobeni in the Eastern Cape, said the committee had recently filed a declaratory order to secure the right of affected citizens to say no to mining.
“The public participation required by law does not give the right to say yes or no, it’s just about ticking a box. A declaratory order would change that.
“We are not antidevelopment; we want to develop agriculture and tourism, which are sustainable, unlike mining which is short term,” she said.