Oubaas takes on coal mining giant

Heart of Mabola protected area faces being ripped out

OUBAAS Malan may be close to 70 but the Mpumalanga farmer still has a lot of fight left in him. That’s clear when he speaks about his adversarial relationship with Indian mining company Atha-africa Ventures.

“I’m like a Jack Russell terrier fighting a boerboel. I just won’t let go,” he says.

For several years, Malan, of the Mabola Protected Environment Landowners Association, has been battling the company’s proposed Yzermyn underground coal mine near Wakkerstroom in the sensitive Mabola district.

The region, a declared protected environment, boasts a vast network of springs, streams, wetlands and rivers, and has been classified as a strategic water source area, a national freshwater ecosystem priority area and an aquatic critical biodiversity area.

The planned underground mine falls within the Mabola Protected Environment.

“We told them (Atha) from the first day that they started drilling that we don’t want them here but they don’t listen,” says Malan, whose family has farmed in the region’s lush, protected grasslands since the 1950s.

“If you go back into the history of Atha, every time their consultants say the area is too sensitive, that they can’t mine here, they just get another consultant. We’ll fight them till the end.”

His association is part of an eight-member coalition, including the Endangered Wildlife Trust and Birdlife South Africa, which has launched a judicial review application to set aside the decision of the Mpumalanga Department of Environmental Affairs to grant environmental authorisation to Atha and the decision of its MEC to dismiss the coalition’s appeal in the Mbombela High Court.

The application is coupled with an interdict preventing the start of any activities at the proposed mining site, pending the outcome of the review.

The applicants state they have a well-grounded apprehension of irreparable harm.

“The potential for serious environmental harm to flow from the commencement of the mining is clear.

“The ecosystems in the proposed mine area have been recognised as strategically important and environmentally sensitive.

“Some of the most important rivers supplying water to the most populated areas of South Africa (and to Swaziland and Mozambique) stand to be seriously impacted by any contamination of fresh water flowing from the area.”

Represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), the coalition argues that environmental authorisation was granted to Atha despite long-standing recognition of the strategic environmental importance of the area, specifically as a water source and for biodiversity, by various government departments and agencies.

It is in contradiction to key planning instruments for the area, South Africa’s international responsibilities relating to environmental protection, Atha’s failure to provide financial security for the future treatment of polluted water and having failed to consider the proposed mine’s climate change impacts.

“Atha claims that the proposed mine will create 576 jobs, but its consultants say most of these jobs will not be sourced locally,” says the CER.

“Atha has failed to address the agricultural and tourism-related jobs and livelihoods that will be lost if the mine goes ahead,” the body adds.

Local communities would be negatively impacted by the proposed mine because their access to water would be restricted “since the mine would cause the groundwater levels to drop and springs to dry up.

“Water would also become contaminated. Further downstream of the proposed mine, river water is used by farmers for significant numbers of livestock and for crops, and also by hundreds of farmworkers for domestic use,” CER explains.

“Moreover, since part of the proposed mine is a strategic water source area, disrupting that water supply will have a national economic impact,” it says.

In 2015, it was granted a mining right by the former minister of mineral resources, despite the declaration of the Mabola Protected Environment by the Mpumalanga MEC in 2014.

Atha received approvals from the Mpumalanga Environment Department, the Departments of Water and Sanitation and Mineral Resources in 2016.

“Thereafter, it also received permission from the former minister of mineral resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, and Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa under the Protected Areas Act.

“Many of these approvals were initially resisted by the various departments, and court proceedings have revealed disagreement among officials.”