Application to mine withdrawn once again

KOMATIPOORT - The mining conglomerate that has been trying to get a licence to mine coal on a large farming area adjacent to the Kruger National

Park, withdrew its application again last week.

The latest announcement by the company, Tenbosch Mining, that it has withdrawn the licences it had been seeking for mining rights as well as an environmental permission to open an underground coal mine, is the eighth time such applications were withdrawn.

The first application submitted for mining rights on the 18 000ha piece of agricultural and nature reserve land was around 2018, when Manzolwandle Investments (MI) announced its plans to start an opencast and underground coal mine.

The area that they wanted to mine borders on the southern side of the

Kruger and is just west of Komatipoort.

It includes the holiday nature reserve, Marloth Park, as well as the worldrenowned Ingwenyama Lodge.

Since then, the company has announced numerous times that it withdrew its application.

However, soon afterwards, it was found that a new company applied for such a licence, but reduced the number of hectares, possibly to sideline objections from communities and environmentalists alike.

In 2019, however, MI appeared on the radar again with a fresh application.

MI appointed Singo Consulting, who seemingly acted as a partner/consultant for the company. Singo was also responsible for doing an environment impact assessment (EIA) for the mine.

Late in 2019, Singo disappeared off the scene after AfriForum had laid criminal charges against it for alleged plagiarism in the EIA it had drawn up.

Once again, MI announced that it would withdraw its licence application.

Then suddenly, in January this year, it became known that MI was back, this time with a new application for an opencast mine of 87 000ha. This would mean an area of 87.2km² would be mined, all along the Kruger.

According to Myezo Environmental Management Services, which was then appointed to do the EIA, the area under the application is remainders of portions 18, 21, 55, 64, 69, 85 and 213 of Tenbosch Farm 162 JU, portions 2, 5 and 6 of the farm Turfbelt 593 JU and farm Tecklenburg 548 JU.