Lack of community consultation gives lie to ANC’s populist rhetoric

Policies and legislation entrench and enable deep and historical inequality of the past to continue into future

In a recent opinion piece, ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte asked a pertinent question about the mining sector: is SA benefiting enough from the extraction of its resources? While we are delighted that such a senior leader of the majority party would publicly question the efficacy of mining and its benefit to SA and its people, there remains a significant disconnect between the rhetoric that emerges from the governing party and the policies and legislation that entrench and enable the deep and historical inequality of the past to continue into the future.

Duarte approvingly quotes Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane as saying that “with an estimated $2.5-trillion to $3-trillion in nonenergy mineral reserves still in situ, we are looking forward to another 150 years of mining in SA… [a]s we move mining forward, let’s take everyone along and ensure that the mineral wealth beneath our soil indeed benefits all South Africans”.

She further asserts that “[n]atural resources belong to the people. Profits should benefit the people, not a company or a president or the individual who happened to own the ground where natural gas or iron ore was found”.

In true populist style, Duarte concludes that “we must move with greater vigour and determination to ensure that in the 150 years of mining that is left in our country, by the time all is depleted, no South African is left behind. As the ANC begins to refine its policy recommendations at its 54th elective conference in December 2017, we must remain cognisant of our historic mission of building a genuine people-centred developmental state, where the poor and marginalised of our society remain central to our growth trajectory. Business must continue to be a vital partner to growth, but this cannot be at the expense of workers and the rural poor. Past practices need a radical shift to a more inclusive economic growth path.”

Juxtapose this flowery rhetoric against the lived reality of the majority affected or involved in the mining sector and the hollow nature of the rhetoric and the unchanged colonial logic of elite-centred policies and legislation becomes all the more apparent.

Take the despotic lack of legislative and policy space for communities to be consulted when mining occurs on their land, for example. The governing party has systematically developed legislation in the sector that seeks to exclude communities from deciding their own developmental paths while ensuring that benefits from any mining on their lands are controlled and used for the benefit of a few chiefs and their connected cronies.

Even in communities such as Xolobeni, which have vigorously resisted mining on their land, the governing party has not sought to claim the value of a “people-centred” solution but has used various tactics to undermine the democratic will of the people of Xolobeni and has continued to favour profit over people as it seeks greater tax and revenue streams from mining enterprises.

The tension between a state that seeks to gain greater access to mining revenues without consideration for the wishes of those affected by mining, as Duarte says in her article, is central to the disconnect between the rhetoric of pursuing mining for the benefit of the people and the lived reality of those affected by mining.

As Duarte states, “The first problem then in SA is that natural resources are not mined by the state, therefore the majority of its revenue goes to shareholders of the companies licensed to mine and only taxes and some rents are due to the state.”

This one-dimensional drive to enrich the state, which has become a vehicle for the enrichment of a disconnected elite, is clearly exposed for all to see in the outcome of the latest version of the Mining Charter. Its outcome, while supposedly done in the interest of the “poor and marginalised of our society”, is to unashamedly seek to create state vehicles through which billions of rand could be plundered by the political elite with few to no mechanisms for oversight and transparency.

The revenue that would emerge from the new state vehicles proposed in the latest charter will not be controlled by the poor and marginalised, nor will they have any say in its allocation, and it is unclear that they will benefit in any way. If history and even contemporary history is to be used as a gauge, the billions intended for the poor will end up in the bank accounts of the elite.

This then is the first mistake made by the governing party, which appears to be wilfully ignoring the mountain of evidence suggesting that monopoly control of the industry by a handful of mining executives cannot be overcome by monopoly control of the industry by a handful of the political elite.

Having started out at the turn of the century by forming a closed pact with mining executives and organised labour, the state sought to run the industry through this exclusive club. This formula of elite pacts was instrumental in deepening the inequality and poverty faced by many mining-affected communities. For two decades, the Chamber of Mines was happy to be in the exclusive club and all three parties were, in turn, happy to exclude community voices and concerns both in legislation and in practice, as long as they were benefiting from the unequal distribution of resources.

It is only recently, with the top-down imposition of a mining charter that seeks to strengthen the hand of the political elite at the expense of members of the chamber, that they have seen fit to cry foul on their exclusion from the process that defined the Mining Charter. It is only now that they realise excluding communities from decisions that affect their daily lives is deeply problematic and indeed, unconstitutional. So much so that they have sought common cause with communities on this issue. However, they cannot bring themselves, having enjoyed more than 150 years of privileged exclusivity, to recognise the rights of communities to be consulted. In this, the chamber has more in common with the political elite than with the “poor and marginalised” people of SA.

So, while Duarte is publicly promoting further exclusion of stakeholders from the sector by promoting state ownership and control, and the mining executives of the chamber are trying to find a way to claim their right to be consulted without acknowledging the right of communities to be consulted, the unequivocal answer lies not in entrenching colonial ideas of elite control and benefit, which leads only to exclusion and inequality, but in opening up the space for a plurality of views and interests and the sharing of distribution of resources in more equitable ways.

This is the only way it can be ensured that “no South African is left behind” and that our “historic mission of building a genuine people-centred developmental state, where the poor and marginalised of our society remain central to our growth trajectory” is achieved.