Miner ordered to supply Xolobeni application

Mining company Transworld Energy and Mineral Resources (TEM) must furnish the Amadiba Crisis Committee with its mining rights application before the end of the week, the high court sitting in Pretoria ruled on Monday.

The application was submitted to the mineral resources & energy department almost five years ago.

High court judge Tan Makhubele ordered that TEM, which wants to mine titanium in Xolobeni, could only hide “sensitive financial information”, meaning that the so-called “social labour plans” in their application can no longer be kept secret.

Amadiba Crisis Committee spokesperson Nonhle Mbuthuma said the ruling was a long overdue victory for her community.

The court declared that interested and affected parties as contemplated by the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002 (MPRDA) were entitled by sections of the MPRDA to be furnished with a copy of an application for a mining right, subject to the right of the applicant and/or the department to redact financially sensitive aspects.

Makhubele said this should be done within five days of his order.

He interdicted the department from awarding mining rights until that application had been furnished to Amadiba and processes for consultation, comment and objection had been completed.

“They refused to give us their application, so we went to the court of law,” said Mbuthuma.

“We wanted to know their plans, to know where they will mine exactly and for how many years. We also wanted to know how they were planning to rehabilitate our environment. All that information is hidden in those applications.

“The mining application goes hand in hand with the social labour plans, where they promise a lot of things. But the community doesn’t have anything on paper binding TEM or committing them to the community.

“They can’t promise us anything unless it’s on paper. We need to have something written down that Amadiba can use to hold TEM accountable for their promises,” Mbuthuma said.

She said before taking the legal route they had approached TEM and the department to provide them with the application. However, the exercise proved fruitless.

“We are happy with the ruling because rural communities often get ambushed by companies so that they can’t make them accountable.

“In SA mining towns, you will find huge holes underground and other damage left by the mining companies. The people in those towns don’t have anything to use to force those companies to be accountable.”

In March 2015 TEM, a subsidiary of the Australian mining company MRC, filed its second mining application. They wanted to do opencast mining for titanium minerals along a 22km stretch of the Amadiba coast.

The first application was filed in 2008, but it was suspended the same year after the community met then mining minister Buyelwa Sonjica.

Sonjica’s successor, Susan Shabangu, retracted the licence, but gave TEM the right to apply again.

Lawyers representing Amadiba then demanded to see the mining application, but TEM refused.

The department also refused to hand over the application and referred Amadiba to TEM.