How notions of development can lead to underdevelopment

Mining in SA has historically been associated with conflict, categorised along racial, class, and gender lines.

The prominence of these types of classifications indicates the exclusive nature of mining. Capitalism, which is based on exploitation and the maximisation of profit, has inevitably led to the rise of mining in Africa.

Deaths of both community members and employees have partly resulted from disputes between the mining industry and local communities, despite the presence of corporate responsibility actions and programmes.

The Xolobeni land issue is a typical example of how the rise of capitalism leads to disputes.

As a consequence of their opposition, locals have been labelled as being against development and new job prospects.

In light of this, it is important to investigate the extent to which multinational corporations influence the state through their neoliberal agenda and [how] the apparent weakness of the state in developing countries limits governments’ ability to influence and bring social cohesion and change.

Second, if a country’s population as a whole remains disorganised, the state is more susceptible to the prescripts of neoliberal capitalism.

Community-level conflict, however, has occurred in various locations across the country, and it is important to recognise this is not an isolated occurrence but rather a process of defiance at various stages of development that sheds light on the crisis of extractive industry-supported capitalism.

While development is an important aspect of human prosperity, it has equally led to mass forced migration of people.

There is a need to understand how concepts of “development” are not always fundamentally about development.

Some notions of development (for colonial situations) actually lead to “underdevelopment”, and this means any expansion of industry is driven by exploitation and exclusion.

Western ideas of development have long put mineral extraction at the core of the development and creation of the modern world system, especially in the form of the gold transferred from Latin America and Africa into European economies.

It is very important in how we understand the construction and use of concepts such as development and how they are used in the exploitation of the factors of production of former colonies.

It helps clarify the role of social movements as a countervailing force and demonstrates that these groups are not necessarily against development per se but rather against the underdevelopment that often comes hand-in-hand.

Social mobilisation can be understood as a response to threats that particular forms of economic development present to security and integrity of livelihoods, distributional imperatives and ability of a population in a given territory to control what it views as its own resources.

In terms of David Harvey’s formulation, the emergence of movements might be understood by their relationship to two distinct types of accumulation: ‘‘accumulation by exploitation’’ and ‘‘accumulation by dispossession’’.

Accordingly, the accumulation of profits by large-scale mining companies is at the expense of the communities’ wellbeing and development.

Second, the exploitation and dispossession at the centre of the conflict and which define the accumulation are first and foremost historical.

It is then essential to locate these social movements in the mining sector within the global movements against capitalist modes of being and accumulation.

This has pushed mining companies over the years to establish offices to handle what has been referred to as corporate social responsibility (CSR), which drives ideas such as “sustainable mining ” .

While CSR is important, in SA it does not place an obligation on companies to ensure they fulfil their side of the bargain.

In other words, companies police and make their own policies as they monitor the implementation themselves.

Concepts such as CSR and sustainable mining are not necessarily about communities in which mining takes place.

They exist as part of businesses’ larger set of strategies to manage or neutralise critics.

This is very critical, especially when looking at how these concepts influence the way people view businesses constructing schools and providing water (which are significant interventions), however, these fall short of capturing the imaginations of communities and how mining operations might disturb the very communities and their livelihoods.

This is what is at the centre of mining resistance in communities such as Xolobeni on the Wild Coast.

What is manifesting in that community is not sporadic but a part of the larger debate and actions of global mining resistance.