Residential mining raises questions

Australian mining project promises jobs, but residents wary of development

WITH a warm smile, Cora Bailey drives through the crumbling ruins of Durban Deep, greeting her neighbours: large groups of dusty-faced illegal miners, washing their diggings in buckets in the cold sunlight.

Most return her friendly wave. “This is like the old Joburg, back in the days when prospecting first started,” she remarks.

Briefly, Bailey stops her Community Led Animal Welfare (CLAW) vehicle outside a decrepit mine house for a kind word with Fanie Magwaza. “He was shot a few months ago in the leg,” Bailey says, matter-of-factly, later. Then, wryly: “Who hasn’t been shot here?”

As illegal mining has exploded in the lawless abandoned mining area, the body count has swollen in Zama Zama turf wars.

“Now, the Zulus from Denver have moved in and are against the Sothos. Every day, it seems someone is murdered here,” Bailey says.

But an Australian mining company, which has set its sights on a vast section of the West Rand, including Durban Deep, has told residents its proposed underground and open cast gold mine will help curb illegal mining – and bring much-needed employment.

West Wits Mining’s application for a mining right for gold, uranium, silver, sandstone, and aggregate spans the residential areas of Florida, Georginia South, Cresswell Park, Meadowlands, Matholiesville, Goudrand, Witpoortjie, the Roodepoort CBD and other industrial areas.

The firm envisages that 360 000 tons of ore will be mined a year from the opencast and underground resources. But Bailey, who has attended community meetings with the firm’s environmental consultants in recent months, isn’t so sure. “The whole economy here runs on illegal mining. There is so much violence and my concern is ... that it could only intensify with the legal and illegal operations.”

In its background information document submitted to interested and affected parties, West Wits says the proposed project would involve a combination of opencast mining and refurbishing of existing underground shafts and infrastructure to conduct longer term underground mining operations.

It envisages that opencast activities will take place in a phased approach. “Once an opencast area has been mined and rehabilitated, the next opencast area would be targeted. Once the areas are rehabilitated and stabilised, they would be made available for housing development and /or for agriculture purposes.”

David van Wyk, lead researcher at the Benchmarks Foundation, believes the mining should not go ahead.

“The Minister of Mineral Resources should not be issuing any more licences in Joburg. It is mined out already. It should be rehabilitated as much as possible and then if one or two places are viable for micro mining – that is what I call Zama Zamas – they should legalise those and control them properly.

The reason why people occupy these sites is because they are not rehabilitated. Look at the example of Durban Deep, which used to be a functional town.”

Bailey agrees. “I see all around me in Joburg the evidence of non-rehabiltiation of mine dumps and nobody is held accountable. The fact that it’s the poorest communities are living under slimes dams, and breathing in the dust, has always been acceptable. Now we have foreigners coming in to mine here, which is another form of colonialism, and environmental degradation.”

The firm says the project would allow for the generation of jobs but the numbers will be highly dependent on the scale of the operation, which depends on the profits. Bailey claims that local residents are being “suckered” into supporting the venture because of the promise of work. “Their lives are so desperate, even the promise of a flag waving job will sway them.”

Nyanda Khanyile, a resident of Cresswell Park, and the chairperson of the newly formed Communities Against Mining, an umbrella group for the areas affected by the application, says concerns centre on rising crime and disruption, too. “We have a lot of problems here with Zama Zamas but that’s for the police to deal with, not this mining company.

“And why do you mine in a residential area? It’s going to mostly affect the elderly people who live here who have nowhere to go, who have worked hard to secure these properties.”

Van Wyk agrees. “You have so many old people in these areas who are starting a struggle that will tire out teenagers. There is no respect for the elderly home owners, and upwardly mobile people who have left Soweto to escape mining and are now going to be in between mining waste again.”

The company’s bid document says potential impacts include contamination of groundwater resources, pollution, and the inhalation of radon gas and particulate matter.

In Fleurhof, resident Gregg Palm, shows off his a neat suburb, also hemmed in by old mine dumps. “They’re going to extract hazardous material here behind our homes, can you imagine?

“And have you seen any refinery here? This stuff is going to be trucked to the East Rand. Can you imagine the damage to Main Reef Road, which is already in a bad state. It’s just nonsense.”

It’s going to mostly affect the elderly people