One prisoner dies in fire at Limpopo prison:
Eighteen more prisoners were injured and the prison was gutted in a blaze started by rioting inmates
Communities weigh up environmental harm with ‘social’ benefits when it comes to mining licences:
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe announced in January an exploration campaign to open mine sites in Limpopo, North West and Northern Cape, which have been identified as a “new mining belt” for transitional minerals.
Transitional minerals are key to the energy, mobility and digital transition and include platinum group minerals (PGMs), lithium, cobalt and copper. South Africa is endowed with PGMs and manganese. Many Industrialised states have identified these minerals as “critical” and a new rush for cooperation and business with many mineral-rich states is underway especially in light of the 2015 climate change Paris Agreement.
New exploration and mining projects will require mining licences. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to open new mines across the world, including in South Africa, without community buy-in. This is largely because it is no longer enough to convince people of the social benefits of mining such as jobs and “development”. Instead, people are increasingly weighing potential social benefits with the negative environmental impacts of mining, particularly in the context of climate change and a just transition. It becomes even more difficult for companies to justify mining when there have been no material benefits for communities.
This has major implications for minerals critical for many industrial states’ energy and mobility transitions.
One can argue that the “social licence to operate” — as a means to manage social tensions and contestations against mining — no longer captures the reality on the ground. Instead, the Sustainable Licence to Operate (SDLO) better captures these shifts.
The Xolobeni community’s resistance to the proposed mining for ilmenite, titanium-iron oxide, rutile, zircon, and leucoxene on the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast has become the symbol of resistance to mining in South Africa. It dates back to 2002 with the discovery of rare minerals and the granting of a mining right by the mineral resources department to Mineral Sand Resources (MSR). The mining right was later suspended after it was challenged by the Amadiba Crisis Committee. In 2015, Transworld-Energy, a subsidiary of MSR, filed for another mining rights application. In 2018, the community again challenged the mining right and the Pretoria high court ruled that without consent from the community, no mining can occur — unless the state expropriates the land.
The Xolobeni community proposed an alternative developmental path in the form of ecotourism. I visited Xolobeni in 2019, the beaches are serene, the sea blue to greenish, and nothing Camps Bay could ever live up to. More importantly, people have land, they fish and farm and the animals roam freely on vast green stretches of land. The community has a life of dignity. Without a doubt, there is potential for an eco-tourist economy with the right investments by the government.
The Xolobeni community is not the only community resisting mining. The Makhasaneni community is against Jindal Africa’s proposed open cast R30 billion iron ore mine in Entembeni in northern Kwazulu-Natal. The Entembeni Crisis Forum’s petition against mining is gaining momentum, with almost 5 000 signatures collected since late July. Although some residents support the mine, others, including the farming community, are against the harmful environmental impacts the mine will have on water sources and crops. The area is a producer of fruit and nuts. In addition, the mine says about 350 households will be relocated, but the forum says that based on the map, about 3 000 households may be affected. The social and environmental impact assessments are still being completed.
The Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation, the Global Environmental Trust and other NGOs are contesting an environmental impact assessment and the public participation process of Petmin’s Tendele coal mine in Somkhele, Kwazulu-Natal. The community approached the court to block an expansion and restart of the mine. The Pietermaritzburg high court delivered a judgment in early July giving the green light for the mine’s expansion to continue.
The Somkele mine employed about 1 600 people and since the mine stopped working, it has been described as a “ghost town” with only 22 workers on site. The dispute in the poverty-stricken area is between community members, workers, businesses linked to the mine and the mine itself. The National Union of Mineworkers, representing the workers, is another strong proponent of the mine. Some have described it as the environmentalists versus the rest. In their report in BusinessLive, Jaco Visser and Natasha Marria write, “At its heart, this dispute revolves around environmental legislation and the impact of mining operations on the environment and on local communities” and calls into question whether there can be a “just” in the “transition”.
The local economy of Somekele largely depends on the mine. Like many South African mining communities, through Social Labour Plans (SLPs), mines have absorbed a part of the traditional role of the state through the provision of local infrastructure such as hospitals and schools. But SLPs have also become contentious. They are not integrated with local economic development plans and mining companies sometimes default on delivery. Over the years, SLPs have been one way to obtain a social licence to operate. The prospects of employment for the community was another but the Xolobeni and Somkhele resistance to mining shows that this has changed.
There is also an increasing awareness of people’s rights as it relates to the environment. Human rights and environmental cases have risen on the continent, including in Nigeria, where Ogoni farmers approached a Netherlands court about oil spills by Shell’s subsidiary. Shell was ordered to compensate the farmers and to rehabilitate the land. In addition, a new claim against Shell in a UK court for oil related pollution and compensation dating back to 1989 is being pursued by more than 11 000 people from Nigeria’s southeastern oil-producing region. These claims also indicate the increasing awareness of people’s rights as it relates to the environment. About 54 oil spills have been recorded by Shell in the region, damaging vast areas of mangrove forest, killing fish in rivers and leaving people without a sustainable source of food and livelihood.
Sustainable jobs are also becoming a major consideration because some mines close and leave behind negative consequences of mining such as deforestation, land resettlement, and water and air pollution. This is certainly the case of Somkhele where jobs are being weighed against the environmental costs.
Anglo American, one of the world’s largest mining companies, is facing the “Kabwe case”. Earlier this year, a South African court was tasked with determining whether a class action by a Zambian community in the “world’s most toxic town” would be allowed to proceed. According to pollution experts, lead poisoning may be linked to the damaged brains and other organs of generations of children who live in Kabwe.
According to Antonio Maria Afonso Pedro, director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Sub-regional Office for Central Africa, it is now more appropriate to speak of a “Sustainable Development License to Operate”, which measures success not only on the basis of the benefits and returns of mining but also the observance of the highest environmental, social, and governance standards. The SDLO also recognises that there needs to be a harmonisation of all standards that govern the mining sector to ease the administrative burden on implementing governments and companies. In addition, the SDLO recognises sustainability as a conditionality, as it becomes more prominent, must be more stringent and go far beyond corporate social responsibility minimum standards and include means for industry to be held accountable for negative impacts.
The SDLO raises important questions for the government and industry as it relates to the governance of mining both domestically and internationally. It also raises the importance of consultation and consent where loopholes have been used in the past. Many communities demand free prior and informed consent to participate fully and meaningfully in the decisions that will affect their environment. The current contestations against mining are an indication that social benefits, or even the promise of beneficiation, is not enough. Although South Africa has a strong environmental legal framework, land rights are still precarious. A balancing act will be required from the government to protect human and environmental rights especially in the context of a rush for critical minerals.
Sikho Luthango is a Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung programme manager.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.
Why Limpopo’s schools still have pit toilets:
Phillip Mansokoana holds open the broken door of a dilapidated cubicle made of corrugated iron, rusted at the hinges from standing out in the open. It’s a few hundred metres from the main school building. Next to it are five more like it.
“GIRL” or “BOY” is painted in big, pink and blue letters on the doors — hiding nothing but a low plastic platform built around a hole in the ground, with a toilet seat fixed on top.
Standing aired and dry now, four months ago, these were still the toilets for the 258 learners of the Soka Leholo Primary School in Ga-Makgato, a small rural village about halfway between Polokwane and Louis Trichardt in Limpopo.
Mansokoana, the deputy principal of the school, says learners had been waiting for flush toilets since 2015. It took the provincial education department almost eight years to deliver, following new rules added to the Schools Act in 2013 that said pit toilets are not allowed at schools any longer.
Despite the new facilities being in place, the abandoned pit structures remain on the school premises. There are 2 333 other schools like Soka Leholo in the province. If left like this, they’re a hazard that could result in someone’s death — as happened to five-year-old Michael Komape, who drowned when he fell into a pit toilet at his school in 2014.
There’s no way staff can keep children safe from the old toilets, even now that there’s no reason for them to use the facilities.
Says Peter Mailula, chairperson of the school’s governing body: “The best we can do is to wire the doors shut.”
The good
Although slow, there does seem to be progress, though.
According to the latest provincial data on Section27’s Michael Komape Progress Monitor, by January, 210 of 3 761 schools still had only pit toilets, down from 363 in December 2021, when Limpopo’s education department submitted its plan for getting rid of pit toilets to the Polokwane high court.
This means that about 6% of schools have only pit latrines, compared with about one in four schools in 2018, according to government data.
But the nonprofit Equal Education, which in advocating for quality schooling has taken the department to court about sanitation before, is sceptical of these numbers as “education departments, particularly those in rural provinces [like Limpopo] are known for giving unreliable and inconsistent data”, says Tiny Lebelo, one of the organisation’s campaigners who contributed to a 2022 report on toilet facilities at the province’s schools.
Without accurate data, she says, “departments are likely not planning properly [for getting rid of pit toilets] because they often don’t have a clear picture of the actual need”.
In response to questions about whether data quality has improved, spokesperson for the province’s education department, Mike Maringa, simply replied: “Yes, we have made progress.”
The bad
Clean, working toilets and water for handwashing are about more than having a wee. It’s part of children’s right to good education, says the UN.
Without these facilities, children can miss school days when they get sick with runny tummies or other diseases that spread through contact with dirty hands, such as airway infections, or if girls don’t have dignified spaces for menstruation days.
If poor sanitation services cause children to drop out of school, their chances at better economic development are blocked, because they struggle to get good jobs and don’t become active citizens in their societies.
The 2013 rules about school buildings ban plain pit latrines. Instead schools should have “a sufficient number of toilets for learners and teachers”, which must be clean, safe and private — and be in a working state.
According to the 2022 update to Section27’s handbook on basic education rights, the government wanted this done by no later than 2020.
Yet, despite this policy, there are still schools which have nothing but pit toilets or where these loos have not been demolished after proper facilities were built, and education departments, both at national and provincial level, have missed almost all of their infrastructure deadlines.
At the moment, the Limpopo department of education is more than 125 days behind its schedule for fixing schools’ sanitation facilities. Moreover, data shows that between 2015 and 2021, the pace at which toilets were being demolished was inconsistent — 298 were eradicated by 2020, less than a third the next year, and in 2022, only 32.
At this rate, there’s no way to know when schools will be free of pit toilets.
When the department submitted its plan to break down and replace pit toilets to the court in 2021, it estimated that the goal would only be met by 2031 because of a limited budget. Judge Gerrit Muller slammed this timeframe as “unreasonable”, agreeing with the plaintiffs’ argument that 14 years “provides cold comfort” to children who, over the course of their 12-year school career, would not have the dignity of using a flush toilet. The deadline was therefore revised to 2028.
But, according to Lebelo, the delays are not only about there not being enough money for the changes, as the department alleges. Blame should also go to a lack of political will, poor project planning and not spending the budgeted money, she says.
Passing the buck might be part of the problem, too. In 2022, the education department told parliament that one of the main reasons for the delay in clearing the sanitation backlog is the poor performance of “service providers” or “implementing agents”.
These implementing agents, such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the Mvula Trust, assign orders for toilets to contractors.
But, says Lebelo, because good monitoring systems are not in place, and progress reports and expenditure statements are not publicly available, it’s difficult to track how service providers are doing.
Maringa said that they’d received an adequate budget for this financial year but that he was not aware of the challenges around implementing agents.
Better is possible
Giving everyone access to a proper toilet has been slow-going. According to the World Health Organisation and Unicef, worldwide, 642 million children didn’t have basic sanitation at their school in 2015. By 2021, this number had dropped to 539-million — a change of only 103 million in six years.
As things stand now, only Australia, New Zealand, North America and Asia will be able to provide proper loos for all by 2030 — the deadline for the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda.
Poorer regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, will probably give only about eight out of 10 children access to good sanitation by then, leaving 310 million children worldwide without toilets.
But India’s Clean India Mission is an exception — and has set an example for policies in other developing countries, such as Nigeria and Ethiopia.
In just five years, between 2014 and 2019, the country managed to up the number of toilets in rural areas from 39% to 95%. Celebrities, athletes, religious leaders and the prime minister put their weight behind the project. Because of this, public funds were poured into getting things going and service providers were trained and held accountable for delivering.
One of the main aims was to change public attitudes toward sanitation by making it “everyone’s business”. This included a special tax for the project and all ministries — including the health and education departments — had to make the project part of their annual plans.
This ensured schools and healthcare facilities had enough toilets.
In Ga-Makgato, school sanitation is indeed “everyone’s business”. Residents volunteer to keep the new Soka Leholo toilets clean, which Mansokoana says instilled a new sense of pride in the community.
Says Mansokoana: “The children were so happy with the new toilets. One said, ‘I’m never using a pit toilet ever again!’”
This story was produced by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism. Sign up for the newsletter.
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