With the arrest of four men on charges of attempted murder, assault and robbery after a siege over the festive season against the headwoman and local residents opposed to the mining of the Xolobeni mineral sands, the prosecutor in the Bizana Magistrates Court showed welcome determination to keep them in custody until their trial commences. Yet the media did not turn up to cover the marathon precedent setting bail hearing, preferring to cover the imprisonment of a king convicted of similar charges.
2016 marks the twentieth anniversary of Perth mining entrepreneur Mark ‘Hellfire’ Caruso’s first visit to the Pondoland Wild Coast to commence negotiations with Government officials for mining rights. He was enticed by the assurance that the “tenth largest deposit of heavy minerals in the world” on the Amadiba Coastal Area on the Pondoland Wild Coast were available. Richards Bay Minerals had relinquished the prospecting rights because the remoteness and inaccessibility of the minerals meant that they would not make a profit without a smelter nearby. The RBM plant 300 km’s on the KZN north coast was just too far away.
It seems the Department of Mineral Resources under the former Director General Sandile Nogxina was determined to ensure the minerals were mined and beneficiated. The fact that his traditional homestead was in the vicinity and he and his family were purchasing properties in the area clearly had a lot to do with his determination to give mining rights to Caruso and his partners. Nogxina planned to retire from his long service in 2011 and operate the mine.
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (as it was then) clearly differed with Nogxina's implicit belief that the mine would be a good thing. Relying principally on Section 24 of the Bill of Rights as supreme over all rationalizations and justifications of mining, they asserted that to a mining operation was do simply not an “ecological sustainable” option. It would fly in the face of the constitutional obligation of the State “to protect and conserve the environment for the benefit of present and future generations”.
The minerals - the space age mineral titanium is the most plentiful - lie buried in a 22 km stretch of coastal dunes between the Mzamba and Mntentu river gorges, which by portentous synchronicity happens to be referred to as “Section 24” – a substructure of the Amadiba Traditional Authority with its own “Komkhulu” (great place), it’s own Headwoman, (Duduzile Cynthia Baleni) and a council of advisors elected by local residents to preside over communal land and environmental rights.
In this duty Headwoman Baleni is stoutly supported by the Queen and the Princess of the Mpondo Royal Family, Queen Regent Masobhuza Sigcau and Crown Princess Wezizwe Sigcau, who since the death of King Mpondombini Sigcau in March 2013 have presided over the AmaMpondo ase Qaukeni nation.
Alas, the Section 24 residents are no longer supported by the Senior Chief, Lunga Baleni, who is regarded as having betrayed the trust of the community he is supposed to serve, because of having thrown in his lot with Caruso and his partners in return for a 4x4 Ford Ranger and shares in the mining company.
Nevertheless, despite Lunga Baleni’s efforts to shut down Duduzile Baleni’s Umgungundlovu Komkulu and President Zuma’s efforts to unseat the Queen Regent and Crown Princess and install a rival claimant to the Pondo Royal Throne, Zanuzuko, the three female amaMpondo traditional leaders still hold authority and are much loved for stoutly supporting the right of the coastal residents to decide their own destiny locally without interference, and for bravely defended the rights of the communal land rights holders to reject any plans for the open cast mining operation on their ancestral lands.
Between 1996 and 2002 Caruso and his brother Patrick worked below the radar to gain footholds of support from those local residents who showed themselves amenable to their methods of co-option, and to find agents willing to implement tactics of subversion of any opposition that would conceivably arise. Given that a flourishing eco-tourism initiative Amadiba Adventures occupied the same stretch of coastline, opposition was to be expected. Queen Sigcau could clearly see that Amadiba Adventures was vulnerable to sabotage, and played a vital role in exposing Zamile David ‘Madiba’ Qunya, one of the pioneers of the community based initiative, as the saboteur in chief.
This film produced by Don Guy for the SABC’s environmental program 50/50 features an interview by the late Jonathan Rands with Zamile Qunya. It was filmed in 2003 when the first early warning signs of trouble were surfacing. https://youtu.be/mLrJUshu8mQ
Three years later tensions bubbled to the surface leading to the formation of the Amadiba Crisis Committee in 2007 to formally oppose the mining rights. The Caruso brothers found themselves up against stiff opposition. Mining rights were awarded in 2008, but the Minister was forced to suspend them after she was confronted with overwhelming evidence of manipulation, deceit and fake petitions. The information was so blatantly false that MRC had no way to remedy the shortcomings. In a decision that has never happened before or since, the Minerals Minister Susan Shabangu was forced to revoke them completely in 2011, without the ACC even having to go to court.
MRC tried vainly to resurrect them in a fresh, and rather puzzling Mineral Prospecting Rights application in 2012, but that failed too. The dramatic saga of the second attempt is captured in the international award winning documentary The Shore Break (see www.theshorebreakmovie.com,)
Things became nastier still when in March 2014, Caruso and his partners lodged an entirely fresh mining rights application. (see my e-book Survivor Wild Coast: Before and Beyond the Shorebreak. http://amzn.com/B00ZILAHEA, ).
Although Caruso has still not been able to achieve his ambition to mine the Xolobeni Wild Coast, his business connections and special connectedness to officials in the Department of Mineral Resources did secured him the rights to a much smaller deposit on the Western Cape coast 400 km’s north of Cape Town known as the Tormin mineral sands project. Since production commenced in January 2013 it has provided a revenue stream to help fund his efforts to try to secure the “company making” Xolobeni mining rights, and employ local resident from Xolobeni as part of an ingratiating/subversion strategy.
Alas, after three years of operation the Tormin mine is in a state of endemic conflict, a harbinger of what would likely happen if he was ever awarded rights to mine the Wild Coast. He has fallen out badly with his former partner in the venture, Cape Town entrepreneur Andrew Lashbrooke. Their contractual dispute ended up in the Cape High Court.
When the case was heard before Judge Louis le Grange in June last year I travelled to Cape Town to monitor the trial. While Caruso and I both sat uncomfortably in the public gallery, he leaned over to me when no one else was in earshot and said menacingly, “yours and Andrew Lashbrooke’s names are written all over our forensic evidence. Your fingerprints are on the money that is being paid to disrupt my mine. We are coming after you.”
It was such a far-fetched idea that I was more concerned about his state of mental health than any risk to me. Did he actually believe what he was saying?
As things turned out Lashbrooke lost the R20 million case. But that did not mean that Caruso had won. At odds with the National Union of Mineworkers, despised by local environmental groups, and under scrutiny from the media he threatened to "rain down vengeance" on anybody who opposed him. In an open email he contemptuously invited his detractors (including myself) to continue their "campaign" against the mine:
"I am enlivened by [the] opportunity to grind all resistance to my presence and the presence of MSR [the South African subsidiary of Mineral Commodities] into the animals [sic] of history as a failed campaign.
"From time to time I have sought the Bible for understanding and perhaps I can direct you to Ezekiel 25.17, [A biblical passage was made famous by a pair of assassins in the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction].
"And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."
The Amadiba Crisis Committee in a jesting re-naming ritual added the epithet ‘Hellfire’ to Caruso’s name.
The extraordinary open email would have been amusing were it not for the risks it betokened. Caruso commands resources, has connections to corruptible powers and has shown an addictive appetite for more money and more power, and doesn’t apparently have qualms about the means he must use to get it. Moreover, he is in partnership with Zamile David Qunya, who despite his adament assertion in 2003 that "Xolco is not for mining" is shown in The Shore Break promising that "this mining will happen".
It would be very interesting to play the 2003 film to Mr Qunya and interview him again today, thirteen years on and ask him to answer these questions;
Why has he become so devoted to promote the interests of mining against the majority of local residents who have repeatedly said no to mining as well as the repeated findings of the Department of Environment that mining is not ecologically sustainable and in direct conflict with an alternative economic option of community based eco-tourism?
What is his response to the strict instructions from Nkosi Mandla Mandela for him not to use the name “Madiba” because doing so disrespects the memory of Nelson Mandela with whom the name has become synonymous.
What is his response to the call by Tony Ehrenreich, (Eastern Cape Provincial Secretary of Cosatu) for him to be disbarred from holding shares in any BEEE company? Ehrenreich has accused Qunya of “shamelessly exploiting our people” in an open letter dated 25th September 2015 to Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and all eight cabinet ministers who hold some authority and responsibility for bringing order and justice into mining conflict on the Western Cape Coast at the Tormin mine near Lutzville.
The letter pleads for Qunya “to be excluded from any other company that he may hold BBBEE shares, due to his endorsement of the violation of South African laws”.
How much is he being paid each month for his consulting services, and whether he is prepared to make his bank statement available for inspection by an independent auditor. My sources say Qunya is reimbursed for “monthly expenses” for the “consultancy” work he has been doing and that the quantum is sometimes a “staggering three figure amount”. Since he has accused me publically of profiting from the ongoing conflict I shall also make my bank statement available to the same the auditor can see if his allegation holds any water.
Finally, why is Amadiba Adventures is no more? What has happened to the huge investment by the European Union in promoting eco-tourism on the Wild Coast?
The above background assessment highlights the risk of the unfolding of a very dangerous scenario if legitimate authority is compromised and the Rule of Law is undermined.
The directors who lead the pro-mining interests - Zamile Qunya, Chief Lunga Baleni, Max Boqwana and Mark ‘Hellfire’ Caruso – have shown no commitment to the Rule of Law. They profess “nominal compliance” but only because they have “connections” to authorities that tend to err on the side of favouring the interests of those with money and power. The turning of that tide will not happen because of natural orbits and interactions of sun, moon and earth. It only happens when active citizens take the bill of rights into their own hands.
It is not a new idea.
Eleanor Roosevelt, way back in 1948 after the UN had adopted the International Declaration of Human Rights said in a much quoted exhortation.
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
That means that as human rights were emptied of meaning by the massacre of Marikana they can reacquire meaning if the State upholds the rights of coastal residents of the Amadiba, in decisively dealing with the violent thuggery perpetrated by the local agents of Caruso and Qunya. From observing the bail application of the four accused of Schedule Six offence the State prosecutor appears reassuring determined to keep them in custody until their trial commences. The bail hearing has gone into a virtually unprecedented fifth day, another instalment in the vexing question of how to balance the constitutional rights of accused to freedom, versus the constitutional rights of a community to be protected from thuggery, and witnesses from intimidation.
That would be reason enough for legal journalist to have sacrificed their holiday to cover the trial.
But there are two more even better reasons.
The case presents an ironic contrast to the massive media attention to the imprisoned King of abuTembu, Dalinyebo’s case. He was convicted of schedule six offences not very dissimilar to those that the accused are alleged to have committed. Chief Lunga Baleni is clearly aligned with the interests of the accused, and has been seen at the charge office with Zamile Qunya trying to get the men released. While the headwoman Duduzile Baleni is under siege, the Crown Princess and Queen of AmaMpondo are still struggling against a pro mining claimant to the Mpondo Royal throne, they really do need the media to pay attention to their plight.
But the most compelling reason is this: In a post Marikana South Africa, with the media having played such a critical role in exposing the atrocities committed against men, (several of whom were from the Pondoland) the media has an opportunity to see whether or not the State can be relied upon to prioritise the rights of a vulnerable mining affected community over against thugs in the employ of a foreign owned mining company with an appalling track record.
And by their presence, maybe help ensure that the do.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” (attributed to Thomas Jefferson).
