Most urban dwellers on Planet Earth seem to regard the Pondoland Wild Coast to be as remote as the fictional Planet Pandora featured in the film AVATAR. However the escalating conflict over rights to the titanium rich Xolobeni coastal dunes speaks both metaphorically and practically to the future of South Africa. It also speaks to the future of earthlings on planet earth.
While the soothing strains of the Christmas carol “Silent Night, Holy Night” were still being sung in the final weeks of December 2015, volleys of gunfire from rapid fire weapons left local residents from the Mdatya village situated on the beautiful Pondoland Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape of South Africa terrified. A gang of about ten men apparently loyal to the senior chief of the Amadiba Traditional Authority Lunga Baleni, had since 21st December 2015 conducted a reign of terror, firing weapons at the home of his “defiant” subordinate, the local Headwoman Duduzile Baleni who, in contrast to her superior, has upheld the rights of the approximately 300 families who live along the coast to decide their local destinies locally. Their subsistence livelihood is at risk from a venture sponsored by Australian junior mining company, MRC Ltd, known as the Xolobeni Mineral Sands project. MRC was founded and led by Perth Entrepreneur Mark Caruso. He has been impatiently waiting for twenty years to secure mining rights, via MRC’s South African subsidiary TEM (Transworld Energy Minerals (Pty) Ltd), partnered with a BEE structure founded in 2003 by Caruso, Maxwell Boqwana and Zamile Qunya, known as Xolco (The Xolobeni Empowerment Company (Pty) Ltd).
In opposition the Amadiba coastal residents formed the Amadiba Crisis Committee to coordinate and ensure a disciplined and strategic response. The ‘crisis’ that precipitated their formation has now lasted for nine long years, and is not likely to be over soon.
A week after the first warning shots were fired, a group of anti-mining residents were attacked on their way home from a public meeting that had been called to discuss the violence. The result was three badly injured victims. Broken bones, gashes to the head and bruises.
Four men were arrested on 31st December (Xolile Dimane, 25, Thembile Ndovela 32, Mdlele Simthandile Bhele 31 and Mto Mzukhona Bhele 32) and charged with attempted murder, assault and robbery. Xolile Dimane is an employee in another of MRC’s mining enterprises, the Tormin mineral sands project on the Cape West coast, which has also been mired in controversy.
Fortunately, there were no fatalities, but the three direct victims of the attack were by no means the only people to suffer. Despite the arrests, many villagers still did not feel safe in their homes at night. At nightfall, fearing that the remaining gang members would try to intimidate (or eliminate) witnesses, they opted to leave their thatched homesteads at nightfall to shelter in ravines, under trees and in nearby woodlots.
A grim Wild Coast nativity scene then played out under the stars.
On New Year’s Eve, Busisiwe Ndovela, heavy with child, spent another night in the open with her mother and children, while her husband kept watch. While drunken revellers were still cheering the birth of a New Year at the Wild Coast Sun Casino five km’s up the coast, as those festivities subsided her contractions increased. Even if there had been enough time to get to the clinic, they were too scared to seek the help of anyone nearby with a vehicle because their owners were aligned with the mining interest and ipso facto the ‘sqebengas’ (thugs). Her previous pregnancies had all been uncomplicated and all her older children had cried their first cries within the protective care of midwives in clinical maternity wards. Her waters broke. At around three am she gave premature birth to a baby girl. Her head banged against a rock as her new born daughter emerged from her womb.
While she was trying to cope with post-natal challenges, Chief Baleni whose role under customary law is to first and foremost provide a protective peace for his subjects was trying to secure the immediate release of the four men arrested. The police kept them in custody given the extremely serious nature of the offences. During the marathon five-day bail hearing the Wild Coast nativity in the bush featured prominently in the Prosecution’s argument against the granting of bail, illustrative of how a normally peaceful village had experienced unrest that was unheard of before – all because of the perceived benefits that mining titanium would bring.
News24 was the only media platform to report on the conflict at the time. See here, but Ambhungane and Groundup have recently completed a further investigation and report. See here.
Since social workers are professionally obliged by Section 28 of the Bill of Rights to be vigilant to children needing “protection if the child lives in or is exposed to circumstances which may seriously harm a child’s physical mental or social well-being”, I made my way to visit the family.
Her neighbours rallied alongside her as she spoke about her ordeal.
Hoping that the extremely harmful circumstances that bedevil the physical, social and mental well-being of her child and the many other children in the Mdatya village will change, Mrs Ndovela and her husband Sibusiso have not only consented to the public release of the interview, they instructed me to do so.
