Meanwhile, while Busisiwe laboured to give birth to her baby, on another part of the Planet Earth another titanium related narrative was about to have its epiphany. At a Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toto, a luxury bathroom furniture manufacturer was setting up its stall to unveil its latest “technological breakthrough” - an "intelligent" toilet that opens when you approach it and self-cleans with every flush. The distinctive advantage of the crapper is that the toilet bowl is coated with a Titanium/Zirconium nanotech film, which means “it only needs to be cleaned once a year.”
It’s does not come cheaply, $9,600 (R140,000) but how much of that money goes toward compensating rural communities who have had to give up their land to make way for titanium mining is not specified. Toto does not say from whence the titanium dioxide is sourced, but if they are sincere in their global environmental vision they would surely never knowingly use conflict titanium. Toto Website,
Notwithstanding the urban convenience of having a titanium coated toilet that only needs to be flushed once a year, the moral stain on a toilet made from titanium that has displaced a rural mother forcing her to give birth under the stars, can never be erased.
I would want to believe that, if given the chance Toto would only source titanium dioxide from Xolobeni if the Amadiba community was guaranteed to have an enhanced quality of life and collective community well-being as a result of mining. However since minerals are a non-renewable resource, mining inescapably leaves a negative environmental and social impact. These costs are hard to quantify and seldom if ever properly internalised into a cost/benefit calculus. As human rights attorney Richard Spoor is now teaching the gold mining companies with mounting claims against them for uncompensated damages on behalf of sick ex-mineworkers suffering from respiratory diseases, it is plainly unjust to burden the poor and future generations with the consequences of the short term, selfish, materialistic appetites that the mining industry generally tends to indulge. There are of course beneficial uses. Platinum is very close to my heart. A platinum stent was inserted into my left ventricle fifteen years ago to prolong my life – a life I have ever since devoted to exposing the heart-breaking, negative impact that mining leaves upon the vulnerable and disadvantaged.
Meanwhile, closer to home in Johannesburg, yet another titanium related narrative was playing itself out. Richard Poplak was undergoing surgery to his leg after having been hit by a car while racing his (titanium framed?) bike. A titanium implant reinforced his femur to grace and brace him with a bionic leg.
He was supposed to spend time with his family as part of his recuperation on the Wild Coast. Alas, he had to cancel because the Lily Mine disaster required his pen instead. His article was excellent, See here, but I still believe his pen is most penetrating when used for preventative purposes.
While hope for the three victims trapped under ground evaporated there, the tensions on the ground at Xolobeni increased.
On 16th February, Chief Lunga Baleni warned his coastal subjects that the mining company consultants would commence a ten-day drilling program “for water”. That was clearly a pretence. Reliable sources have told me that the company is desperate to update their now fifteen-year old analysis of the composition of the heavy mineral deposits and are actually needing to drill more core samples to reassure increasingly nervous shareholders that the game is worth the candle.
The Amadiba coastal residents were ready and waiting to stop them again, but they did not show up. The ACC have since learned that the Environmental Impact Practitioner, Peter Badenhorst, having been told in no uncertain terms during his first visit last year that he and MRC were not welcome, had refused to continue with the aggressive methods that MRC expected of him. He was fired. MRC and Xolco are being tight lipped in response to questions by registered Interested and Affected Parties as to what they plan to do to progress their third effort to secure mining rights. Given MRC’s track record in the previous two attempts the ACC remain on their guard and intensely distrustful of anything that Mark Caruso, Zamile Qunya and Lunga Baleni say.
Latest news from the Amadiba Crisis Committee is that “on Sunday evening 28 February, the homestead of a young family was attacked by three men. They fired shots and smashed windows of the house. The man, the woman and their two-year old child was in the house during the incident. The couple are known as opponents to mining on the Wild Coast.”
In the absence of journalists who should be swarming over the story, the ACC have had to do the job of describing what happened themselves.
The incident started at about 8.05 in the evening. A shot was first fired close to the Mtentu village in the coastal Amadiba area, Bizana municipality.
Some minutes later, a white bakkie parked close to the family’s house. Three men stepped out and start banging on the door without speaking a word. Three shots were eventually fired and windows were smashed. When the man inside opened the door prepared to defend his family, the three men stayed outside and smashed another window.
The attack lasted till about 20.50. Not a word was spoken. When the men left, they fired a last shot. This was shot number five. No bullets or cartridges have been found by the community at this time.
At about 20.30, both ward councillor Nokwamkela Mteki and her brother Kenneth Mteki called during the attack to the Mpisi police station, demanding help. The officer taking the calls answered “We are coming!” The distance when driving to help at an emergency from the Mpisi station to Mtentu is about 15 minutes. No police came during the whole evening. Two police officers from Mpisi arrived 8.30 on Monday morning to take statements.
The station commander of Mpisi station is Mr Ntlangula.
Nonhle Mbuthuma: “The Amadiba community never rests. People experience sleeping in the bush and in the fields, but we have houses. People say now that our blankets are eaten by our cows.”
Mtentu is one village of five affected by the mining application lodged again by TEM in March last year. TEM is a SA partner of the Australian mining company Mineral Resource Commodities, MRC. Mtentu is located in the far south of the 22km/1.5km long coast line where TEM wants to do opencast mining for titanium minerals. This is the so called Xolobeni project, named after the central village. The community doesn’t want mining or more “EIA”
We have in many statements before told media about the shootings during Christmas in the area, and the attacks against our Headwoman and targeted crisis committee families. The four men arrested for those attacks are out on bail. Their trial is now scheduled for 8 April in Mbizana.
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In the lore of developmental social work there is a popular development parable that essential boils down to this: “It is good to rescue babies at peril carried down a crocodile infested river. But it is better to go upstream to examine the circumstances that got them tossed into the river in the first place.”
The Amadiba know full well what the upstream conditions are that cause their children to be vulnerable. It is not the fact that titanium lies in abundance beneath their ancestral home. It is the historical track record of the mining industry which has yet to produce a single instance anywhere in the world, which unequivocally demonstrates that any rural community anywhere has collectively benefited from being uprooted and resettled to make way for a mine. It has never happened anywhere. It is for that reason the Amadiba coastal resident have resolved that the titanium that lies buried with their ancestors will forever remain ‘unobtanium’.
If the Amadiba are to prevail they will need privileged urbanites and the media to support them and recognise that the fictional universe of Avatar comes home and down to earth on the Wild Coast. Their story is our story too.
Richard Poplak, you should be writing this not me. Please, if not your pen, we need your titanium bionic leg to come help the Amadiba kick MRC’s butts out of Xolobeni.
