Given the assassination of Amadiba Crisis Committee chair Sikosiphi ‘Bazooka’ Radebe, the following narrative provides the briefest possible summation of the twenty-year history of the ill-fated Xolobeni Mineral Sands venture of Perth entrepreneur Mark Caruso. It includes links to short films archived on YouTube for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the conflict, which testify to the undeniable fact that President Zuma’s government has disgraced the country, violated the constitution and left the Amadiba coastal residents increasingly vulnerable, because of their failure to heed numerous prophetic warnings about the risk of bloodshed.
Twenty years ago while Parliament was putting the finishing touches to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, South African Government officials were taking Perth mining entrepreneur Mark Caruso to the Pondoland Wild Coast to negotiate a deal. The far-reaching Constitution entrenched within it a Bill of Rights which, over the ensuing two decades, set the frame for a bitter contest between human rights and mining rights that, with the death of at least four local leaders over that period who were vociferous opponents of the mine, has serious ramifications for the South African government.
In 1996, the prospecting rights for a significant deposit of heavy minerals known as the Xolobeni Mineral Sands were up for grabs because the holder, Richards Bay Minerals, had decided it was not a payable deposit given the remote and inaccessible location and rugged terrain. Caruso agreed with his hosts to float a venture capital company and craft a prospectus to attract investment, but besides a guarantee of mining rights, he bargained with the government for two other enabling contributions: firstly, seed funding to drill core samples and assay the extent of the heavy mineral deposits, and secondly the necessary transport infrastructure to get the concentrate to a smelter for processing and export to potential customers.
An R18-million loan was approved by the South African Export Development Fund (established by ABSA bank and the Department of Trade and Industries). The junior mining company MRC Ltd was dusted off the shelf and began trading on the Australian Securities Exchange.
Meanwhile the South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL) worked up a scheme that became known as the N2 Wild Coast Toll Road to shorten and flatten the N2 route between Durban and East London by rerouting it near to the mineral-rich coastal dunes. A public-private partnership scheme was announced in 2001 after SANRAL received a supposedly “unsolicited proposal” from a consortium of construction companies calling themselves the N2 Wild Coast Consortium (N2WCC), to reroute the N2 in return for a 30 year tolling concession.
Alas the N2WCC scheme failed to flush on the first pull, after the environmental authorisation was set aside in December 2004 by the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, because of an undeclared conflict of interests by the EIA consultant who happened to be a director within the N2WCC. Nevertheless, the N2WCC was permitted to redo the EIA with a new independent consultant. However, SANRAL CEO Nazir Alli sought to spare the N2WCC further embarrassment by supplanting them and naming SANRAL as the “scheme developer”.
Meanwhile sampling of the dunes had commenced, and in 2002 Mark Caruso was ready to commence a major capital raising programme for what he said was now “the tenth largest deposit of heavy minerals in the world”.
Between 1996 and 2002 Mark Caruso employed his younger brother Patrick to work 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.
Patrick Caruso, with local entrepreneur and self-appointed community gatekeeper Zamile ‘Madiba’ Qunya and prominent Port Elizabeth Attorney Maxwell Boqwana then formed the Xolobeni Empowerment Company in April 2003 to partner with MRC and their South African project company Transworld Energy and Minerals to fulfil terms of the Mining Charter which obliges a 26% black shareholding.
This film, produced by Don Guy for the SABC’s environmental programme 50/50, features an interview with Zamile Qunya. It was filmed in 2003 when the first early warning signs of trouble were surfacing. In the light of what subsequently transpired it clearly shows Zamile Qunya to be deeply conflicted between his role as one of the pioneers of Amadiba Adventures and his role as Caruso’s local fixer for the mine.
Queen Masobhuza Sigcau - Queen of AmaMpondo and a board member of the NGO PondoCrop which helped establish Amadiba Adventures - could clearly see that the eco-tourism initiative was vulnerable to sabotage, and when Amadiba Adventures went into terminal decline, she played a vital role in supporting principled local community leaders in exposing Qunya as the saboteur in chief.
A heavy price was paid by anyone who questioned Qunya. The first anti-mining leader to perish was induna Mandoda Ndovela. He had warned against allowing MRC/TEM to permit prospecting for he could clearly see it was the thin edge of the wedge. He was shot and killed soon thereafter in a still unsolved murder.
Next was Samson ‘Scorpion’ Dimane. He was part of a delegation of local leaders that were taken by Xolco to inspect the dune mining operations of Richards Bay Minerals north of Durban. Patrick Caruso, Boqwana and Qunya contrived to predispose the delegation toward a favourable assessment by paying each of them R400, clothing them in new suits and shoes, and keeping them well-lubricated with alcohol during the 300 km journey to and from Richards Bay.
But Scorpion remained sober. When the delegation reported back to the community he protested in dramatic fashion. He placed on the ground a bag with the suit and shoes, and took the money he had been given and threw the bank notes down on the suit declaring “Whoever wants this can take it. I will not be bribed to sell our land,” leaving Qunya and his supporters shamed, as he left in disgust.
Three years later, after TEM and Xolco announced they were now ready to commence a full mining rights application, tensions again burst out in the open. On 18th June 2007 ‘Scorpion’ Dimane repeated his accusations and exposed Xolco as nothing more than a vehicle for the self-enrichment of Qunya and his supporters while pretending to be a local equity structure.
Except it was all caught live on camera, including the call by the community for Caruso, Qunya and Boqwana to come and explain themselves.
Also on camera is the follow-up meeting on 28th June 2007 showing the non-appearance of the mining protagonists, and the formation of the Amadiba Crisis Committee to expose the deceit and formally oppose the mining rights.
Their first action was to lodge a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission. Their investigation, done in concert with the peace building intervention of the King and Queen of AmaMpondo clearly showed that the fundamental human rights of local residents were indeed being violated.
Despite these findings, limited mining rights for one third of the tenement were eventually awarded in 2008 as an attempted compromise. However, the Minister of Minerals (at the time Buyelwa Sonjica) was forced to suspend them after she was confronted with overwhelming evidence of manipulation, deceit and, most damning of all, fake petitions. Xolco had conspired to produce a list of 3087 names of local residents, claiming their prior, free and informed consent for the mining at Xolobeni. Signatures were (badly) forged. The lists were self-evidently false, garnered from lists of residents who had only given their names to request various government services.
MRC had no way to remedy the shortcomings. In a decision that had never been made before nor since, the new Minerals Minister Susan Shabangu was forced to revoke the limited mining completely in 2011, without the ACC even having to go to court.
But the joy of the success was marred by the fact that Scorpion Dimane had died under suspicious circumstances six months previously. His widow explains his last days in this film.
The Minister did however leave a back door open, by allowing MRC to “address environmental concerns”. To help them on their way, DMR awarded full mining rights for another less coastal deposit to another subsidiary of MRC Mineral Sands Resources, also directed by Qunya, Boqwana and Mark Caruso, but far away on the other side of the country, the Tormin Mineral sands on the Cape West Coast 400 kms north of Cape town.
Since production commenced in January 2013 it has provided a revenue stream to help fund Mark Caruso and Qunya’s efforts to try to secure the “company making” Xolobeni mining rights, and employ local residents from Xolobeni as part of an ingratiating/subversion strategy.
Mark Caruso tried to resurrect the Xolobeni mining rights 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).
The Shore Break has won several international and local awards since its international release in November 2014 and its screenings in South Africa and Australia in June/July 2015, but the publicity has unfortunately not had the expected peace-building effect. This is partly due to the CEO of SANRAL, Nazir Alli inflaming tensions by gross coercion and deceits in trying to swing support toward the N2 Wild Coast Shortcut which will bisect the Amadiba and the AmaMpondo. See this report in which respected traditional council member Nomvelwana Mhlengana describes how her signature was forged for a false affidavit used by Nazir Alli to claim her support for the N2 shortcut.
Things became nastier still when, under threat of losing their prospecting rights in terms of the ‘use it or lose it’ policy of the DMR, the mining company were obliged to submit a mining rights application before 7th March 2015. This third attempt was met with determined refusal by a community empowered to not only ‘think globally and act locally’ but also ‘think locally and act globally’. (See Survivor Wild Coast: Before and Beyond the Shorebreak, written with Glenn Ashton).
The Amadiba Crisis Committee, alarmed by the sudden illness of another of their founding stalwarts, induna Mpotomela ‘Bhalasheleni’ Mthwa just prior to the first public consultation meeting on 8th April 2015, expelled the EIA consultants when they came to commence the requisite public consultation process. When the consultants attempted to return a month later to commence their scientific studies, the Amadiba coastal residents, supported by their headwoman Duduzile Baleni and the Traditional Council of the Umgungundlovu Komkhulu, refused them access to their communally owned land, angering senior Chief Lunga Baleni, who had by that stage been co-opted by Qunya and Mark Caruso with share offers and a new Ford Ranger 4x4.
Mthwa had by then died in hospital. Foul play was suspected and an autopsy was performed by the state pathologist. The results of the toxicology tests are still awaited, one year later. See this tribute to the much revered man, whose mortal remains now lie buried deep within the proposed mining tenement.
Supporters of the mining company then attacked local anti-mining residents on the 3rd May. Headwoman Duduzile instructed lawyers for the community to obtain an urgent interdict to prevent further attacks and put the SAPS on terms. A temporary interdict was granted in late May 2015 by the Umtata High Court. Negotations between the parties led to a mutual agreement to withdraw the application to ease tensions.
Alas six months’ later over the 2015 festive season violence again erupted.
Apparently aimed at punishing the headwoman Duduzile Baleni for her “insubordinate” support for the interests of the local residents, a reign of terror by pro-mining thugs loyal to disgraced Chief Lunga Baleni commenced, resulting in residents fleeing their homes and sheltering in ravines and woodlots at night. A group of local residents returning from an urgent meeting at the Komkulu were attacked and physically assaulted. Four men were arrested and charged with assault, robbery and attempted murder, and spent two weeks in jail, while their attorney argued that “exceptional circumstances” existed to grant them bail. He succeeded but not before an unprecedented five court days for the bail hearing.
While the ring leaders were in jail the night time terror tactics continued. In the predawn hours of New Year’s Day a heavily pregnant mother had to give premature birth to her baby daughter under a Water Berry tree where she and her family were taking shelter. She tells her story here.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the country after three years of operation the Tormin mine has also become mired in a state of endemic conflict, a harbinger of what would likely happen if Mark Caruso and his partners were ever awarded rights to mine the Wild Coast. Mark Caruso, now bitterly estranged from his younger brother Patrick because of the disastrous and costly handling of the 2007 Xolobeni MRA, has now also fallen out badly with his former partner in the Tormin venture, Cape Town entrepreneur Andrew Lashbrooke. Their R20-million contractual dispute ended up in the Cape High Court. As things turned out Lashbrooke lost the R20-million case, but that does not mean that Caruso has won. At odds with the National Union of Mineworkers, despised by local environmental groups, and under scrutiny from the media despite his threats to "rain down vengeance" on anybody who opposed him. In an open email he contemptuously invited his detractors to continue their "campaign" against the mine quoting scripture, echoing a scene from Quinton Tarantino’s film 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."
Although his bizarre threat was primarily directed at the enemies he had made in his exploitation of the Tormin Mine, his inclusion of names of people associated with the Amadiba Crisis Committee left them unsure whether to be alarmed, or just amused. Mark Caruso earned the epithet “Hellfire”.
Their overwhelming emotions turned to outrage, anger and grief, when on 22nd March 2016 the man who had led the Amadiba Crisis Committee since its inception, Sikosiphi “Bazooka” Radebe was brutally gunned down by two unknown assailants posing as policemen outside his workshop at 19h30.
As of the time of writing SAPS had not made any arrests.
Some 2000 people attended his funeral on Saturday 2nd April 2016. The twenty-year saga has become a cause celebre for human rights campaigners internationally, with unprecedented media coverage. It was two weeks after the UN Human Rights Council adopted a far-reaching resolution on Business and Human Rights, which called for protection of Human Rights Defenders. People like Bazooka Radebe.
At the funeral, speaking on behalf of the royal family in tribute to the slain leader of the Amadiba Crisis Committee Chief Cinani said “the keys to mining at Xolobeni have now effectively been buried in the grave of Bazooka Radebe, the Chair of the Amadiba Crisis Committee.”
He then asked: “How can a ‘crisis’ continue for ten years? The Kingdom of AmaMpondo holds the South African Government responsible for this situation.”
While thanking the 12 media houses present for now bringing attention to the ‘crisis’ he also reminded them that that SANRAL’s N2 shortcut via the mine area was integral to the viability of the mine. See this interview.
SANRAL and the South African Government have yet to respond.
Many journalists who may have been inclined to attribute the murder to the fact that Bazooka Radebe was also a leader in the violence prone minibus taxi industry were shocked when two journalists and two members of the Amadiba Crisis Committee were viciously attacked while driving to take photographs of the coastal dunes after the funeral. See this report.
Looking ahead, the lawyers for the ACC, Richard Spoor Attorneys Inc and the Legal Resources Centre have completed papers contesting the legality of DMR’s acceptance of the mining rights application given its woeful lack of meaningful content.
Moreover, despite President Zuma’s efforts to unseat the Queen Regent and Crown Princess and install a rival pro-mining claimant to the AmaMpondo Royal Throne, the Queen and her daughter hold both moral authority and legitimacy in terms of Mpondo customary law. They are much loved by the Amadiba for stoutly supporting their right to decide their own destiny locally without interference from outsiders, 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, or a new motorway that has no long-term benefit to local development aspirations.
The Minister of Mineral Resources, Mosebenzi Zwane is due to visit the Amadiba coastal residents on Friday 8th April 2016.
He has a great deal of explaining to do, including why seven cabinet ministers ignored a report written for the primary attention of the Minister in the Office of the Presidency responsible for Performance Monitoring and Enhancement, on behalf of the Amadiba Crisis Committee in June 2012 titled “Co-option, Subversion and Offensive Exploitation: The failure of cooperative governance for the Amadiba community of the Eastern Cape. The ACC pleaded for an intervention from Government to summarily reject the mining rights application by MRC, TEM and Xolco to again allow for the trajectory of peace and development that was interrupted by the ambitions of Caruso, Qunya, Boqwana and corrupting government officials twenty years ago to resume.
Had President Jacob Zuma’s government responded to the report, it is likely that Bazooka Radebe would still be alive today.
