By Lorraine Kakaza
“I thought after Apartheid things were gonna change for better for me and my community,” says Gogo Mgaga. “But no, it was just a dream.” The brutality faced by the local community on Allen Farm in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, where Gogo Mgaga comes from, is at the hands of Buffalo Coal Mine. The mine had a devastating impact on the community and the environment, including water pollution, air pollution and vegetation loss as a result of soil eruption. After a brief pause in operations in 2018, the mine resumed operations again in 2019 – this time under a different name: Magdalena Colliery.
The hollow promise of “development”
Mining companies enter communities with the promise of prosperity, of “development” and yet the reality for those most directly affected by these projects is nothing but a nightmare.
“We used to have land for farming… but the mine took it away and we did not get any compensation for that. That has meant we have inadequate access to healthy food. Our soil [is contaminated] so we cannot plant anything, and we have little money to buy food. My life is miserable due to pollution from the mine blasting that create cracks in my house that took me many years to build and emotional I am broken every day to see my late husband grave sinking [due to the mine’s blasts] that is another kind of violence that I’m facing every day.” – Gogo Mgaga
Gogo Mgaga is calling for “environmental justice” to address the wrongs that have been done to her and to her community for decades. In the context of South Africa, environmental justice is also about racial justice, and a long legacy of economic injustice and oppression along race and class lines. As she points out, “I never saw in the white communities or, urban areas being located near industrial area or next to the waste disposal sites where there is this kind of air and water pollution. But we as the mining affected communities – we have unsafe homes where we eat black dust from the mine which is high risk and a hazard to my health. I’m coughing nonstop everyday even if I can go to the clinic, I’ll come again to the same situation.”
Communities like those in Newcastle are what author, Steve Lerner, refers to as “sacrifice zones”, lower income and often racialised communities – and often women in said communities – that carry the heaviest burden of environmental harms such pollution, toxic waste, heavy industry and contamination.
“Women are not born to carry the impacts of climate change. Women are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. Climate change is already here, we don’t need science to tell us that. We are happy that we came together because change must come from us, we must fight harder because government and corporations are ignoring our demands.”
Moleboheng Mathafene
For Gogo Mgaga, this life is a slow death, she says, “I feel like my days are numbered. Any time I can die, and I do not know what will happen to my grandchild we use to sleep in this room and now we decided to move to the other one because if the mine can blast at night, we might die while sleeping and no one will even notice as the mine doesn’t care.”
The Newcastle Community & the Right to Say NO
According to Gogo Mgaga, the community never had the opportunity to offer their free, prior and informed consent to the mining activities.
Frontline communities have a right to consent to mining projects that encroach on their lands, they have a right to social labour plans and to have their voices heard. The Newcastle community has protested and organised against the mines, but their resistance has been met with rubber bullets and repression.
The South African Constitution gives all citizens the right to access any information held by government as well as the right to a healthy environment that safeguards the people’s health and well-being. The Constitution also states that the environment must be protected for current and future generations. If a mining company wants to mine, it must do so with the consent of the people and in a way that is sustainable and ensures that future generations can also benefit from South Africa’s resources. The environment includes the land, water, air, people, plants, animals as well as buildings and houses. All of these can be affected by mining activities.
Solidarity for justice
For the Newcastle community, solidarity and women-led resistance to the mining company is the way forward in the fight for justice. Over the past few years, the community has mobilised on multiple levels including a learning exchange with women activists from Ogies, Ermelo and Vaal that are facing the same struggles in September 2020. This culminated in a Global Day of Action picket on September 25 to draw attention to increased presence and prospecting of many coal mining companies migrating from Mpumalanga province and to act in solidarity with climate activists around the world.
