Local correspondent

“Remember! This is your land! It doesn’t matter what kind of paper we come with. You have the final decision!” – Minister of Minerals and Energy, 12 September 2008.

These words of Buyelwa Sonjica, the minister of minerals and energy in 2008, were spoken at the “Great Place”, a traditional meeting place where the five Amadiba villages of the Wild Coast converge. This is part of the coastal Amadiba territory and is home to 6 000 residents.

It takes 20 minutes to walk from the Great Place to the red dunes, to fish in the Indian Ocean. The walk takes you across hills, fields with maize and small plots of vegetables, including onions and sweet potatoes. This is the economy that currently sustains the Amadiba people and the economy that community leaders want to develop.

But the dunes and the land, just off the coast, are red from a mineral called ilmenite, which is used for paint, and contains iron and titanium. The same minister, Buyelwa Sonjica gave an Australian mining company a license to mine this sensitive area, setting the scene for a prolonged battle between the community and the mining company supported by the state.

The torturous zigzagging of this struggle first appeared in August 2008. On 15 August, Minister Buyelwa Sonjica came to the Amadiba community to “celebrate” the granting of a mining license to the Australian mining company MRC. To her dismay, the local community interrupted the ceremony, expressing their outrage at the granting of the licence without their consent and despite their opposition. Such was the determination of the community that the minister was forced to abandon the meeting, promising to come back and meet the community at a later stage to discuss the mining of their precious land.

One month later, Minister Sonjica returned. “This was the only time during all these years, that any politician pushing for mining has ever come to us for a dialogue,” said Nonhle Mbuthuma from the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC). Mbuthuma added that the minister had not been informed of the opposition from the local community. Nor had she heard about the two officers from Mpisi police station who came to Xolobeni School and sjambokked 50 learners in the school yard because they refused to sing at Sonjica’s aborted mining celebration, so as not to betray their parents.

“But you need mining. You are poor!” cried the minister. “Who do you see here that are poor?!” people responded. “But are not some of you very poor?” she tried again. “How can we be poor when we have land?” was the response.

Indeed, non-modernity isn’t exactly the same thing as poverty. People are cash- strapped, but there is no hunger. People have land. That is how many mine workers were able to sustain themselves during the five-month platinum strike.

Following the meeting with the Amadiba community, having finally noticed the level of opposition to mining of the area, the minister suspended the mining licence granted to the Australian company Mineral Resource Commodities (MRC) and its South African partner, Transworld Energy and Minerals (TEM). Two years later Susan Shabangu, who had replaced Sonjica as the minister of mining, revoked MRC’s mining licence, but gave the company 90 days to re-apply.

Where there is a will, there is a way.  Since then the company has been very active attempting to overturn the resistance of the community, using all means necessary. There have been intrigues, the co-option of factions in government departments, MRC money paid for solar geyser systems for those who agree to mining, as well as the buying of influential people. One such person is the local chief, Lunga Baleni, who initially stood with his community against mining but has now defected to the mining camp. He now drives around the area in a car belonging to the mining company and has been made a director in XOLCO, the BEE partner of MRC/TEM.

Mighty forces

Bizana’s local government is determined to serve the Australians and a number of people in the shadows holding a stake in the company’s fortunes. Infrastructure has been put on hold until mining comes to the area. Mining will supposedly electrify the area – from coal of course, not from solar panels or other renewables. But many small solar panels have already been installed on the rondavels, reminding us of what is possible.

SANRAL’s Chief Rascal, Nazir Alli, wants to locate a four-lane N2 highway toll road on the coast, just outside the planned 22km-long,1.5km-wide mining area. The number of homesteads facing the threat of removal from their source of livelihood and life environment will increase from about 200 to as much as double that.

In a court battle through which the road agency seeks to break the resistance of the community to the proposed toll road, SANRAL has forged affidavits of “support” from people who don’t exist, as well as from a leading member of the ACC. In this they have been assisted by a local ward councillor who is now faces the hostility of the community and is increasingly isolated. There will be no next term for him.

The obvious link between the Australian mining company’s campaign to mine the coastal area of the Wild Coast and SANRAL’s N2 toll escapade has not escaped the community. As they see it, the “man” wants to marry the “wife”.

The first clash

Bizana municipal officials have attended many meetings with the mining company over the years. They met MRC/TEM again at the Wild Coast Sun casino during the afternoon of 29 April this year in an attempt to solve an acute crisis. TEM has again applied for a mining license and “scoping” should follow. But at a meeting on 8 April at Komkhulu, which the consultants and chief Lunga had to leave under a rain of guavas and sweet potatoes, the meeting decided: There will be no “scoping”, because there will be no mining.

On the morning of the 29 April, 20 vehicles were blocked from accessing the coastal area to take mineral samples. A number of 4x4s containing mining staff and consultants, as well as chief Lunga Baleni and BEE people from “Xolco”, led by Zamile Qunya, arrived without a warning, heading for the red dunes. The caravan was chased back at Mpindweni village. Chief Lunga got out of his car, brandishing a knobkerrie: “I am the chief. I decide!” But he was forced to run with the rest. The caravan was stopped again in Xolobeni village, close to the Great Place, by a hundred community member, who blocked the road with logs and stones. Qunya was brandishing a pistol. Four police cars arrived to clear the way. “Shoot us here if you like. Then we will at least die on our land.” The whole caravan had to turn back.

Later, in a conference room at Wild Coast Sun, the municipality unsuccessfully urged the shocked expedition to try again the next morning, promising help from the police from as far away as Flagstaff and Lusikisiki. They would arrest leading members of the Amadiba Crisis Committee if the convoy was stopped again.

Blood and violence …

There is of course a lot of money to fight for. So, on Sunday 3 May the caravan was back. Some taxi drivers had been called in after being told to attend a taxi meeting at Xolobeni Junior School, but they left together with many others after an hour, after hearing of the plot that was being set. Qunya helped police to find four persons to accuse of “blocking traffic” the previous Wednesday.

Five vehicles containing hardliners from Xolco stayed, all of them with firearms. One car set off to Mtentu village in the south and was again blocked. A shot was fired at a homestead, then more shots. Four cars tried to leave for Mtentu, but were blocked in Xolobeni. The passengers were forced to leave their cars, including Chief Lunga. All were armed with pistols and fired shots in the air. A bullet fired by Zamile Qunya grazed a man in the head. A woman, 61, was hurt badly in one arm after falling on the ground while fleeing the gunfire.

On Thursday she pressed charges against Qunya’s brother. In the evening, men came to look for her with the intention of intimidating her into silence. On Friday 8 May, she went into hiding. Qunya, unceremoniously called “This Dog” in one of the community’s resistance songs, has so far enjoyed immunity, together with others around him.

…or combining old and new

The building of the new black bourgeoisie is occurring in alliance with multinationals like MRC. Mining and the introduction of capitalism requires companies to drive communities like the Amadiba from their land. In the process, laws and constitutional rights are violated – with the help of the police, the local administration and the traditional authority. This can only be achieved by flooding them with money. But this is Pondoland. Only the chief has been disgraced. All other traditional leaders in the affected area are part of the blockade, and the resistance. The class enemy has lost both patience and momentum.

This ten-year-old resistance to “development” builds both on the memory of the Pondo rebellion and on the self-confidence that subsistence farming and mass grassroots democracy can nurture; the community has shown itself capable of declaring the chief an outcast. The Amadiba campaign, “No Mining on Our Land”, is exceptional in its persistence, and so is the increasingly tense dual power situation in the area.

By demanding control over the way the old and the new should be combined in the context of the glaring unevenness of a rural area, the Amadiba coastal community points to another route for the future. It means that we all have a future. Victory is the only option.

The author is a member of the Amadiba community