The mining agenda

Monday, March 1st, 2010

There’s a huge storm brewing over plans to prospect for zinc, lithium, silver, manganese, lead and tin in the Bottelary and Stellenboschkloof wine areas.

Gary Jordan of Jordan winery, one of those affected along with Zevenwacht, De Grendel, Mooiplaas, Saxenburg, Hazendal, Hoogelegen and Langverwacht, admitted he was surprised by the turnout of around 150 people at an information session held on Saturday at Zevenwacht. Another meeting is being held at Mooiplaas on Wednesday, 3 March at 09h00.

Saturday’s meeting was addressed by a history professor who sketched the historical background to tin mining at Zevenwacht, a geologist, a representative of the company of independent consultants and then open discussion with members of the public, the Bottelary conservancy, wine farmers and civics organisations.

Basically, there’s a process being observed. Firstly, the consultants, GCS, published notices in newspapers for interested and affected parties to register. That deadline was 12 February – which came and went with virtually no-one being any the wiser since the adverts were flighted on 10 and 19 February respectively – and GCS were only contracted a week before the expiry date! The second deadline is for those registered interested and affected parties to lodge objections to the prospecting proposal – and that is March 9. Following that, the consultants submit a report to their principals and there’s a further 60 day period before a decision is made whether to prospect or not. Applying for mining permission is then the next phase, should the ore deposits be deemed to outweigh the environmental and other objections and be financially viable.

Much of the discussion revolved around the fact that local landowners and various organisations with vested interests, conservation bodies, farm worker and civic organisations and even fellow government departments such as Environmental Affairs and Water Affairs were not aware of this process being considered and neither consulted nor approached for input.

The company concerned is African Exploration and Mining Finance Company (AEMFC), owned by the Central Energy Fund, a state organ. AEMFC is essentially exempt from any of the applicable legislation governing mining prospecting. They don’t have to follow any public participation process – but the independent consultants GCS, are doing so anyway.

Around the turn of the previous century, during the Anglo-Boer war, alluvial tin deposits were found near Zevenwacht. Since an army marches on its stomach and in the Boer vs Brit spat it was tins of bully beef, these deposits were mined with the ore then sent back to Cornwall for processing. In 1911 the Good Hope Tin Co. was floated with £100 000 and although it sourced the latest machinery and sunk a shaft on what is now Zevenwacht wine farm, it ultimately went bust. It was also stated that the Union Carbide mining company showed some interest in mining the area in the 1980s but they too abandoned the site. “Union Carbide, the hard men of mining, would only walk away if it was not worth their while,” commented historian Professor Sparg.
While much of the rhetoric dealt with processes being flawed, lack of consultation and the principals of reasonableness and natural justice being flouted, there were interesting points raised. The potential argument about job creation is flawed since mining is a highly mechanised process and for every R1 million spent on mining just three jobs are created while the same investment creates five jobs in the wine industry. The environmental issues are huge – Bottelary conservancy is home to the highly endangered renosterveld vegetation, there are protected wetlands which are on the RAMSAR international list, and it’s part of the Cape Winelands Biosphere.

But there was a more sinister note added by members of the Civics organisations which are of the opinion that this is a smokescreen for land appropriation since the area borders on major metropolitan areas. An even more cynical note was struck by one observer who commented that nothing concrete is likely to happen since it was most probably a scheme by political opportunists to line their own pockets. A “few tame geologists and a couple of million rand milked from the Central Energy fund (and SA taxpayers) later…” the problem will go away since everyone knows the deposits are not viable.