By Christopher Rutledge
Not long after the dawn of the “democratic state”, the government of the day sets its sites on the immense wealth of the mineral sector and under the guise of “progressive” intentions.
In its earliest iterations in the 1998 White Paper on Minerals and Mining Policy, the state immediately seeks to remove the common law principle, that ownership of the land includes ownership of the minerals in the land. In one foul swoop, the state sort to keep millions of South Africans in poverty, for the so called greater good of feeding the looting hordes that were soon to devour a great part of the state and the country’s wealth.
Today, the biggest beneficiaries of the wealth extracted with great violence from the belly of our lands, are the shareholders and the state. The State, who is ostensibly the custodian of the wealth on behalf of the entire nation, has failed to not only distribute that wealth in an equitable way, leaving millions languishing in poverty while they ride high on the hog, they have also failed to protect the environment and our collective heritage, and perpetrating a grave injustice on the very people on whose behalf they claim to act.
The diabolical deception and betrayal of the values and aspirations of the liberation movement, that all would share in the wealth of the country, is nowhere more clearly articulated than in the content and structure of the existing Minerals Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA).
The Institution of the MPRDA, which essentially limits and excludes communities from having any meaningful say about what happens on their lands and how their health and well-being is affected, is also supported by a range of other legislative and common law institutions which have all interact and accumulate the oppression of communities across institutions – and across history.
So while the MPRDA limits and excludes communities to a large degree from having any say about how their lives are impacted by the vast wealth extraction system led by government and private capital, and are often left to survive in harsh economic circumstances, communities often seek to express their anger and frustration at the injustice of a system that extracts wealth amidst the poverty of daily life.
But in a society where systemic oppression has become so ingrained into the fabric of our daily existence, we hardly notice how the beneficiaries of the vast wealth extraction, uses the very wealth stolen from beneath the feet of communities, to further humiliate, degrade and deny them the dignity promised in the Constitution.
In what has become a growing trend among the selfish & wealthy exploiters of our collective mining wealth, mining companies have started to use the vast wealth they loot every day, to access the courts, knowing full well that those living in poverty, who merely seek justice, have no hope of being able to defend themselves in the courts.
This type of litigation is called Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation, or ‘SLAPP’ suits, and the Constitutional Court has found that this “abuse of litigation would fall within the common law doctrine of abuse of court process” which would “consist of a consideration of both the merits and the motives for bringing the case”.
On the face of it, the mines approach the courts and make a range of claims against local community activists, ostensibly to protect their rights, while ignoring the obligations that they have in terms of the law. They also fail to tell the courts that the community has been peacefully requesting consultations with the mine and that the mine has consistently evaded their obligations to the community and even to the law.
The mine would often argue that if the community has complaints they should speak to the regulator, The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources. But what they fail to tell the court is that the Regulator almost never acts against a mine and that mines are generally allowed to operate without any regulatory oversight. Complaints are lodged with the Department, which are either ignored, or whitewashed in a longstanding collaboration between mines and the Department.
This Systemic collusion to exclude communities who bear the brunt of mining activities, often leads to growing levels of frustration which result in increasingly agitated and violent protests.
There is literally no recourse for communities. Not with the government and not with the courts.
In one instance, which highlights the absurd levels to which the institutional and structural system of oppression is willing to go to, a court in the Free State interdicted an entire community. The offensive nature of an interdict which seeks to prevent an entire community from protesting, is not only an afront to the Constitutional right to freedom of expression, it is also an egregious denial of the right to equality.
These court interdicts are then used by the mine to authorise the Police to arrest and act violently against protesters.
Communities affected by the industrial scale violent extraction of wealth have been placed in a structural position of oppression by design, and this structural oppression continues in the full glare of day and public attention.
With a democracy like this, who needs a dictatorship?