Community Advice Office Project
Building a Network of mining affected communities to hold government and mining companies accountable and ensure community participation in decision-making.
Our mission for this project is to have Advice Centres in communities affected by mining so that they can offer a safe space for women and vulnerable persons as well as act as a centre of activism from which communities are able to protect their land, livelihoods and resources and hold those in power to account.
This project will seek to combine elements of scientific data collection (through interviews, questionnaires and surveys, observations, documents, and records, focus groups and oral histories) in which the community produces knowledge at their local level to inform their advocacy and support their efforts to shape decisions that affect their land and rights.
Our work is located in over 50 locations in mainly rural and peri urban areas in 7 provinces across South Africa. However, for the purposes of this project, 15 locations will be identified where Women’s groups have been established and which will form the basis for a paralegal support network in each identified community.
ISSUE STATEMENT:
MACUA and WAMUA branches have been faced with an increasing number of requests for legal assistance from our over 50 branches, which indicates both the expanding presence of the movement in areas that suffer from a severe lack of access to justice and the escalation of mining companies’ use of legal mechanisms to silence community dissent.
Seeking a proactive solution, MACUA and WAMUA has been collaborating with the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) to develop grassroots paralegal offices that will regularly receive legal training and that will be connected to a broader support network which will be set up to ensure that matters that cannot be resolved locally are escalated for additional support through legal clinics that we partner with such as CALS. Further, Legal Clinics such as CALS, similarly receives more requests for legal services than they can attend to comprehensively. Both organizations, have therefore embarked on this project as partners, in order to provide rural and marginalized communities with avenues to help local communities expand their capacity to be effective leaders, communicators, and organizers so that they are able to build their collective power to shape decisions that affect their land and rights in ways that are designed to reduce inequality, curb climate change and preserve the agency of communities.
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The need for the project should be seen against both the broader context of an increase in violence and other forms repression against people living in poverty, and social justice activists (Note the recent assassination of Fikile Ntshangase a member of MACUA), as the state and private sector actors seek to use repression to quell protests (There are currently 4 MACUA branches whose leaders have been interdicted by mines).
The Project should also be considered against the context in which the mining sector has historically been instrumental in cementing and aggravating patriarchal tendencies both on the mines and in communities. Many of the social discord engendered by the mining sector has stimulated and encouraged the toxic masculinities which today continue to bear down on women in affected communities. The relationship between mining communities and mines has left women within the communities particularly vulnerable, disenfranchised, and denied avenues to access justice.
We work in over 50 locations which are mainly rural and peri urban areas in 7 provinces across South Africa. However, for the purposes of this project, 15 locations will be identified where Women’s groups have been established and which will form the basis for a paralegal support network in each identified community. We have specifically proposed that the project be led by women’s groups, in order to ensure that we undo the historical legacy of women’s oppression and to actively create spaces where the most affected (who are generally poor black women), are at the center of developing solutions.
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LONG TERM GOALS
Our long-term goal is to ensure the needs, hopes and aspirations of rural, low-income and communities, women, girls, and vulnerable groups, who are impacted by mining activities, are reflected in policies and practices related to natural resources and climate justice.
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MEDIUM TERM GOALS
Outcome 1:
To strengthen the capacity of 15 MACUA and WAMUA branches in affected communities to protect their lands and livelihoods from destruction by establishing Advice Offices in the community.
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ACTIVITIES
There are two main initial interventions we have identified as steps that could address the identified need, utilising the paralegal/Community Advice Office (COA) model.
First, progressively setting up mining-affected community advice offices or building a cadre of paralegals trained on mining-related issues. This would require both organisational and logistical work, as well as partnerships with the existing institutions that capacitate paralegals to ensure paralegals receive the best training available.
The second major task involves building up a referral network and database to enable paralegals, where matters require an admitted attorney, to expeditiously refer matters to the individual attorney/legal aid office/law clinic best placed to attend to the matter.
In parallel to these processes, The MACUA branch will also stimulate and initiate public debates and dialogues at the local level on various issues affecting the community as part of local public awareness campaigns to promote the COA’s. These campaigns will undertake Community Health and Environment Surveys which will seek to gather information on the impacts of social, environmental and economic factors which impact on the health and well-being of the community with a view to using the data to inform their advocacy and support their efforts to shape decisions that affect their land and rights.
The branches will also be linked with other communities affected by mining in national and regional fora to build their collective power, so they can shape decisions that affect their land and rights.
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