Following two days of deliberation, which included a presentation by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), mining-affected communities have rejected the current draft of the Mining Charter, as gazetted by Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe last month.

This comes after 100 community representatives from several organisations gathered in Johannesburg on July 2 to consider the latest iteration of the draft charter.

The organisations included Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua), Women from Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Wamua) and Mining and Environmental Justice Community Network of South Africa.

The parties resolved that those community representatives invited to the Mining Charter Summit, which was due to be held on July 7 and 8, should attend and express the collective outcomes of the community conference.

At the centre of the conference resolution, Macua and Wamua said, is participants’ objection to the DMR’s alleged refusal to include Macua, Wamua and Mejcon in negotiations on the charter despite a court directing the DMR to do so.

The communities expressed anger and disappointment that the Minister and the DMR had shown “a complete disregard for their fundamental human right to be treated as equals and instead the DMR treated communities as if they had no rights”.

Appealing to the DMR, Macua national coordinator Meshack Mbangula requested that the department “listen to communities who have fundamental and inalienable human rights to be heard”, and suggested that the DMR start formulating a charter that would appropriately reflect what communities had been asking for in the People’s Mining Charter.

During the two-day conference, the parties said the proposed Mining Charter III was “deeply flawed”, with some of the key concerns, namely the definition of communities, not being specified.

The lack of distinction between an affected community and the broader municipality had been used to enrich municipalities at the expense of those communities that suffered under mining, the parties noted.

Gender, meanwhile, was not included extensively enough to shift the patriarchal nature of the sector and the targets for women’s empowerment needed to be significantly increased in all areas of the charter, the parties noted in a statement.

Further, they called for social and labour plan (SLP) budgets to be specified according to an agreed target and to be made transparent, adding that SLPs should include consent from the affected communities.

“The budget, if not spent, needs to be carried over into the new period.”

Further, the new draft Mining Charter excluded the principle of ‘Free Prior and Informed Consent’, or the right to say no to mining, which Macua and Wamua pointed out “is a vital requirement for communities to receive any kind of justice in the historical exploitative sector”.

According to the organisations, the draft Mining Charter does not adequately explain how community trusts are to be managed, which will, in turn, be exposed to abuse by traditional leaders and connected politicians, leading to increased conflict in communities.

“The Mining Charter should clearly outline how the community trusts will be managed . . . and governed and must include extensive community participation,” they suggested.

The organisations further lamented that insufficient attention had been paid to environmental rehabilitation after mining and that the exclusion of this element from the current draft Mining Charter was indicative of the interests that the charter sought to serve, namely those of big business and not communities.

“Insufficient attention has been paid to zama-zamas or the promotion of community work programmes through local procurement that can help to lift communities out of poverty,” Macua and Wamua argued.

Additionally, the lack of focus on youth was glaring within Mining Charter III, they said.

“The issue of youth unemployment cannot be . . . glossed over and the draft Mining Charter III must include substantive targets and programmes to empower and benefit the youth,” they suggested.

The allocation of 14% of companies’ shareholdings to black entrepreneurs should not be derived from the community and workers’ shares and should be dealt with separately as business transactions, Macua and Wamua further suggested.

Meanwhile, the full complement of 30% black ownership should be allocated to affected communities living in poverty and “should not be used to benefit and enrich politically connected individuals”.

The DMR, during its presentation at the conference, indicated that the shareholding would be effected according to the State’s appetite to acquire the shares, if the State so wished.

This, the organisations pointed out, reduced the community benefits and, exposed the nature of a predatory State, opening up shareholdings to politically connected individuals.

The nature of how this was delivered was also troubling, they said, as it was not clearly defined in the draft charter, but rather communicated in person during a presentation.

In conclusion, Macua and Wamua felt that the People’s Mining Charter should be incorporated into the Mining Charter as an expression of the will and aspirations of affected communities, as opposed to the current expression of the draft Mining Charter as a conduit to enrich the politically connected.