http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=602&catID=6
Platinum Protests in the Limpopo
Monday June 23rd 2008
Local graves, as yet untouched, lie near the boundary of the Anglo Platinum site.
The platinum miners have cut off services to those communities that refuse to be relocated. They are using the police as muscle to throw people off their ancestral land so that they can mine there. To me it is a mess. The destruction taking place on the land is simply unsustainable.
They say that they have relocated the remains of our ancestors, but they leave us to wonder where the bones have been reburied. Where the exhumations took place, where the graves were, there are now bones and skulls. Right now, as I’m speaking, they are still there. This is really a criminal insult to our ancestors.
Everywhere that Anglo Platinum are operating in South Africa they are making a mess. People have been ploughing our fields from generation to generation, but they can’t use that land any more because of the mining operations. Also, the industry has contaminated the water in so many of the villages in the area.
I cannot say that we will ever manage to stop Anglo Platinum. They are using the police, and some of the government departments. I believe the South African government is on the side of the corporation, because they are looking at the revenues they are getting.
During the apartheid era, before we had any freedom or democracy in this country, it was the tribal chieftain who made the decisions concerning communal land. It was only he who could enter into an agreement, and do so without the consent of the indigenous people. As a result, these are the tactics that Anglo Platinum are using to defeat our people and encroach on our land without any consent from us.
They are claiming that there has been a legal agreement about the land, but it is our position that they must provide evidence of this in court. If there is an agreement it is only known to them and the constituent companies they are using; they have not made these documents public. It would be just a fake agreement to us because it was done during the apartheid era. It would have been something the chieftains did without any involvement from the indigenous people.
We lodged a report against the company on March 25, at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), who ordered Anglo Platinum to stop the evictions. They also instructed the company to stop the environmental degradation. Now the SAHRC is taking the matter further and bringing a report before the South African parliament.
We are working internationally. We are trying to ensure that everyone from jewel manufacturers to investors will stop doing business with Anglo Platinum. We staged demonstrations in April in the UK. [Dolo joined ActionAid at the Anglo-American AGM in London. Board members were invited to take the “Limpopo water challenge” and drink water collected from a school near to the platinum mine. No one volunteered.]
We are alone here, and we are fighting a big monster. The local authorities and municipalities, the provincial government, they are all on the side of the corporation. They can arrest our people without committing an offence. The evictions will continue. They will use the police who hit our people and arrest them, and we can’t stop them.
As long as Anglo Platinum continues with this inhuman and destructive behaviour, and without any consent from the local community, we will continue to demonstrate. The mine has been in operation for 15 years – since during apartheid. It will take another five or seven years, but we will continue until they agree to stop.
• Phillopos Dolo was interviewed by Francis Tamburin.