Mining Corporation Greed

Villagers near Africa’s biggest copper mine have taken a legal battle against Vedanta/KCM to London and tell of blighted lives and a looming catastrophe. If you pump a glass of water from the borehole outside the little church in Shimulala, you will see it is bright yellow, smells of sulphur and tastes vile. Mining giant Vedanta’s subsidiary company KCM drilled the borehole in 2010 for the village after the Mushishima stream was turned into a river of acid when mining chemicals spilled into it. A leaked company letter says that chemists who tested borehole water there in 2011 found it tainted with copper residues, acid and minerals, and said it was unfit for consumption.

The villagers say acid spills and contaminated water in their streams, rivers and boreholes are getting worse. “The frequency and severity of spills is higher and more consistent. Before we could not smell [the pollution] but now we can. The ground is contaminated, our crop yield has dropped, the maize crop is about half what it was,” said Leo Moulenga of Shimulala. “When there is a spill, the air is very acidic. Last week they spilled a lot. It was awful. In the future we don’t think people will be able to live here. It is becoming uninhabitable. The pollution has been incremental. Now it’s getting worse.”

Floribert Kappa, of Hippo Pool, said: “I used to go to the Kafue river to draw water and started drinking it as normal. I saw that fish had died and were floating on the river. We ate the fish and soon everyone started crying with stomach pains. I was given some medicine, but the pains got worse. I collapsed and was taken to a hospital. The diagnosis was that I had drunk or eaten something acidic which had caused damage to my chest and intestines. I was told the damage was permanent. Now I live on painkillers. Everyone here has been affected in some way. We all use the same water. We have tried chlorinating and boiling the water but it still smells acidic.”

Last year Vedanta/KCM made up to £320m profit from the mine but engineers who have worked there say that its pollution treatment works have been pushed beyond their limits by the company to maximise output.

“The feed in … has been increased to over 50,000 tonnes per day. They were designed to handle 30,000 tonnes,” said one engineer. “Degraded equipment like leaking pumps, pipes, and settling ponds have given to excessive spillages and water overflowing into the Mushishima stream and subsequently the Kafue river. It poses a possible environmental catastrophe. Power failures and deficient pumps frequently result in slurry spills and effluent containing sulphuric acid, lead, zinc, iron and mercury being dumped into rivers.”

The mine has a long history of pollution from its tailing dams, processing plants and old pipes. In 2011, the high court in Lusaka ordered Vedanta/ KCM to pay about £1.3m to 2,000 residents of Chingola after sulphuric acid and other chemicals were discharged into a tributary of the Kafue in 2006.

The judge said Zambians “should not be dehumanised by greed and crude capitalism which put profit above human life. KCM was reckless and had no regard for human, animal and plant life. Chingola residents were guinea pigs.”

Vedanta later appealed to the supreme court, claiming that it was not responsible for the pollution. The verdict was upheld, but the supreme court reduced compensation to people affected by the spillage to virtually nothing.

Much of the infrastructure of the present mine is more than 40 years old. The copper is now worked largely underground but the deep, opencast pit is one of the biggest in Africa – more than four miles long, a mile wide and 1,600ft deep. Mine waste, which is being reworked to extract copper residues, now rises in miles of 300ft hills stretching around the town of Chingola. Large-scale mining led by global companies listed on the London stock exchange has expanded dramatically in the past decade. Chinese and Indian growth and the rising price of metals has led to the exploitation of new areas of the resource-rich Amazon, India, Indonesia southern Africa and the Philippines. But the boom has been accompanied by evictions, land grabs, human rights violations and damage to water supplies, say development and human rights groups.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/aug/01/zambia-vedanta-pollution-village-copper-mine

Together we can win

"Nothing has changed. We are still being paid under the apartheid wage structure." explained  David Sipunzi, newly elected head of the NUM, South Africa's biggest mine union. He was referring to the fact that lower-paid miners were overwhelmingly black and often drawn from rural areas far from the shafts - a system that has prevailed for decades.

Sipunzi added he aimed to bring Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) back into his union which left over a decade ago. "We are not enemies, we are both workers. The enemy is the employer. If we are fragmented we are not going to win the battle with the employer."

WORKERS UNITED CANNOT BE DEFEATED 

Too Late for Many

When Oupa Sonopi started working in the mine at the age of 25, he was never informed of the high risk of contracting tuberculosis (TB). "Although we would hear about colleagues in the mines being treated for TB, I was not aware that the environment we worked under could be a huge contributor to me getting TB. We were not informed when we were recruited," he says.

According to Sonopi, most of his colleagues who work at the gold mines in Carletonville, a small gold-mining town 86 kilometres west of Johannesburg, suffer from airborne diseases such as silicosis, pulmonary TB and other lung infections such as chronic obstructive airways disease and lung cancer. 

Data from the Department of Health indicates that about half-a-million mineworkers in South Africa and about two million former mineworkers, spread across Mozambique, South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland, are at a high risk of contracting TB, just like Sonopi. They are vulnerable to lung disease because of their exposure to multiple risk factors, including their overcrowded living settlements, which usually increases the risk of infection with airborne diseases. The high rates of HIV infection as well as their exposure to silica dust in the deep mine shafts - which are often poorly ventilated - also increase the risks.

Project Ku-Riha (Ku-Riha, a Xitsonga word for compensation), is being implemented by the Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases and the Compensation Commission for Occupational Diseases (CCOD) of the Department of Health. According to Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi,  "The department has identified 103 000 active and ex-miners with compensable claims for the pneumoconiosis which includes silicosis asbestosis, TB, chronic obstructive airways disease, progressive systematic sclerosis and lung cancer among others." Authorities have set aside R1.5-billion that will go towards compensation. Migrant workers from other countries who have worked in South African mines and who account for around a third of the South African mining work force are also eligible to apply for the fund. The minister said thousands of people had died without ever receiving or even being aware of the country's Benefit Medical Examination and the autopsies their families were entitled to under the Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act of 1973. However, the CCOD has such a huge backlog of claims from mine workers with lung disease that it will take years to process. 200 000 claims had been checked while about 500 000 were yet to be touched. A preliminary analysis of the claims held by the CCOD showed that more than half (56%) were for TB and 17% for silicosis.

Motsoaledi acknowledged that compensation could never be enough to address the difficulties that the affected miners faced. "Compensation will never be enough. We need to change the laws to ensure that our miners are protected," he said.

The fund derives its income from levies paid by mines themselves. Claims are assessed by the Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases' certification committee, which determines whether or not they qualify for pay-outs, which usually range from R3 000 to R100 000. Other work-related injuries and diseases, such as loss of limb or finger, are dealt with by the Department of Labour.

Poverty in the Midst of Plenty

Hunger and malnutrition in a world of plenty is an unacceptable and shameful reality of the 21st century.

Following the end of fighting in Liberia in 2003, several investors arrived in the country, promising to invest millions of dollars in a war ravaged country much to the delight of Liberians struggling to get jobs to make a living but the benefits are meager or in some cases, nonexistent. The 52nd National Legislature wasted no time in ratifying dozens of concession agreements granting these foreign companies the right to mine Liberia’s iron ore deposits and also engage in other activities.

Many of the companies made big promises of creating a large number of jobs, building roads and other infrastructure for the local communities, but ten years on, all the companies granted concession contracts in the mining sector have been unable to jointly provide up to 10,000 jobs for Liberians. The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a civil society organization, has revealed that Liberia earns too little from its iron ore exports, which has severely strained state--‐citizen relations and relations between local communities and foreign multi--‐nationals operating in the mining sector.

“We only hear that China Union is paying money for community development, but we don’t know where the money goes,” said Hawa Kerkula, women’s leader of the Yarbaryon Clan in Bong County, Liberia. She continued: “We who live near the mountain have not seen any benefit since China Union came here. Our roads are bad. There are no health facilities in our communities. How does the government expect us to live?”, the Bong resident is further quoted

The report reveals that Liberia gives overly generous tax breaks to iron ore investors, which grossly violates the country’s revised Revenue Code. SDI states that, for example, while the Revenue Code requires multinationals to pay 30 percent income tax on all corporate profits, ArcelorMittal, China Union, and Putu only pay 25 percent.

The Alternative Mining Indaba

Africa, with a population of 1.2 billion people, holds about a third of the world's mineral resources, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB). The continent produces a tenth of the world's oil and two-thirds of its diamonds.

Of Africa's 54 countries, 24 rely on a select few mineral products to generate more than 75 per cent of their export earnings, the AfDB found. In Botswana, for example, nearly 45 per cent of government revenues come from mining, while natural resource exports account for 25 per cent of revenues in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a report from the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) showed.

The war criminal and well paid advisor to dictators, Tony Blair, addressed 7000 delegates (all who had paid the 23,000 rand a ticket) of the Mining Indaba. Did he know that rather than investors, actual mining workers were holding an Alternative Mining Indaba which had 300 delegates attending.  At a march to the Mining Indaba on the summit’s first day, placards summed up the range of issues at stake: “Stop polluting our water.” “Africa is not for sale!” “Our mineral resources, our future!” “It’s not development when the environment is being destroyed.” “No to tax dodging!”

In 2002, a young man called Fortunate Siziba was walking home in Mapanzure, Zimbabwe, at night when he fell into an open, unsecured, un-lit pit previously used for chrome mining. The pit was 17 metres deep. Siziba was left partially blind. In 2012, nine-year-old Asa Mpofu fell into an open, unsecured, un-lit chrome mining pit in the same area. She drowned. In neither case was any compensation paid by the chrome mine operators, or even an apology given. The most assistance that Siziba received from the mine operator was to be transported “in the bucket of a front-loader” to a nearby clinic. The Alternative Mining Indaba, people are angry. What emerges from the Alternative Mining Indaba is not solely a simplistic picture of mining companies being bad and local communities being good. The failure of African governments to protect the interests of their people is also cast into stark relief.

“We are not anti-development,” Southern Africa Green Revolution’s Matthews Hlabane said. “We are anti-development we don’t understand.”

Southern African Resource Watch’s Georges Bokundu summed it up most flatly in a presentation on the second day, with regards to the situation in his home country: “Mining copper, gold has brought no development to DRC. Only more conflict.”

“Development” at all is something of a contested term in these circles – promised by mining companies, yet often failing to materialise in the way governments or communities hope. Part of the problem is how little say communities are generally granted into what mining companies do around them. Mining legislation in South Africa and other countries demands that mining companies produce Social and Labour Plans – SLPs – which should lay out their plans for how they will contribute to socio-economic development around the mine. As the Legal Resources Centre’s Wilmien Wicomb pointed out, however, these are generally kept secret from the communities – who then have no way of knowing whether mining companies are sticking to whatever they promised in order to win their cherished mining rights. This lack of information also affects community-members concerned about the environmental impact of mines.

Lawyer Gilbert Makore, of the Zimbabwean Environmental Law Association, said that “most communities have never seen an environmental impact assessment report”. Even if they are granted access to such a report, the language is often highly technical, and often in English only. Corruption occurs between some environmental consultants, too, who produce copy-paste reports for different mines. Even when such consultants are not corrupt, Makore said, they can “go in, hold one meeting with a local leader, and then pass that off as community consultation”.

In Kankoyo, Zambia a major copper mine, and the resulting mining activities have had a “devastating impact” on their environment, Soil can now only support the growth of mango trees and small plants. Residents complain of respiratory problems. Houses have developed cracks in the walls ranging in size from relatively small to big enough to allow two people to shake hands. The soil erosion which results from mining leaves the house foundations unsupported, he explained. In 2012 the community presented their problems to the mining company. They discovered that in terms of the agreement signed with the Zambian government, the mine was exempted from environmental liability. There is little doubt that governments do not do enough to ensure that environmental or social contracts are stringently adhered to by mining companies.

South African mining minister Susan Shabangu was receiving annual reports from Lonmin, was aware that the mine was failing to live up to its socio-economic obligations in the Marikana area, and took no action for a long time. The Bench Marks Foundation’s Hassen Lorgat said that there was a tendency among certain conservative media pundits, government and corporations to see what happened at Marikana as an “aberration” – an unpredictable event spawned by union conflict – to avoid discussing ”corporate neglect of workers, abuse of power and privilege of exploiting our mineral resources”. In Lonmin’s own 2011 Annual Report they had already identified risks including “poor community relations due to internal and external factors that could result in civil unrest”.

Zama-zama, or illegal miners, are continuously vilified and criminalized. Mention of the zama-zama has recurred throughout the summit in tones of outrage or concern about their criminalisation – as if “legitimate” mining activity can only be undertaken by European and North American mining corporations. One delegate summed up what seemed to be a widespread sentiment: It’s like when Europeans kill endangered animals and they call it hunting, but when Africans do it they call it poaching.

Capital goes on strike

Commodity prices are at their lowest in 12 years. The world’s biggest mining companies will scale back spending by $20 billion this year, according to Macquarie Group Ltd., as they cut growth plans amid waning demand for raw materials. With projects planned during the decade-long commodities boom now being shelved, Africa is likely to bear the brunt of the cuts, investors say. Of the 20 countries most reliant on mineral exports, 10 are in Africa.

The Nedbank Africa Mining Index, which consists of 20 companies including Johannesburg-based Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. and AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., touched a six-year low in December, indicating investors’ negative outlook for the continent’s prospects.

“Africa has such potential and resources to be developed,” Pictet’s Moorhead said. “But to realize that, you need to spend a lot of cash and that’s a story, in general, investors don’t want to hear right now.”

“People are cutting back on Africa more than say Australia because Africa tends to be high on the cost curve,” said Andrew Lapping, who helps manage $39 billion at Allan Gray Ltd. in Cape Town. “Suddenly they’re having to cut capital and decide which are their best projects. There are less of those in Africa than in other regions.”

Unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as uncertainty over mining taxes in Zambia -- the two largest copper producers on the continent -- has added to investor unease in recent weeks. The pullback presents a challenge to nations such as Botswana and Guinea which, according to the International Council of Mining & Metals, derive more than 60 percent of their exports from minerals.

BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, is moving to spin off its Africa-focused assets into a new company called South32, while Rio Tinto Group, the second-largest, exited its Mozambican coal business last year after writing it down by $3 billion. Glencore Plc’s South African coal unit will cut annual output by half amid a “continued deterioration in the export coal price,” it said last month. Anglo American Plc is looking to sell platinum mines in South Africa and its iron-ore unit is planning to reduce capital expenditure 20 percent. West Africa-based producers of iron ore, which has declined 54 percent to $61.64 a metric ton since the beginning of 2014, have been particularly hard hit. London Mining Plc was planning a $400 million expansion of its Marampa operation in Sierra Leone in July but by October it had called in administrators. African Minerals Ltd., which also produces the steelmaking ingredient in the country, shut its mine in December.

“Traditional mining areas, even places like Australia and Canada, will all be hit but particularly in Africa where you’ve got big projects being built,” said Clive Burstow, who helps manage $44 billion at Baring Asset Management in London. “Companies have become very Darwinian in how they look at capex. Projects have to make a return.”

In Zambia, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. and Glencore are among companies that have suspended projects valued at more than $1.5 billion in Zambia because of a tax dispute, while Barrick Gold Corp., the biggest producer of the metal, has started the process to put its Lumwana mine under care and maintenance. Vedanta Resources Plc, founded by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, is reviewing its Zambian copper unit amid a 23 percent slump in the price of the metal to $5,663 a ton since the start of 2013 and higher taxes introduced last month. Minerals from Zambia, Africa’s largest copper producer after Congo, comprised 69 percent of the country’s total exports in 2012

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/africa-hardest-hit-as-miners-trim--20-billion-spending-this-year/41264556

Eritrea's Mining Industry

The small east African country of Eritrea has started a mining industry and is doing it right. To start with Eritrea is receiving 40% of the profits generated by its first gold/copper mine.

Compare this to Tanzania where Anglo-American mining company operates one of the worlds largest gold mines and pays a whopping 4% royalty to the government.

Thanks to Wikileaks we know that the USA forced sanctions against Eritrea through the UN Security Council in 2009, not to punish Eritrea for allegedly supporting “terrorism” (i.e. Al Shabab in Somalia) but in an attempt to sabotage the start of Eritrea’s mining industry.

40% vs. 4%? Small wonder that Eritrea’s deal threatens western interests for if the rest of Africa takes note and begins to follow suit in the deals cut allowing exploitation of the continents resources Pax Americana and its vassals are facing a serious problem.

From Thomas C. Mountain who has been living and writing from Eritrea since 2006.

Read it all here

Mine V Nature

Africa sustains some of the most spectacular ecosystems on the planet.  But those ecosystems and their iconic wildlife are now facing their greatest peril - a mining boom of unprecedented intensity.

Africa contains around 30% of the world's minerals - including large quantities of phosphate, platinum-group metals, gold, diamonds, chromite, cobalt, manganese and vanadium, and huge deposits of aluminum, uranium, iron ore and coal. But with just 5% of all global mineral exploitation taking place in Africa, the potential for growth is enormous. Africa is now attracting a stampede of foreign mining investment. China's investment in African mining quadrupled from 2000 to 2009, and now exceeds $100 billion annually. Investments from India, Brazil, Russia, Canada and Australia are also pouring in. For example, more than 230 Australian mining companies are now involved in over 600 mining and mineral-processing projects across 42 African countries.

Mining projects can have both direct and indirect impacts on the environment. The direct effects are generally limited to the immediate vicinity of the project itself, and can include intense impacts on land, wildlife habitats and aquatic environments from mines, tailing dumps, roads, pollution and an influx of mining workers and migrants. But for the environment, the indirect effects of mining can be far worse. Mining is often linked to major infrastructure projects such as roads and railways to move commodities from mines to smelters or seaports, and hydroelectric dams. For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sicomines, a China-Congolese joint venture, is pouring $9 billion into roads, railways and other infrastructure in order to develop a massive copper mine, the Dikulwe-Mashamba concession. In Mozambique, the Brazilian mining company Vale is investing $4.4 billion to rebuild a railway system from northern coalmines to the city of Tete.

New roads and transportation projects can promote economic growth, but they can also unleash a Pandora's Box of environmental problems. Across the developing world, new transportation projects often promote large-scale deforestation, wildlife poaching and an influx of illegal migrants and land speculators. Local communities often suffer as well from the sudden influx of opportunistic nomads and spikes in prices for food and other goods.

The mining boom is a key driver behind 29 massive 'development corridors' that will criss-cross Sub-Saharan Africa. These corridors will bring tremendous pressures and land-use change to a continent that may lack the technical and governance capacity to manage such unprecedented environmental and social challenges:
In Gabon, the Belinga iron-ore deposit will require a 240 kilometre-long railway that will penetrate deep inside the Congo rainforest.
In Cameroon a 570-kilometre railway will link the Mbalam iron-ore mine to the Atlantic coast.
In Tanzania, a planned road to the goldfields by Lake Victoria could bisect Serengeti National Park and disrupt one of the world's greatest surviving wildlife migrations.

The rush to exploit Africa's mineral wealth is also threatening many protected areas. At least five African nations have already downsized or degazetted national parks to promote mining projects. Zambia, for instance, has downgraded 19 of its national parks to promote limestone mining, and permitted a huge copper mine in the heart of the Lower Zambezi National Park. Tanzania has downsized Selous Game Reserve for uranium mining, while Guinea has downsized its Mt Nimba World Heritage Site for iron-ore prospecting. And this might be just the tip of the iceberg. The potential for future threats is massive given that many valuable mineral deposits in Africa are located near or within protected areas.

The mining frenzy that is now engulfing Africa presents the greatest environmental threat the continent has ever seen.

From here

No Silver Lining

Africa’s largest silver mine has been operating in the Atlas mountains since 1969, but the Berber people living in the surrounding villages remain among the most poverty-stricken people in Morocco. While Africa’s resources are historically usurped by international companies, the Imiter Mettalurgic Company operating the silver mine is mostly owned by Morocco’s royal family.

“The king forgot about us. He tours the country helping people, and he never comes to this region,” one woman told the New York Times. “He is our father, and he has forgotten about his children.”

Morocco’s Berbers are historically independent, organized and resilient, and once enjoyed a deeply entrenched system of water management that has been disrupted by international groups in recent years. The mine is said to have taken up to 66 percent of the water allocated in a special system to each village.

Since August, 2011, a group of activists from Imider, who call themselves Movement on the Road ’96, have been living in an occupation camp on Mount Alebban in order to protest the mine’s unreasonable water use and pollution. The group claims that the mine has used up more than their fair share of water, depleting aquifers that the agricultural communities in the area use for their terraced crops. Movement on the Road ’96 also claims that the toxic byproduct of the mining process, including cyanide and mercury used to treat the ore, has caused disease, killed livestock and exacerbated desertification. The group, which takes its name from a 1996 uprising that the government violently suppressed, is demanding that local employees should make up 75 percent of the total workforce.

“…even small plots at the foot of the mountain seem doomed to due to the shortage of water and poisons from the mine,” according to the Free Academy in Rome (LAR). LAR says that since operations began in 1969, very few infrastructural improvements have taken place. “At Imider there are no schools (except a small garrison basic), there is no electricity in most homes, the internet or even kiosks with newspapers, while the nearest hospital is located 200 km away (Ouarzazate).”

Uganda's Mining Wars

Huge mineral deposits in Uganda’s Karamoja region, expected to regenerate the conflict-ravaged area, could instead further deepen the suffering of people living there, a report has warned.

Minerals, especially gold, have brought frantic manoeuvres from mining companies and powerful individuals in government who want to receive money from the precious resource, according to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report. The impact of mining on human rights in Karamoja’, launched on Monday in Kampala, says mining companies have disregarded the region’s indigenous people’s land rights — sometimes fencing off swaths of land without their consent. Land in Karamoja is particularly important to the community, which depends on nomadic pastoralism for survival. Land in Karamoja is owned communally, which makes it difficult for the mining companies to identify the rightful owners for compensation or consultation.

 “Private sector investment could transform the region — providing jobs and improving the residents’ security, access to water, roads, and other infrastructure,” the report says. “But as companies have begun to explore and mine the area, communities are voicing serious fears of land grabs, environment damage, and lack of information as to how and when they will see improved access to basic services or other positive impacts.”  Karamoja’s 1.2 million people remain enveloped in chronic poverty. Karamoja has the poorest development indicators in the country — highest poverty levels, malnutrition, and 80% of the population living on less than $1 a day.

From here 

Radiation poisoning

In 1975 Anglo-Australian mining firm Rio Tinto set up its Rössing uranium mine. It needed a place to house its black workforce so it built Arandis in Namibia. Arandis is still the home of the workers, but has lost the financial support of the company. It looks like it is doomed to decay.

Many men who worked in the mine's early days claim to suffer from severe illnesses including cancers, hypertension and anaemia.  Hoseas Gaomab, worked in the mine's laboratory for 23 years. He knows many men who have died. But he doesn't know why.  Gaomab is sick, too. He suffers from a disease that has made his legs and hands numb for the much of the past 20 years. It simply didn't occur to Gaomab that his illness could be work-related. Then, in 1993, a medical student named Reinhard Zaire arrived, interviewing miners and taking blood samples. "He asked us how long we worked for Rössing and when we got sick. Then he called us together to tell us we were irradiated."

He concluded that there was an increased risk for uranium miners to develop malignant diseases such as cancer. Shortly after the report was published, Zaire was dismissed by the Namibian Ministry of Health and Social Services, his research permission was revoked, and he was accused of practising as a medical doctor illegally. Rio Tinto slammed Zaire's report.
 "To date, there have been no confirmed occupational illness related deaths," said Rio Tinto spokesperson
There are no records available from the company of what happens to workers once they leave Rössing. After their retirement, the men return to their homes in rural Namibia, where they rarely have access to proper healthcare facilities.

The Scourge of Silicosis

According to the South African Department of Labour, there are currently as many as 2,000,000 former gold miners suffering from silicosis.  Tens of thousands of gold miners - many of them migrant workers - who have registered for what is thought to be South Africa's largest class action lawsuit in history. Three law firms - Richard Spoor Attorneys, Abrahams Kiewitz Attorneys and the Legal Resources Center - have filed affidavits against 31 mining companies accusing them of damaging their clients' health by exposing them to elevated levels of dust underground.

South Africa's gold industry was founded on the migrant labour system, a system that heavily linked to the apartheid era. Black men from poverty-stricken areas across the south of the continent were cheaper to employ than locals. Even now, more than half of the total workforce in the mining sector is recruited from neighbouring countries. Once they leave the mines, however, they disappear from the radar of the occupational health institutions and the mining houses.

In South Africa, one of the world's largest gold producers, silicosis was identified as an occupational lung disease in 1911. The implementation of the Miners' Phthisis Act of 1922 allowed white miners to receive compensation for diseases contracted in the mines. In 1930, the first conference dedicated to the illness was held in Johannesburg. The current health and safety legislation, however, excludes gold miners. For mine workers, there is a separate act, named the Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act (ODMWA), which for a long time "only served the white and coloured workers", explained Thuthula Balfour-Kaipa, the head of the health department at the Chamber of Mines, an institution funded by the mining companies.

The majority of the miners have been and still are black. Up until the 1990s, black men comprised some 90 percent of the mines' workforce, a statistic which has not changed significantly. The majority of those men traditionally came from countries other than South Africa.

According to Balfour-Kaipa, the compensation act has not been implemented properly, even after it was reformed following the fall of apartheid in 1994. "The men are getting less compensation than they should - if they get anything," she said. Balfour-Kaipa does not blame the mining companies, but the government. She says the lack of a functioning public health system in the provinces or countries of origin of the migrant workers is at fault. "The Eastern Cape is one of the most dysfunctional provinces in South Africa," she said. "For Lesotho and Mozambique, there isn't even legislation about occupational health."

Dr Thabiso Kolobe is a general practitioner from Maseru, Lesotho, who only learned about the disease last year. "Silicosis is not a common word here," he said. "Doctors don't think that way, they are not aware of this disease when they see an X-ray." Once a worker returns to his home, chances drop that he will ever be diagnosed with silicosis. "They just die outside in the villages," says Kolobe. "Because there is no organised service, no database of ex-miners, no screening system... Many of those men live in rural areas, so even if it's clearly indicated that they have to come for a screening every six months, they'd have to travel far."

Corrupt capitalism

Simandou, a mountain in the remote interior of the impoverished west African country of Guinea that is so laden with iron ore that its exploitation rights are valued at around $10bn.

Beny Steinmetz, an Israeli tycoon was estimated by Forbes magazine to have a net worth of $4bn, acquired the rights to extract half the ore at Simandou by pledging to invest just $165m to develop a mine at the mountain. Shortly afterwards, he sold half of his stake for £2.5bn. The rights to extract iron ore from Simandou had been held by Rio Tinto until late 2008 when Conté stripped the Anglo-Australian mining giant of half its stake. Apparently, the president signed the necessary paperwork while on his deathbed, one of the final acts of his dictatorial government. BSG Resources then acquired those rights, agreeing in return to invest $165m to develop what it described as "a world-class integrated mining project".

In April 2010, Steinmetz negotiated to sell half his company's stake – a quarter of the mountain's ore – to Vale of Brazil, the world's biggest iron ore miner. BSG Resources and Vale formed a joint venture company called VBG which would produce around 2m tons of iron ore a year.

When Vale agreed to pay $2.5bn, one veteran of African mining was quoted in the financial press as saying that Steinmetz had hit "the jackpot".

The US justice department decided to mount an investigation into circumstances. Unknown to either Steinmetz the FBI launched an investigation in January into whether payments allegedly made on behalf of Beny Steinmetz Group Resources, the Guernsey-registered mining arm of the tycoon's business empire that acquired the rights, were in breach of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Frederic Cilins, an agent for Steinmetz's company, was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, after federal agents had covertly recorded a series of meetings. The recording shows, it is alleged, that Cilins plotted the destruction of documents which it is claimed could have shown the Simandou exploitation rights were acquired after millions of dollars were paid in bribes to Guinea government officials. Cilins had in the past offered to pay $12m in bribes in order to influence the award of mining concessions. He had also paid out several million dollars, and had called the meetings in order to arrange for the destruction of documents concerning bribe payments and mining concessions.

Steinmetz has been embarking on litigation at the high court in London, accusing Mark Malloch-Brown, the former Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister and deputy secretary general of the United Nations, of being involved in a smear campaign against BSG Resources.

Guinea, a former French colony, has almost half of the world's bauxite reserves and significant reserves of iron ore, gold and diamond reserves, but the majority of its 11 million people live in poverty as a result of years of corruption.

African telecoms billionaire Mo Ibrahim, for example, asked publicly: "Are the Guineans who did that deal idiots, or criminals, or both?"

Not all gold glitters

There is no refuge from the blistering heat at this artisanal gold mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Any trees that might have provided shade have been consumed by the mine, which covers an area the size of five or six football fields. About a thousand people - men, women and some children - swarm across the open-cast mine near Iga-Barrière, about 25km east of Bunia, the administrative town of the Ituri Region. Local NGOs put the numbers of artisanal gold miners in Ituri between 130,000 and 150,000. Women, some with babies strapped to their backs, form human chains to pass plastic basins of mud from men excavating the shafts. They all work 13 hour days, six days a week. Some earn as little as US$0.21 a day.

It can take up to three weeks to dig, by hand, an 8m-deep shaft to where the gold-bearing sands lie at Iga-Barrière. Narrower shafts requiring less work carry greater risks.

A stake at the artisanal gold mine costs about $250, or five grams of gold, and is paid to the Société des Mines d'Or de Kilo Moto (SOKIMO), a public company. SOKIMO is a relic from Belgium, the former colonial power. Created in 1926, the company enjoyed boom years during the 1960s and 1970s, employing about 6,000 people and providing housing, clinics and schools for its employees. However, its nationalization in 1966 by then-Zaire's President Mobuto Sese-Seko, who used the company to support his lavish lifestyle, eventually took a toll. By the late 1980s, the company's only source of revenue was the taxing of artisanal and small-scale miners. Makuza Boniface, SOKIMO director at Iga-Barrière, told IRIN the company imposes a 30 percent tax on all gold produced at the site by the artisanal miners. Gold is being smuggled across the borders by gold dealers exploiting a tax loophole, Kitene said, to maximise profits.

Lobho Faustin, 30, cannot afford his own claim. He is part of a group of eight diggers, earning a wage to support his three children. "It's a job to live and survive on. How much money you make depends on how lucky you are. Sometimes I get $50 in a week and sometimes nothing. You can work for weeks and not get paid. I work for someone else. But it all depends. If we find gold then we get paid. There is nothing else to do," he said.

Artisanal miners face an array of occupational hazards, including: mercury inhalation while extracting gold from ore; tunnel and open-shaft mine collapses; women experiencing spontaneous abortions due to heavy labour; and the complete absence of water and sanitation facilities. "Health and safety is set down in the Mining Code, but most miners don't seem to care. It is very difficult to prosecute people as most are not educated and many were in militias during the war," Toto Bosingaka, the chief of the Service d'Assistance et d'Encadrement d'Artisanal (SAESSCAM), told IRIN.

As elsewhere in the eastern DRC, Ituri encountered a succession of international and local conflicts, and a variety of militias and foreign national armies imposed their own taxation system on the artisanal gold miners. Ndele Tanzi, coordinator for the Bunia-based NGO Honesty and Peace, told IRIN gold mining was a major threat to peace and stability. "The Ituri war was cast as an ethnic war, but if you look carefully it was about resources."
Although Ituri has returned to relative peace, gaining access to Iga-Barrière requires passing through numerous roadblocks staffed by security forces and government officials, who impose random "road taxes" on vehicles and pedestrians alike. The peace dividend has not provided any respite from a culture of backhander payments.

"While the exploitation of artisanal and small-scale miners continues, the identity of those responsible has now changed. They are no longer warlords and militia leaders but government administrators, members of the government's military and security organizations, and many regional traders," A November 2012 report, Conflict Gold to Criminal Gold, published by Southern Africa Resource Watch, said.

Louis Bedidj Fuarwingo, coordinator of the artisanal miner organization the Association Exploit dans Mineur Artisnal pur le pacification et reconstruction Ituri (AEMAPRI), told IRIN, "Sometimes authorities harass miners and make them pay for small things to let them work. They can make people very angry and demand as much as $750. "They ask for non-existent certificates, like 'scientific training' and 'expertise in mining'. They just create such lists to pick money from the miners. Police come to the mining camp and go to the mine boss and then all the miners have to contribute."

From here

Gertler's Congo

Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler has been accused of making most of his $2.5bn fortune from "looting Congo at the expense of its people" which remains at the foot of the UN's development index. Most of Congo's 68m population do not have access to electricity or running water, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday. The nation's per capita income is $280 – below the level it was at when the country, formerly known as Zaire, gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

Gertler, who normally avoids the public eye, declared in an interview "I should get a Nobel prize. They need people like us, who come and put billions in the ground. Without this, the resources are worth nothing."

Mining company Eurasian Natural Resources Company (ENRC) has spent $550m (£340m) buying itself out of a Congo copper-mining partnership with Gertler. ENRC ended its relationship with Gertler this weekend after mounting pressure from politicians, investors and campaign groups demanding that it clean up its reputation and be more transparent in demonstrating how local people benefit from its activities. Gertler used his close relationship with the government to secure preferential treatment, and the Serious Fraud Office has been called on to investigate. British MPs are also demanding that the UK slash aid spending to Congo because the country has failed to show that profits from its mines are benefiting local people. The International Monetary Fund froze loans to Congo because the government refused to publish details of a deal between a state-owned mining firm and companies said to be linked to Gertler.

The transparency campaign group Global Witness, which has criticised ENRC for using Congo partners that work with offshore companies which they claim could be benefiting corrupt local politicians, said: "Instead of the Congolese state benefiting from the sales of the country's most valuable mines, the bulk of the money is going to secretive companies in offshore countries, mainly in the British Virgin Islands. "Mr Gertler and the FTSE 100 companies partnering up with him should publish full details of their dealings in the Congo, including the names of the offshore companies' beneficiaries. The public should be assured that these beneficiaries do not include corrupt Congolese officials".

Gertler said it was the Congolese government's role to disclose the deals, not his. "We're a private company. Why should we announce?"

Sharing the wealth

“At this rate, we may have to rely on relief food. There’s virtually nothing to harvest. All my maize crop is now only fodder for my livestock,” Jared Mwakina says, wiping sweat from his temple.

Mwakina’s woes are shared by hundreds of other villagers.

 “Sometimes when we get enough rains to sustain our crops, elephants from the neighbouring Tsavo West National Park move into our farms and destroy all our crops. It’s a vicious cycle of poverty and suffering,” says Daftone Mwang’ombe, another resident.

To add to the locals’ misery, the roads are in a pathetic state. Water shortage is the order of the day. Women and children suffer endlessly searching for the precious commodity, which they ferry home on their heads and also using donkeys. But these beasts of burden in Kishushe hardly get a chance to browse or even bray as they are gagged tight most of the time,  to stop them from feeding on the little crops left in the farms.

Yet this is a rich community, blessed with vast resources including huge iron ore and copper deposits. The village holds one of the largest deposits of iron ore and copper in the country. The iron ore in Kishushe is called magnetite type, which is the best ore for industrial use. The whole iron ore deposit is estimated to be worth more than Sh1 trillion. Wanjala Mining Company, which is extracting the iron ore is projected to mine and export more than 100m tonnes of the ore this year estimated to be worth more than Sh20 billion. Most residents accusing the mining firm of short-changing them.

 According to an agreement, Wanjala Mining Company had undertaken to construct four rooms at Kishushe Dispensary, equip the labs, pipe water to Kishushe from Kishenyi Dam in Werugha location, pay Sh70 per tonne of iron ore extracted to KDTF as well as upgrading of local roads to a modern standard.

“Most of our youths were rendered jobless after the mining company mechanised most of their mining activities. At this rate, the idle youths may be forced to go into unlawful acts such as poaching for bush meat to earn a living,” says Julius Mwasaru. There is abundant wildlife resources that are a major tourist attraction.

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000058674&pageNo=1

The resource curse once again

The largest mining investment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo should have brought jobs, growth and development to the surrounding community, but has instead brought poverty, according to a report by Southern Africa Resource Watch. The mine produced about 115,000 tonnes of copper and 8,000 tonnes of cobalt in 2010.

The US$2 billion investment by Tenke Fungurume Mining (TFM) in the copper and cobalt mine in Fungurume has resulted in a decline in the community's once thriving agriculture sector and the closure of many small businesses due to a drying up of money in the area. Since the mine's operation, many people had abandoned agriculture in an attempt to find jobs at the mine, which were ultimately not made available to locals. Furthermore, the 1,600 square kilometre concession area had meant that agriculture was no longer allowed in many areas, he said, adding that people were not told where they were and were not allowed to farm.

The company said that between 2006 and September 2011, it made social investments of $42 million. The few social projects that the company had carried out had "not brought value to the community" because the community was not consulted at all, Southern Africa Resource Watch director and co-author of the report, Claude Kabemba said. "It is like 'an elephant which passes through a village and does not pay any attention to the barking dog'." Kabemba said that as part of its social project, TFM had rebuilt some schools, although not as promised and without consultation with the locals, and had put a clean water supply into the community, although this was only at one point which was a far walk for most people. The few things that had been done had been done poorly and without any interaction with the community. "This reflects a lack of seriousness and attention to social responsibility," he said.

TFM's own report said that it contributes 0.3% of net metal sales revenue to the TFM Social Community Fund, and since the commencement of commercial production, these contributions have totalled $7 million. Claude Kabemba countered that the community could not access this fund and while the fund definitely did exist, it was not clear how it was being used.

While the company said that approximately 98% of direct TFM employees are DRC citizens, the report found that no Fungurume locals had been employed at the mine, and TFM had brought in workers from other areas. These workers stayed at a camp outside of Fungurume, and therefore had little exposure to the community. This meant that workers did not spend any of their incomes in the village and as a result, there was no money in circulation. Kabemba believed that the only reason the company would choose to find workers elsewhere was a "strategy to ensure the community does not have a say", and an attempt to avoid strikes or any community involvement. Also, many small businesses had to close because of a lack of money in the community, and the local economy had become "stagnant", he said.

mining the rich but not for the poor

John Paul Getty, once quipped that the meek may  inherit the earth but not the mining rights.

This years' list of the who's who of world mining, metal and minerals billionaires recently published by the popular mining web site miningnews.com tells a story. Not unsurprisingly, not one of  the mining super rich is an African. The richest of all the mining plutocrats is Eike Batista, son of the former CEO of Vale, Brazil's largest mining company. Young Eike is  now worth USD 33billion and is the richest man in Brazil and the 10th richest in the world. As ever, being born rich, really helps if your aim is to make the super-rich list.

It is estimated that the net worth of the 40 richest mining billionaires is in the vicinity of USD 300 billion in 2011, roughly equivalent to about of 40 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's GD (excluding South Africa). The theory has been that the state gets the mineral wealth and then shares it among the citizenry. The reality is more dismal  In the countries dominated by mining they have the most unequal distribution of income in the world. The three most unequal countries in the world are Namibia, South Africa and Botswana. The increasingly divided world of a few very rich individuals dominating the mining and metal sector and the host countries calling for greater equity in the distribution of benefits, unable to lift their own citizens out of poverty, is set to continue

A new "resource nationalism", as it has come to be called, has been spawned by this relentless accumulation of wealth. These new nationalist mining policies include local ownership eg Zimbabwe.  Zambia is about to cut new deals with its copper mining companies. Additional profits taxes are proposed in South Africa. These new taxes which are supposed to capture high profits when prices rise are becoming de rigeur. Yet the experience from countries like Papua New Guinea which have long had these taxes is that mining companies and their accountants will find clever ways to avoid them. In addition, governments challenged when it comes to implementing inclusive policies that lift the bulk of the population out of poverty.

"You'll Be Fired If You Refuse"

Chinese-run copper mines in Zambia are dangerously unsafe and owners routinely flout the rights of workers, says a report by Human Rights Watch. Chinese mines were worse than at other foreign-owned mines. Pay at the Chinese-run mines was higher than Zambia's minimum wage, but much lower than that paid by other multinational copper mining firms. Also miners are threatened with dismissal if they became involved in union activities.

"Sometimes when you find yourself in a dangerous position, they tell you to go ahead with the work," one miner told HRW. "They just consider production, not safety. If someone dies, he can be replaced tomorrow. And if you report the problem, you'll lose your job."

Miners had to work 12-hour shifts often in fume-filled tunnels. Sometimes shifts were 18 hours long. Zambian law limits shifts to eight hours. Miners in Chinese-run companies have been subject to abusive health, safety and labour conditions and longtime Zambian government indifference.

Many of the poor safety practices in Zambia's Chinese-run mines were strikingly similar to abuses at mines in China. Currently dozens of miners have been trapped in a coal mine in China. Four miners were killed and 50 more are missing after the accident, which happened late on Thursday in the city of Sanmenxia in Henan province.

Hundreds of Chinese miners die every year in pit accidents. The industry is one of the most dangerous in the world, and is notorious for its lax safety standards. Earlier this week a gas explosion at a mine in neighbouring Hunan province killed 29 people.

The new imperialists

Socialist Banner has previously described the new imperailsts such as Canada. But others should not be over-looked, Australia being one new arrival in African continent to take advantage of its natural wealth.

30 per cent of global mining resources are in Africa.

At least 230 Australian companies are active in the resource sector on the African continent. Between them, they are pursuing 650 individual projects in 42 countries. Their total investment is estimated at a whopping $24 billion. About 20 companies and 100 projects have been added just since the beginning of 2011. And Intierra Resource Intelligence estimates that the capital expenditure for new projects in the pipeline is about $23bn.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/africa-provides-a-rich-seam-for-resources-sector/story-e6frgd0x-1226174509918

At this week's Commonwealth Business Forum with 300 officials from 40 African countries attending , Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd is set to unveil a $30 million initiative to promote mining development in Africa