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How can you tell the difference between the Mining Indaba and the Alternative Mining Indaba? One trick is to look for people who are actually miners, or who come from mining-affected communities. If there are any around, chances are good that you’re at the Alternative incarnation. Another trick is to ask people if they paid up to R23,000 for a ticket to the event. If the answer is ‘yes’, then they’re at the Mining Indaba. REBECCA DAVIS has been at the other one.
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.
Over the course of a few days at the Alternative Mining Indaba, you hear so many of these kinds of stories that it becomes hard to keep track of each individual case. The atmosphere here is a world apart from that in the glitzy exhibition halls of the Cape Town International Convention Centre, just a few kilometres down the road, where the Mining Indaba is taking place. There, well-heeled movers and shakers in the mining industry make deals, talk investment, and compare annual returns.
Here at the Alternative Mining Indaba, people are angry. They are so angry, in fact, that the very first address of the first day cannot be completed without activists demanding the microphone, determined to have their say.
At a march to the Mining Indaba on the summit’s first day, placards summed up the range of issues at stake: “Please leave my land, I am using it for agriculture (I am a widow)”. “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!”
This year saw the biggest Alternative Mining Indaba yet, at around 300 delegates. It’s growing every year, and every year those attending seem more passionate, more vocal and angrier.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-02-12-minings-alternative-summit-painting-a-different-picture-of-africas-most-conflicted-industry/#.VN00cPnF8ds