The post MACUA & WAMUA Calls on Mining Affected Communities to Vote with Caution on May 29th Election first appeared on MACUA.
BY MACUA Team
Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA) and Women Affected by Mining United in Action (WAMUA) have noted the ways in which political parties have used the suffering and dispossession of mining affected communities as a convenient trope to mobilise the voting power of mining affected communities in their narrow self-interested favour.
Recently, the leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA) was recorded at a political rally in the Northern Cape, lamenting the fact that despite the Northern Cape being rich in minerals, its inhabitants are living in poverty. This is despite the fact that the DA, together with the ANC, IFP, EFF, ATM and AIC, who had members on the Portfolio Committee (PC) of Mineral Resources and Energy of the 6th Parliament, have consistently failed to support MACUA/WAMUA in its multiple attempts to get the PC to ensure that interests and wellbeing of mining affected communities are catered for within the legislation.
During the 6th Parliament, MACUA submitted a petition of 50 000 signatures to Parliament calling on Parliament to ensure that the rights of affected communities are protected and that mining companies were held to account for their failure to comply with their obligations set out in their Social and Labour Plans (SLPs). Yet despite our requests, the PC, made up of the political parties mentioned above, have consistently failed to deal with the matter.
MACUA continuously faced attacks by members of the PC while they fought to maintain the status quo of excluding mining-affected communities from legislative and consultation processes, denying them their human right to dignity and to live in an environment free from pollution and degradation. During the 5th and 6th Parliament, MACUA presented the PC with evidence of the extent to which mining companies are failing to adhere to their legal obligations to deliver socio economic benefits to affected communities, and yet these same parties which now want the votes of the marginalised and the poor, were active agents in protecting the wholescale looting of the country’s wealth and the impoverishment and exclusion of communities.
We call on all communities who are impacted by the devasting effects of mining and the dispossession of their land to reject these self-serving politicians. We call on affected communities to use their voting power as a collective to advance a democratic and participatory mining legislative and regulatory regime to generate societal pressure on the Members of Parliament to facilitate meaningful public participation in legislative and policy development processes and to agree on amendments to the law governing mining that meaningfully address the demands of communities.
For more information on our collective demands, please visit our website: www.macua.org.za or attend our online webinars and be part of the conversation.
Topic: Outcomes of the Marginalised and Affected Communities (MAC) Summit, local experiences and demands of communities.
Time and Date: 09h00-11h00 on 28 May 2024
For further details contact: Magnificent Mndebele (media and communications manager) on 064 785 9746 or via email at: Magnificent.Mndebele@macua.org.za
