National and international support for opposition of Marloth mine

MARLOTH PARK – More and more people are pledging their allegiance to the fight against the proposed mine between Komatipoort and Marloth Park. This includes the DA shadow minister for tourism, Manny de Freitas, who visited the site on Monday.

According to the chairman of the Marloth Park Ratepayers Association, Cindy Benson, De Freitas, along with Willie Aucamp and Sonja Boshoff, was taken on a tour of the site as well as Marloth Park and surrounding areas to show the immense negative impact that a mine will have.

The proposed mining area encompasses “Tenbosch 162 JU (excluding portion 46, 74, & 90), all portions (excluding 01) of the farm Vyeboom 414 JU, all portions of the farm Turfbult 593 JU and all portions of the farm Tecklenburg’s Ranch 548 JU”. This stretches from the edge of Marloth Park to the edge of Komatipoort.

This will be an opencast and underground mine of coal, pseudo-coal and torbanite or oil shale resources. The mine is expected to have a lifespan of 30 years.

“To this point nobody has told us who has acquired the mining rights and to date no one has showed us any evidence that there even is coal to be mined.”

The members of parliament, however, are not the only stakeholders who got behind the fight against the mine. Benson confirmed that Ngwenya Lodge would be contributing R50 000 towards legal costs against the mine. AfriForum and SAAI also came on board, as well as national media programmes Carte Blanche and Fokus.

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“Yesterday I even received a message that the story has reached as far as Australia, and that we are also getting support from there,”

Benson said.

She added that AfriForum had already received about 3 000 written grievances and she herself also had about 4 000 letters. Meanwhile, Singo Consulting had given Benson and her team, including lawyer Richard Spoor, 15 days to respond to the 500-page environmental impact assessment that was done.

“AfriForum logged a complaint against it and we now have 50 days to work through the assessment and give our comment.”

Lambert de Klerk, AfriForum’s head of environmental affairs, explained that the complaint, in the form of a letter, was necessary “because the parties involved failed to disclose sufficient information about the proposed mine. Furthermore, no proper consultation or public participation process has been followed. Stakeholders did not have the opportunity to register as interest groups and no documents such as an environmental impact study were made available”.

Benson urged anyone who wants to come forward and lodge complaints to send her an email at mpra.cindy@gmail.com.

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