A new way of counting loss and damage* from researchers at King's College London and the University of KwaZulu-Natal shows how far mining compensation in South Africa falls short of what communities lose and the impact this has had on their livelihood.
"Assessing Tendele mine's loss and damage in Somkhele means living just a small part of the pain and trauma of the affected community, its animals and the environment. The economic, social, cultural and spiritual harm is non-ending and yet the mine has eschewed their dignity and paid derisory compensation. Our report lays bare some of this pain in order to draw attention to how rural people can be cast aside and their rights disregarded in the mining economy."
Professor Sarah Bracking, Professor of Climate and Society in the Department of Geography at King's College London
Just Compensation, published today and commissioned by pro bono law clinic All Rise Attorneys, documents the experiences of a community affected by an opencast coal mine (run by Tendele Coal Mining (Pty) Ltd) in Somkhele, a cluster of villages in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
The researchers found that households affected by the opencast coal mine have lost more than R80 million (about US$4.9 million) in land, crops and livestock since mining began in 2007, yet have received compensation covering just 4.7 % of those losses,
As well as highlighting the financial losses experienced by those affected by the mine, the report makes explicit some of the pain and trauma the community and its animals have experienced and how people's rights have been disregarded.Drawing on surveys of 115 directly affected households, the report calculates losses of just over R80 million between 2007 and 2018, against total compensation from the mine of R3,6 million.
Only 25 households, 22% of those surveyed, recorded receiving any compensation at all. When lost future income from maize and livestock is projected to 2028 and 2038 respectively, the losses rise to over R157 million and the compensation paid falls to 2.3%of the total.
Households also reported the forced relocation of ancestors' graves, disrupted access to 15 indigenous plants used for food and medicine, damage to housing, worsening health, and new costs for buying water because their prior sources became contaminated or fenced off.
The study was conducted by Professor Sarah Bracking, Professor of Climate and Society in the Department of Geography at King's College London, and Dr Danford Chibvongodze of the School of Social Science, Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Professor Bracking said: "When a family here loses its cattle, it doesn't just lose those animals. It loses the calves those animals would have had, the milk, the savings, the security - whole future streams of income. Standard compensation practice prices none of that, which is how you end up with a mine paying under three per cent of what people actually lost.
"The scale of loss documented in the report is severe. Households that previously held 270 hectares of land were left with 68 hectares, a 75% reduction valued at a proxy of R60.6 million."
Total crop yields collapsed by 94% with maize down 97%. Livestock holdings fell by 65%, from 7,574 animals to 2,643, with the average affected household losing 15 cattle.
Dr Chibvongodze says: "The families we surveyed were not poor before the mine arrived. They had land, herds and harvests they sold to their neighbours. What the data shows is a community whose asset base was dismantled in a decade, with almost nothing put back."
Dr Bracking added: "Assessing Tendele mine's loss and damage in Somkhele means living just a small part of the pain and trauma of the affected community, its animals and the environment around. Cows and goats died prematurely because their stomachs were found to be full of coal dust. Houses made structurally unsafe from blasting, risking the lives of those living in them. Men, women and children who grew persistent coughs have also suffered from lung disease.
"The economic, social, cultural and spiritual harm is non-ending and yet the mine has eschewed their dignity and paid derisory compensation. Our report lays bare some of this pain in order to draw attention to how rural people can be cast aside and their rights disregarded in the mining economy."
Commissioner Philile Ntuli of the South African Human Rights Commission, and author of the reports foreword said: "If this report succeeds in widening our collective understanding of what constitutes loss, what restoration requires, and what justice demands, it will have made an important contribution to South Africa's continuing constitutional journey."
And, in the afterword, Professor Patrick Bond of the University of Johannesburg estimates the wider climate damage from burning the mine's coal since 2007 at an extra R687 billion.
The authors call on the South African government to engage with Tendele to ensure affected families are duly compensated, remedies implemented and rehabilitation carried out without further delay.
The full report can be read here: Just compensation in mining: an asset-based livelihoods approach to calculating loss and damage and rehabilitation | King's College London
*The researchers used an asset-based livelihoods approach, which values what households lost in productive assets, including modelling some of the future income those assets would have generated, rather than pricing only what was immediately destroyed.
