The Battle for Pondoland

On Monday morning, I walked into the LRC office. Little did I know where work would take me by week’s end! First order of business was morning tea (a mandatory daily task – I can see I will be drinking a lot of rooibos in the coming months). My colleagues chattered about clients, politics, government Ministers, advocates, passed around the Daily Dispatch newspaper, threw about names and acronyms. Then everyone bustled off to their offices. I was set up in my temporary office in the boardroom/library and handed a few files to read.

The Grahamstown LRC is a small office of just 9 people including lawyers and staff. Sarah is the head attorney and my supervisor. The rest of the legal team consists of Kesentri (attorney), Rufus (paralegal), Sku (candidate attorney, i.e. articling student), and Kim. Then there are Nomfundo (administrator), Ethel (cleaner), and Cathy (secretary). What this means is that I will have plenty of responsibility! On Tuesday, I found myself drafting a long letter to the attorneys for the Minister of Finance for a constitutional litigation case, which was then passed on to our advocates in Johannesburg for review. (In South Africa, like Britain, there is a distinction between barristers and solicitors – they are called advocates and attorneys respectively.) On Wednesday, I was handed two land restitution claims and told to start drafting the founding affidavit to launch a court action against the Land Commission for failure to restore land to our clients.

Most excitingly, there was buzz around the office about a meeting in the Transkei on Friday with the Minister of Minerals and Energy and our clients, the Amadiba Crisis Committee. This is a high profile case that, luckily for me, has reached an apex of activity right now. The Lonely Planet even has a box about the conflict that states “[t]he major attraction for investors is the mineral-heavy sand-dune mine at Xolobeni, eyed by Australian mining company Mineral Commodities (MRC)”, then concludes ominously: “For now, Pondoland sits undisturbed, its rushing waterfalls still flowing towards the sea and its wildlife still roaming without hindrance. But if you have any plans to visit the area, better make it sooner rather than later.”

At present, the Director General, through power delegated by the Minister of Minerals and Energy, has granted a mining right to MRC which apparently will come into effect on October 31. Neither the community nor the LRC were informed about the grant; rather, the LRC caught wind of it through a press release on the Australian stock exchange. The LRC has launched an internal appeal to the Minister on behalf of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, a group of concerned residents of the Xolobeni area, and is also preparing to bring urgent court applications for an interdict (i.e. injunction) and review (i.e. judicial review).

So on Thursday morning, we loaded up the "bakkie" with backpacks and junk food and headed for Pondoland. Cows and horses gradually appeared on the road and monkeys and goats chattered by the roadside. I got to see the South African landscape on the 8-hour journey: Peddie, King Williams Town, Bisho, Butterworth, Nelson Mandela’s birth house at Mzevo, Umtata (where we picked up the delightful Pasika, a community worker and prodigious talker that kept us entertained for the rest of the drive), first glimpse of the ocean at Port St Johns, Lusikisik, Flagstaff, Bizana, and finally Port Edward, where we spent the night at a banana and macadamia farm. After a working dinner with a few community members and social worker John Clarke (of Sustaining the Wild Coast), we fell into bed in rustic farm bungalows.

We rose on Friday at 6am for a “brisk walk” and quick breakfast then packed into the bakkie. The road to the meeting was long, bumpy, and sometimes treacherous, but winded through beautiful rolling hills dotted with round mud huts. Hundreds of people arrived from all over the countryside and set up wooden benches under the big South African sky.

The meeting was mostly in Xhosa. I had the occasional translation from Rufus and Pasika, but relied mainly on tone of voice and body language to understand what was going on. The King (represented by an attorney), the Amadiba Crisis Committee, and many community members expressed strong opposition to the mining. Chief Lunga Baleni stated that he had no position then slunk off before the end of the meeting. Minister Sonjica started out rather arrogantly, interrupting the King’s representative with rude comments as he spoke, but evidently decided to change her stance when faced with such strong opposition. She paid lip service to consultation, stating she was “so disappointed”, had “no idea” what had been going on, and would “consult afresh” … she admitted the entire process leading up to the decision was flawed yet she refused to suspend the decision to grant the mining right! Then, before anyone had the chance to ask any difficult questions, she quickly packed up her entourage and drove off.

The upshot is that nothing has changed. The internal appeal to the Minister is probably futile (given her comments to the media in support of the mining), and the LRC will likely have to proceed with court action. We start drafting on Monday.

I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to my upcoming work at the LRC. Meeting with the Xolobeni community showed me the people behind our work, the people we are trying to give a voice. Sarah repeatedly told them, “We want to make your voices heard in the court of law”. It was also amazing to see Pondoland, its beautiful landscape, and the way of life its people are trying to preserve. I am so grateful – to the CBA, CIDA, and the LRC – to be part of an organization doing such remarkable work.