Sustaining the Wild Coast – No Toll Road, and Mines

By Moray Combrink

Industrial development is in the pipeline. There is a proposal to mine titanium on this stretch of coast. Although a toll road through the Wild Coast and the mining are ostensibly two separate ventures, there are obvious links between the two. It won’t be possible to exploit the mineral deposits effectively without good road access, and while government denies that it wants the road in order to facilitate the mining, the coincidence is more than curious. 

At the end of November and into December this year COP17, the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be held in Durban. There will also be the 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 as an attempt to counter global warming by committing industrialized nations to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

The choice of Durban to host a major international gathering focused on serious environmental issues is both gratifying and ironic. The South African government has welcomed the opportunity to make its input, but this same government has recently played a pivotal role in a most controversial project that threatens the environment in part of our own country – and Durban is involved here too.

Toll Road

The project in question is the Wild Coast toll road, the major highway to be driven through Pondoland in order to link Durban more directly to the Eastern Cape. The inland route presently followed by the N2 is route is tortuous, slow and dangerous, so the idea of a more direct modern highway for the movement of people and goods has obvious appeal - although the toll charges will be costly.

Furthermore, industrial development is also in the pipeline. There is a proposal to mine titanium on this stretch of coast. Although the road and the mining are ostensibly two separate ventures, there are obvious links between the two. It won’t be possible to exploit the mineral deposits effectively without good road access, and while government denies that it wants the road in order to facilitate the mining, the coincidence is more than curious.

Progress and Development in Pondoland

Leaving the mining aside for the moment, it has been argued that the new road will greatly benefit the people who live along the route, especially the Pondoland community. For historical and geographical reasons, ‘progress’ and ‘development’ have passed this region by. There is no commercial agriculture, no heavy industry, and no large-scale trade.

Consequently there is not much in the way of formal employment, and in monetary terms personal income is low. The supporters of the toll road claim that it will make the area more accessible to tourism and trade, providing jobs and money. Add in the mining, and the prospects for economic growth in the region look impressive.

Enormous Financial and Environmental Costs

However, while the supposed benefits of the project seem obvious, the costs will be enormous – not only in terms of the road building expenses and toll fees, but in terms of the damage to the environment and the quality of life in the area.

Every road has an impact on the environment through which it passes. In this case, the environment, hitherto untouched by ‘industrial development’, is still pristine, despite amaMpondo people having lived in the area for at least 500 years. The close connections between the traditional amaMpondo way of life and the natural environment  makes the region all the more vulnerable to damaging interference. This road will be particularly intrusive.  As it passes through mountainous areas cut by ravines, nine bridges will have to be constructed. A bridge will also be needed to cross the Mzimvubu river, which has the largest undeveloped estuary in South Africa.

Natural watercourses will be interfered with, changing their flow patterns, potentially leading to siltation and affecting vegetation growth. Then too there will be a run-off of polluted water from the road surface as rain washes away the residue of oil and other filth from heavy traffic. The litter alongside every major road in the country shows what lies in store. Water pollution will also affect the health of local people who rely on the clear streams of the area for water. ‘We drink the same stream water as the cattle but it doesn’t make us sick as it is fine’ say local people.

Region of Significant Biodiversity
 
This is also a region of significant biological diversity, which will be threatened by these developments. Changes to the vegetation will affect the creatures that feed off these plants. Worse still, as has been realized elsewhere in the world, arterial roads cut across the habitats of animal life, fragmenting them, interrupting the tracks along which animals move, and making it very dangerous, if not impossible, for creatures to move or migrate along their accustomed paths. Wild coast communities will also be split and fragmented by the road trespassing through them. Already the country’s catastrophic road death toll includes a high proportion of pedestrians.

If animals are prevented from one habitat to another as the seasons change they can even be threatened by extinction, and the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa (Wessa) is amongst the organisations campaigning against the road.

Nor is it necessarily true that making these areas more accessible to tourists will be an advantage. The value of ecologically pristine environments is exactly that they have not been affected by human intrusion. It has also been argued that the area’s secluded beaches, indigenous forests and waterfalls have a special appeal precisely because they are secluded. Once opened up to large numbers of visitors, the ecology will be irreparably damaged and this unique quality will be lost.

In the light of these social and environmental considerations – and if mining goes ahead as well, the damage will be enormously magnified – it must be wondered why the statutory environmental impact assessment (EIA) has not blocked this development and why the responsible government minister has not vetoed it. In fact an initial EIA favourable to the development was rejected because it was seriously flawed.
A second study still failed to deal with all of the questionable findings and probably does not conform to the requirements of the National Environmental Management (Act 107 0f 1998), but it seems that Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa has in any case chosen to ignore both expert and local opinion on the matter, dismissing some 50 legal appeals against the project.

Local People Do Not Want Road or Mines

The opinion of the local people, who will be most directly affected by the road and possible mining, is that they do not want either. Although from one perspective this is one of the poorest parts of the country, from another it could be said that the people who live here are remarkably fortunate. They are self-sufficient, producing enough food to satisfy their own essential needs. Their cultural heritage, with its traditional customs and values, is largely intact. Their land, spared from too much intrusion by outsiders, is very beautiful.

Impressively strong leaders have emerged amongst the community and, having made sure that they are fully aware of the implications of the projects, are staunchly opposed to them. They do want better infrastructure and services in the form of local roads, schools and clinics, but they emphatically do not want their land and their way of life altered beyond recovery in this way.

And, in the light of the coming COP17 convention, one consideration deserves special mention. While humanity’s rapacious pursuit of ‘progress’ has brought the planet to the brink of disaster, these Pondo communities have for centuries been able to sustain themselves in harmony with their environment. Far from needing first-world style development, this region could in fact be a model for countering the disastrous threat of climate change and global warming.

All in all, it seems amazing that the government has paid do little attention to the concerns of environmentalists and the wishes of the local communities. However, this is now becoming a nationwide pattern – in Pondoland, in the Karoo, and at Mapungubwe, the present government seems to be putting short term profit above the long term interests of the country and the nation.

With the government backing the industrialists, concerned people and organizations as Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC) are having to look to the courts to protect these regions and their people from this kind of exploitation. The local communities have a lawyer, Cormac Cullinan, willing to fight their cause, but legal battles are costly.

Support the Wild Coast Communities

The best way to lend support is to make donations to one of the concerned organizations so that the money can be used in the best possible way. The ‘Too Great a Toll 2012’ calendar is also being sold to raise funds to support Wild Coast Communities . ( www.swc.org.za   )

Just over 200 years ago, when England’s industrial revolution was gaining momentum and laying the foundation for our modern world – urbanized, industrialized, commercialized and materialist, with increasing movement of both people and goods on ever-more sophisticated transport systems – William Wordsworth wrote these words:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Sordid indeed. We should not allow that tragic mistake to be repeated in our own country and in our own time.

Photographs by Val Payne