Two weeks ago, I visited Rustenburg’s Royal Bafokeng five-star hotel, Royal Marang, researching Zimplats’ failure to develop Ngezi’s rural community. The hotel’s funded by Royal Bafokeng’s $3.2 billion community wealth fund from platinum mining royalties.
South African mining companies face criticism for being “colonial mining companies”, but the same have build cities like Joburg, Rustenburg, and Kimberly in ways Zimbabweans can only dream of, through their royalties, giving contracts to communities and having community members sitting on their boards through properly constituted governance entities.
In contrast, Zimplats contributes 40% of Implats SA’s platinum, but Ngezi’s remains an impoverished and polluted growth-point in which they have not built a single hospital, school, and vocational training center. Suffice to say, Implats one of “South Africa’s white owned mining companies” is the mother company of Zimplats, which is alleged to be exploiting the Ngezi rural community into poverty, through black Zimbabwean directors.
According to the community (rural council elders), the company directors have created their own companies that take all the service contracts (uniform, river sand supply, catering, construction , logistics) and they don’t give any single contract to the community, hence the community remains impoverished.
If this is true, then according to corporate governance, this is conflict of interest, corruption, if not fraud upon Implats shareholders. This is before exploring the claims of transfer prizing and money laundering of these corrupt proceeds into foreign accounts.
Defenders say Zimplats has done much for Ngezi, but they have done much according to which yardstick? In fact, when compared to South African so-called “colonial mining companies”, Zimplats has done nothing for Ngezi hence it remains a village without a school, hospital or major road built by Zimplats in the area, after 31 years of exploiting platinum in the area.
Local frustration is evident in the fact that opposition councillors now represent Ngezi urban or Turf, and rural development councillors are warning that ZANU PF may lose rural wards due to protest votes, for shielding Zimplats’ exploitative activities.
The moral of this story is our mining [Chinese, local or western] industry is a cesspit of corruption, arrogance and impunity. It’s colonial and continues to exploit lives, pollute and destroy the environment with impunity because we are using colonial laws and putting profits before the future.
In conclusion, the point I am trying to make is this issue goes beyond the Chinese but it’s all miners, hence we must make laws that will bind the Chinese and all other miners to mine more responsibly with the inclusion of community members on their boards.
The documentary on Ngezi and Zimplats is forthcoming once we are done editing. We’ve offered Zimplats a right of reply, but they’ve ignored our requests. Another company flagged by the community was Nyaradzo who are dumping medical and biological waste from their parlor/mortuary into a landfill where community goats and cows eat, in contravention of our waste management laws.
