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frica’s top mining chief executives met and addressed thousands of industry professionals at the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town last week. Although the challenges of conducting business in Africa were noted, overwhelmingly positive sentiments were expressed about mining on the continent. But, just a few kilometres away from the indaba, hundreds of civil society activists who could not afford the almost $2 000 admission fee convened the Alternative Mining Indaba to grapple with concerns about the mining sector’s negative impact on human rights. Two protests, one staged by delegates of the Alternative Mining Indaba and another by indigenous leaders, made it clear that mining industry leaders should be worried about their image – with good reason, it seems: the 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer puts mining third from the bottom when it comes to public trust in business. In the same poll, a majority (81%) of respondents said that companies could improve the economic and social conditions of the community where they operated and still increase profits, and 75% of respondents also thought that companies could be profitable while working to improve the communities where they mined. But the industry’s woes go way beyond an image problem. There are real-life stories of fraught relationships among mining companies, their workers and their communities: locals are threatened by private security companies, resettlement
ZIMBABWE MINING REVIEW issue 1 2015
is mismanaged and workers’ lives are endangered. The Marikana massacre in 2012, in which 34 miners were shot and killed by police while miners were on strike at a Lonmin-owned platinum mine, highlighted these tensions between mining companies and their workers. Companies’ profits are also compromised by the negative impact of mining on human rights. The South African mining industry is estimated to have lost R15-billion in the period leading up to and following the Marikana massacre. Legal challenges to and community protests about mining operations are estimated to cost $20-million a week globally in delays, and potential payments to 17 000 former mineworkers for silicosis claims could amount to R51.5-billion. Better relationships with communities and workers could have mitigated, or even avoided, the harm caused in these cases and in many others highlighted in the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s latest briefing note on mining in Southern Africa. To manage these risks coherently and better respect human rights, mining companies should move beyond just adopting human rights policies and a “mainstream” respect for human rights. In Southern Africa, three areas are key to this: transparency, engagement and respect for communities’ and workers’ rights to health and safety.
Transparency Amid widespread calls at the indabas for greater corporate transparency, Melissa Fourie of the Centre for Environmental Rights said fear is behind the nondisclosure
in the industry. She asked: “What, indeed, would happen if everyone could see how noncompliant the mining industry really is with environmental and social obligations?” She called for increased government support to ensure more comprehensive compliance by mining companies. There are examples of the government being robust about transparency: the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance recently scored a significant legal victory when the Supreme Court of Appeal ordered ArcelorMittal to release records to verify the company’s environmental claims independently and better understand its impact on local communities’ health. The court said: “[C]orporations … must be left in no doubt that, in relation to the environment in circumstances such as those under discussion, there is no room for secrecy and that constitutional values will be enforced.” Transparency also applies to financial outflows. According to the chairperson of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, extractive industries are the greatest culprits in avoiding taxes, depriving governments of much-needed funds that could be allocated to health, education and development. The problem is so serious that the AU has launched an initiative to stem the illicit financial outflows, citing in particular the mining industry in South Africa. Mining companies, then, need to be progressive about transparency and show leadership in this regard. A good example of this is Rio Tinto reporting annually on its payments to dozens of countries, including Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
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