COLLECTED BY CHINATUNGSTEN - DEC. 20, 2012 - There’s one thing you’ve got to say for Bongani Minerals: they don’t give up easily. But then, the upstart start-up does have some battle-hardened veterans of the BEE circus in its corner – like director Phemelo Sehunelo, Kimberley’s former municipal manager better-known as the founder of the infamous Imperial Crown Trading1.

Bongani can also count on the backing of French minerals exploration company Batla Minerals SA, which owns a 49% share (Batla’s frontman goes by the distinctly un-Gallic, non-BEE name of Johannes van der Walt).

In spite of their connections, it took Bongani seven years and five tries before managing to persuade the mining-friendly Department of Mineral Resources to issue the company with a prospecting permit for Moutonshoek, which is a reflection both of the shoddiness of its applications and the motivation and hard work of its opposition on the ground.

Most of that opposition falls under the umbrella of the Verlorenvlei Coalition, which counts among its members 1,596 individuals and 149 organisations representing landowners, farm workers, businesses and environmentalists from Moutonshoek in the mountains above Elands Bay. Coalition members have spent huge amounts of time and energy, and in some cases, millions of rands, contesting Bongani’s applications from every possible angle:  economic, scientific, social, legal and environmental (see nose116).

For starters, they dispute Bongani’s unsupported claim that the so-called “Riviera deposit” contains 99,000 tonnes of tungsten and is “potentially the eleventh biggest in the world”. They refer to the US Geological Survey’s International Strategic Summary Report for Tungsten which ranks Riviera 140th out of 154 identified sites world-wide, containing only an estimated 46 tonnes of the metal.

Far from being a strategic resource, as claimed by Bongani, the deposit, even if mined optimally, would produce enough tungsten to satisfy local demand for just 15 months.

As for the suggestively named “rare earths” said to lie within the ore, apparently they are among the most common of this group and occur only in tiny amounts.

Bongani claims the mine will attract initial direct capital investment of between R1.2 billion and R1.5 billion over the first five years of operations but provides no evidence in support of  this. Expert opinion presented by the coalition suggests that the mine will run at a loss for six years and will only show a positive cashflow after 12 years.

Bongani says the mine will employ 405 male workers during a 17-year operational phase. The coalition says that’s a huge exaggeration, and would anyway hardly offset the loss of sustainable, lifelong employment for more than 1,500 permanent and seasonal farm workers, most of them women.

Bongani has itself admitted that the mine would destroy agriculture in the area for decades to come, and that’s being super optimistic if past experience with mine rehabilitation is anything to go by.

The Moutonshoek Valley, 50km northwest of Piketberg has produced food, including fruit, vegetables, grains and meat, for almost 300 years. It contributes R100 million a year to the local economy, including valuable foreign exchange it earns from the export of table grapes, citrus and racehorses – and where horse breeders Mary Slack (neé Oppenheimer) and Wendy Applebaum have both chosen to site their studs.

It is also the source of the Krom Antonies River which irrigates fruit and vegetable farms all the way to the coast where it flows into the 1,500-hectare  Verlorenvlei Wetland, an internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot (a Ramsar site) with huge potential for tourism.

The economic argument shot to ribbons, you’d think it would be impossible to justify destroying land, livelihoods and water resources from mountain to coast for generations to come for the benefit of a few well-placed local fatcats and some remote Frenchmen.

But somehow the Department of Mineral Resources finally found a way, and in March 2011, awarded Bongani prospecting rights on four farms in Moutonshoek Valley. Inexplicably, it neglected to inform the objectors of its decision.

It was only when Cope MP, Phillip Dexter, asked a question in Parliament seven months later that the truth emerged.

The Verlorenvlei Coalition immediately lodged an official appeal with Mineral Resources, but, almost 18 months on, has yet to receive a response.

In the meantime, Bongani managed to bring round to its cause the owners of three of the four Moutonshoek properties beneath which it wants to prospect, and so finally gained access to the promised land, at least for a drilling crew.

But there was something they’d forgotten; something they needed that was not within even the gift of the mighty Department of Mineral Resources: local planning permission.

In March 2012, in a similar case2, the Constitutional Court threw a spanner in the drilling works of many a daring digger by ruling that local planning regulations apply as much to miners as to ordinary folk. In other words, you can’t just go and dig dirty great holes in the middle of land zoned for something else, like agriculture, not even if the Mineral Resources thinks its OK.

The ruling came in the nick of time for Moutonshoek and the Verlorenvlei Coalition.

The Bergrivier Local Municipality quickly applied for and got an interdict against the landowner on whose property Bongani was drilling. Realising the game was up (temporarily at least),  Bongani withdrew its drill and quit the field. And there was much rejoicing.

But the diggers were not done.

Bongani, now holding Power of Attorney for the three consenting landowners, has applied to the municipality on their behalf for a departure from the Land Use Planning Ordinance to allow prospecting, if not mining. By the time objections closed in late November, the municipality had received 94 submissions from opposing individuals and organisations, including a lengthy one drafted by the Verlorenvlei Coalition’s legal adviser Martin Coetzee.

Apart from all the arguments made previously, the latest objection deals of necessity with planning policy. It draws attention to the objectives of the National Framework for Sustainable Development, the Western Cape Provincial Spatial Development Framework, the West Coast District Municipality’s Integrated Development Plan and Spatial Development Framework and the Bergrivier Local Municipality’s own Integrated Development Plan and Spatial Development Framework.

And they all seem pretty intent on preserving agricultural land and biodiversity, and not at all big on mining which, if mentioned at all, is always in conjunction with calls for caution.

All in all, the case against seems impregnable.

But do the residents of Moutonshoek and supporters of Verlorenvlei feel confident of success?

Bennie van der Merwe, race-horse breeder, citrus farmer and local vet – and the only one of the four targeted land owners to shun Bongani’s advances – remains cautious.

“All the facts are on our side, but there’s always politics.”

But Van der Merwe, whose lush, green lucerne pivot lies directly above the core of the Riviera deposit, says whatever the outcome, the fight will continue.

Martin Coetzee is more optimistic.The difference this time, he says, is that the political mood has changed. After the Maccsand case and the public outcry in 2010 over applications to mine some of the Cape’s best-loved wine estates, Mineral Resources has been forced to soften its pro-mining stance, especially as concern has grown about the country’s ability to feed its people.

Following the winelands debacle, the director-general of the Department of Mineral Resources, Sandile Nogxina, said the government would never approve mining on productive agricultural land, as it had to balance the exploitation of mineral resources with protecting food security. Well, duh.

“We are a responsible government after all,”  he is quoted as saying.

Even Minister Susan “God’s gift” Shabangu was given pause for thought after Verlorenvlei Coalition spokesperson Malie Grutter challenged her at a Cape Town Press Club breakfast in September 2011. Bongani’s prospecting right was subsequently amended to exclude certain “intensive farming areas” although, from the looks of its drilling map, Bongani is unaware of or deliberately ignoring this admittedly meaningless restriction.

As things stand, Bongani will be given time to respond to the latest objections, after which the Bergrivier’s Municipal Manager will submit a recommendation to the Mayoral Committee which will make a decision. But that could still be many months away.

If, against all good sense and public sentiment, the area’s public representatives still decide to grant Bongani its wish, the Verlorenvlei Coalition will refer the matter to the province, which would be unlikely to make a decision for at least another 18 months.

And if by some miracle, Bongani’s application survives that round, there are always the courts.

Bongani’s Johannes van der Walt was given very little time to respond to our questions, but he did get back to us just before deadline to make a couple of points: he said the coalition had failed to provide him with the documentary evidence on which its objections were based so he couldn’t comment on specific claims.

Since the company was only applying for permission to prospect, the arguments against mining were premature. He said Bongani had already spent R18m on the prospecting phase, including its numerous applications to the Department of Mineral Resources.