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HUMAN RIGHTS
Apartheid and its environmental legacy
by Heeten Kalan (South African Exchange Program on Environmental
Justice)
South Africa is a prime example of the stark and unsettling connections that exist among race, gender, poverty, and the environment. Among the many inequalities which exist is an ailing environment which provides meager employment and playgrounds for the black population of South Africa. The environmental crisis originates in apartheid through the combination of poor land, forced overcrowding, and poverty. As the years go by, more and more dumping sites will be uncovered and environmental disasters that have been concealed under apartheid will come to light. The new government will have to implement responsible legislation and regulations to protect the environment and control corporate behavior in the most industrialized country on the continent.
South Africa is sitting on a toxic time/bomb. The new government has inherited a poisoned country of rivers, valleys, gorges, and mine dumps. We need to inject the environmental justice agenda into the revised thinking on development and growth. We should certainly not allow a program of development and growth which poisons those who have most suffered from the inhumane apartheid system.
As one of the world's biggest mineral suppliers on the planet, little attention has been paid to the fact that for every ton of metal that leaves a mine mill, about one hundred tons of wastes are left in a heap topside, where it can be blown away by the winds, runoff into rivers, or leach into ground water. South African gold mines also extract large quantities of uranium as a secondary product. To add to the hazardous situation, black communities living nearby may be exposed to the cancer-causing radium and radon that commonly leak from uranium mine wastes. Furthermore, the importation of hazardous wastes, the dumping of mercury in the rivers, the strip mining of coal and uranium, the outdated methods of producing synthetic fuels, combined with the rampart poverty, lack of sewage facilities and deliberate structuring of the notorious 'homelands' present South Africa with serious environmental concerns.
The scope of the problems is wide and spans the entire community. How can we start assisting a community in Merebank, Natal which is surrounded by two oil refineries, a paper processing plant, a water treatment plant, an airport, and a large percentage of Natal's industry? Or, what about the Mozambican refugees who occupy a decrepit and abandoned paint manufacturing plant, outside of Johannesburg, which has hundreds of barrels of old paint lying around? What about Mafefe, an asbestos mining area since 1929 where children play in open asbestos dumps?
Black South Africans have a strong history of resisting apartheid and their struggles provide valuable insights and lessons for the environmental movement. Black South Africans, specifically women, have developed methods of sustainable economies through the informal sector. South Africa has one of the most democratic trade union movements in the world, and has developed a strong alliance with civics. The civics are community structures which have opposed high rents, unrest, detention without trial, and lack of sewage facilities among other issues.
Black South Africans have borne the brunt of apartheid and should not continue to bear the brunt of policies which may no longer kill them with bullets and torture, but instead with asbestosis, chronic diseases, and mercury-contaminated water.
Upon examination, there are three over-arching links which draw the connections between the situations in South Africa and the US, for example. The first and most obvious link is around issues of race, class, gender, health and environment. The United Church of Christ 1987 Report cited that most of the toxic dump sites in the US are located in people of color and poor communities. In South Africa, apartheid policies structured around notions of race, class and gender, have created a situation which allows massive dumping and poisoning of black communities throughout the country. The second is the astounding similarity between the 'bantustans' in South Africa and Native American lands in the US. 'Bantustans' are pockets of land which have been used for the 'surplus people' and act as a cheap source of labor for the industry. There are, thus, striking similarities of land use, underdevelopment, and toxic dumping between the 'bantustans' and the Native lands. The third crucial link is around the legacy, like the US, of toxic contamination. Weapons testing, the use of military arsenal on black communities, and the arms industry ARMSKOR have had detrimental effects on the people and on the environment.
As the nature of the trade becomes more global and exploitative, so must our efforts be more international in dimension and scope if we are to truly confront and challenge the poisoning of communities. As multinational corporations seize investment opportunities, there should be some basic standard and procedure which monitors labor and environmental practices. In order to address the issues at stake, we need to draw the global links, and forge tighter solidarity networks. We also need to inject the environmental justice agenda into the larger discussions taking place around economies, land, trade and development.