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- Convenors:
-
Jan-Bart Gewald
(Leiden University)
Steven Robins (Stellenbosch University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- History (x) Conservation & Land Governance (y)
- Location:
- Philosophikum, S73
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 31 May, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The find of diamonds initiated an industrial mining revolution that transformed southern Africa. For 150 years an alliance between mining capital and political interests wrought South Africa into an industrial economy. Recently this industrial mining economy has been coming to an end.
Long Abstract:
The chance find of diamonds near the Orange River in 1869 initiated an industrial mining revolution that transformed southern Africa from the Cape to southern Congo. For 150 years an alliance between mining capital and political interests wrought South Africa into an industrial economy that favoured the interests of extractive capital and a white settler minority. In recent years the promise of an industrial mining economy has been coming to a stuttering end.
The Marikana Massacre of 2012 marked a turning point South African History; the culmination and possible ending of the alliance between mining capital and political interests in South Africa. Mining as percentage of GDP has continued to shrink, as has the amount of labour employed in industrial mining in South Africa. In short, the era of the supremacy of industrial mining in South Africa appears to have come to and end, but the bitter inheritance of this era has not and will continue to bedevil South Africa for generations to come.
Industrial mining has littered South Africa with a toxic legacy that is reflected in a wide variety of spheres, from skewed demographies and enormous social difficulties, through to shattered eco-systems and destroyed habitats.
Industrial mining may be coming to an end in terms of importance to the South African economy, but its bequest to southern Africa as a whole will continue to scar the sub-continent for as long as humankind exists and beyond.
The panel seeks papers that deal with the legacy of industrial mining in South Africa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 31 May, 2023, -Fabian Pindus (International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)
Paper short abstract:
Amidst the ruinations of the entrenched minerals-energy-complex, Limpopo´s regional government is pushing an industrial megaproject north of Makhado. Taking up debates on extractivism, this paper turns to the (un)making of futures in the contestations over this dreamscape of modernity.
Paper long abstract:
The southern site of the Musina Makhado Special Economic Zone (MMSEZ), which is backed by Chinese investors, is proposed to consist of several mineral beneficiation plants – and, originally, a coal-fired power plant. The plans for the MMSEZ are connected to recent projects of expanding the resource frontier of industrial mining towards the province Limpopo.
In this paper, I argue that the imagined future of the MMSEZ haunts the present as the continuation of an ancestral catastrophe.
This metallurgical cluster of the MMSEZ, planned to be situated along the N1 between Musina and Makhado, is contested by various actors.
While the architects of this dreamscape of modernity promise ´the liberation from the shackles of poverty and unemployment´, environmental NGOs anticipate the effects of currently unfolding circuits of extraction to be environmentally ruinous. However, the alliance against the MMSEZ is characterized by – in Isabelle Stengers formulation – ´interests in common which are not the same interests´.
Although these processes occur as industrial mining itself is facing ruination, the proposal of the MMSEZ illustrates the durability of the interaction of an extractive governmentality and racial capitalism.
Based on an interrogation of Elizabeth Povinelli´s distinction between ancestral and coming catastrophe, I analyse how these histories are folded into the interests within the alliance against the MMSEZ – particularly in the responses to its Environmental Impact Assessment.
This paper is based upon preparatory fieldwork in the context of my PhD project in 2022, as well as on an analysis of the ongoing lawfare.
Jan-Bart Gewald (Leiden University)
Paper short abstract:
There is a city built on diamonds in southern Africa. The city is invariably described in one of two ways; Kimberley is hot and dusty, or Kimberley is cold and dusty. The paper will describe the socially skewed long-term impact of toxic mining dust upon the inhabitants of Kimberley.
Paper long abstract:
There is a city built on diamonds in southern Africa. The city is invariably described by visitors not in terms of glitter and glamour, but in one of the two following ways; Kimberley is hot and dusty, or Kimberley is cold and dusty.
The city of Kimberley, provincial capital of the Northern Cape Province, South Africa, is built upon the detritus of diamond mines that were in operation between 1871 and 2020. Beginning in 1870 this deep level mining came at an enormous environmental cost, associated with extensive deforestation. In addition diamond mining was coupled with the establishment of enormous barren mine dumps of waste across which the harsh winds of the highveld move at will.
Writing in 1872, Czech traveller Emil Holub, struggled to describe the impact on man and beast of the dust that enveloped the mining settlement, “A dull, dense fog … dense clouds of dust, … [we] shared the fate of all new-comers, in feeling much distressed and really ill". Throughout the years that followed visitors to the city have invariably described similarly distressing scenes.
The paper to be presented will seek to describe the socially skewed long-term impact of toxic mining dust upon the inhabitants of Kimberley, and the business and political policy responses to this public health hazard between 1870 and 1920. The paper is based upon wide-ranging literary and archival research, coupled with extensive fieldwork visits to Kimberley and its mining sites in the past four decades.
Steven Robins (Stellenbosch University)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing the concept of a ‘resource frontier,’ this paper will analyse the socio-environmental impacts of historical and contemporary transformations of land use in the Karoo, including mining, renewable and non-renewable energy, astronomy, and biodiversity conservation and wildlife farming.
Paper long abstract:
Historians of the Karoo have drawn attention to the culturally hybrid and politically contested character of the 19th century Northern Cape colonial frontier (Legassick, 1969, 2010; Penn 2005). Drawing on the concept of a ‘resource frontier,’ this paper will analyse the socio-environmental impacts of transformations of land use in the Karoo, including the consequences of the discovery of copper and then diamonds. This was followed by asbestos mining and, in more recent years the mining of iron resources and rare earths, which is a major contributor to the GDP of the Northern Cape Province. Far from being a “boom to bust” story, mining in the Karoo continues to have a very long shelf-life - as is evident with new applications for shale-gas exploration, diamond and heavy mineral sand mining, uranium and base metals such as zinc, lead, and copper (Walker and Hoffman, 2023; in press). The paper will examine how, in the aftermath of mining histories of enclosure, dispossession and extractivism, the Karoo has once again become a resource frontier where new forms of extraction include technoscientific megaprojects involving renewable and non-renewable energy (wind, solar and possibly shale-gas) and massive investments in astronomy (the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope) and biodiversity conservation and wildlife farming (see Walker and Hoffman 2023). The paper will also investigate whether these interventions conform to a “boom and bust” narrative, i.e., another promise of ‘development’ that is unable to meet the needs of residents in desperately poor towns in this drought-prone and overheating semi-arid region.