Cattle herders and activists in Sekhunkhine make a breakthrough

Mathapelo Thobajane/Sekhukhune, Limpopo/070917

Today 07/09/2017 we the community of Sekhukhune made an important breakthrough on the problems we face with the death of our cattle form mine pollution. We got the mine to set up a task team to jointly look into the causes of the death of our cattle and to find a solution. This is important because for years we have been complaining mine polluted water killed our cattle and the mine has not responded to the complaints.

We were surprised to hear that our problems were well known to the mines . They claimed to be attending to our problem.
We agreed that all that the task team will be the start of a new communication between the mine and the community. All data collected by the mine without people affected will be set aside and new samples will be collected with farmers being present. The task team will meet every month.

Present in the meeting where representatives from the mine, government, the farmers and community activists. Government was represented by the Department of Water and Sanitation, Environmental affairs, Agriculture. The Local mine management was represented by the Environmental manager of the mine, and Anglo American was representative by Dr Kotzee.

The community was represented by the farmers and Sekhukune Environmental Justice Network. The Bench Marks staff who assisted the community was represented by Eric Mokoua and Joseph Lebokang.

We are looking forward to start work with the task team and to make sure that our communities are treated with respect and consulted in every decision that affects them. We will work in the task to team monitor the compliance of the operation of the mine.

We thank BMF for supporting the whole process today and facilitating and participating in the meeting, which they did very well.
Farmers are now without words in appreciation the support they saw from the SEJN team and the BMF

Maaaaaaatlaaaaaaa…???