Jojo tanks in our village without our consent

 

Community Alerts/Lentswe Buda/Rustenburg-Motlhabe/05/04/18

Pilanesburg platinum mine responds to Motlhabe grievances by providing the community of Motlhabe with two jojo tanks without the community’s consent.

The community of Motlhabe happens to be one of the mine hosting communities that are still struggling to access the most important service deliveries. The community of Motlhabe has been hosting the Pilanesburg Platinum mine for nine and a half year now and there are no improvements or developments made so far.

Years come and go, grievances are being sent to the mine and the normal response is ignorance, water has always been the community”s priority. The Moses Kotane Local Municipality and the Pilanesburg Platinum Mine are both giving a blind eye to the community of Motlhabe. We are being treated as informal settlers. Late September 2017 young activists from the community of motlhabe approached the council of Motlhabe and discussed the issue of water access and requested to make a meeting with the Pilanesburg Platinum Mine, the council was happy to help and they did arrange the meeting with the mine representative’s, but the mine didn’t pitch, In October 2017 the Pilanesburg Platinum Mine provided the community of Motlhabe with two more jojo tanks that doesn’t solve the issue, these jojo tanks do not reach the community’s satisfactions. The community of Motlhabe uses only two borehole water sources that are expected to provide the whole community, and these boreholes they can only cover 35%-40% of the community.

We are the communities, we are the land owners, the mining companies should treat us as the land owners, instead of treating us like informal settlers or refuges we deserve better. By Lentswe Buda