community march to Twickenham Platinum

Thobejane Boitumelo

The communities that are affected by the Twickenham platinum mine gathered and staged a match to the mine to protest on lack of employment for local communities. The objective of the reopening of the mine must be to employ within communities as they were promised to be given jobs. The unemployment rate is now high which leads to a high crime rate, people turn to crime to enable them to survive economically, and financial hardships negatively impact families, relationships, and the community, when this happens consumer spending which is one of the economy’s key drivers of growth goes down leading to a recession or depression when left unaddressed, when people are unemployed they have no income to support themselves or their
families which leads to poverty .

The march was organized by 12 community forums from affected community villages. Which areMashabela, Mashishi, Kgwete, Magakala, Modimole, Phasha, Mampa, Phashaskraal, Magobading. The mine took people to train as operators for LHD, COMPETENT, AND WINCH OPERATOR but even today those people are still unemployed. The mine should have created job opportunities when they were training people first. The mine failed to keep its promises when the mine was still under care and maintenance in 2015 they told communities that it would reopen after 5 years counting from 2016 and now we are on year 9 and the mine is not promising anything. As the communities affected by the Twickenham platinum mine, we should fight hard and demonstrate an objective for the mine to reopen to fight against poverty, high unemployment rate, and financial hardships.