Waiting for Re-mining in 2037

Sicelo Sithole

The community of Snake Park will wait for another 14 years for Pan African Resources to come and re-mine the tailing dump. People in Snake Park are in danger because of the toxic tailing mine dump. We as monitors went to Pan African Resource during our Targeted investigation last year in 2023. They gave us the sad news that they will have to re-mine first before they can rehabilitate. This came as bad news for us because the tailing is already decanting and causing a catastrophic disaster in our community.

As a Bambanani co-operative we decided to make more campaign awareness in our community, we did this by embarking on a phytoremediation project. We want to remediate the toxic soil from the mine dump. Many community members are happy about this project because at least we can prevent the dust storms that are making people sick, other people even go to private doctors to get health care for the airborne diseases caused by the toxic dust. It’s sad news for the ones who cannot afford private health care.

The community is not happy about re-mining because the tailings are getting worse and it will kill more people. By the time they start re-mining, many people will be dead and our air quality is already destroyed. We cannot wait for 2037 and we want the mining company to do a public participation meeting and they must become transparent before we take them to court.