Tharisa Mine operates just south of Marikana along the N4 Platinum highway. To commence its huge opencast operation, the mine had to move a rural farmworker community off the land. The mine constructed “silver city,” a township of tin shacks, not proper housing, but tin shacks. For any open cast mine to operate, a wellfield of boreholes is constructed to drop the water table so that the operations can be conducted in dry conditions in the pit.
Tharisa pumps the water thus extracted into an old Aquarius shaft and has punted this as a solution to South Africa’s water challenges. However, Aquarius is also pumping the water into water tanks that feed the relocated community with tap water. This is cheaper than providing the community with properly treated water from Magalies Water which supplies the Bojanala District with water.
The community has been complaining for years about the inferior quality of the water. They have also been complaining that the mine expanded right up to the doorstep of the relocated community and that rocks from blasting falls on the houses and property. Just two weeks ago the company introduced a slap suite on activists in the community fighting for their constitutional rights to water and to a healthy and safe environment. The first sitting of this case happened on Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at the Mmabatho High Court in Mahikeng. The charge against the activists is that they are “hampering the business of the mine.”
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How valid are the claims of the community that their untreated water is unsafe? A municipal official from Rustenburg came to the community and took samples from two sites and evaluated the samples in a laboratory. Bench Marks then took the readings and compared them to global health standards for clean water using indicators from the World Health Organisation and the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA.
Bench Marks Foundation compared the Maditlhokwa water sample test outcome with World Health Organization and Environmental Protection Agency standards and that the water supplied to the people in Maditlhokwa is not in line with international standards and certainly is also in contravention of South African water laws, in particular the Water Services Act 108 of 1997 (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, 1996. South African Water Quality Guidelines (second edition). Volume 1: Domestic Use). As such the mine is in contravention of the law and should be criminally charged.
The levels of Cadmium, Aluminium, Lead, Manganese, copper, Magnesium, Iron and Nitrate levels in the water are dangerously high. At the total dissolved solids level of 2490 exceeds acceptable levels for safe drinking water by five times. These exceedances can lead to a number of illnesses in the community including cancer, mental retardation, Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons disease, diabetes, heart disease and blue death in infants.
Following the testing of water at two points in the community the local municipality has long ordered the mine to stop the flow of untreated water to the community. An instruction was issued to Tharisa but to no avail. On the 29th of February 2024, a meeting to resolve the issue was held amongst the mine personnel, councillor and community members and it was agreed that Tharisa should stop supplying water that is not properly treated to the community. The mine has ‘promised ‘to attend to the issue.
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