Imagine seeing Jacob Zuma’s nephew and Nelson Mandela’s grandson rubbing shoulders in the dock, on charges of water pollution. Of course, say what you like about SA, we do put extraordinary people in the dock, like the Chief of Police. It wouldn’t happen everywhere.

It’s all about acid mine drainage (AMD) and yesterday the Parliamentary water portfolio committee heard that the consequences of the financial fizzling out of Aurora Empowerment Systems, the company headed by Khulubuse Zuma and Zondwa Mandela. The company has stopped pumping AMD from the defunct East Rand mine, Grootvlei. We’ve already seen one mining casualty: Goliath Gold recently announced it would abandon its Sub Nigel mine because of flooding due to the cessation of pumping at Grootvlei.

Zuma and Mandela, charged last year, have yet to be brought to court.

Environmental activists, however, always bemoan the fact that junior miners such as Aurora are called on to carry the can for big mining companies who sell off to juniors entities that have become non-assets. It’s a thought. A good one.

Just last week, watchdog organisation the Bench Marks Foundation, mining companies failure to include in their cost accounting, the environmental, economic and social costs to the communities in which they operated would ”push more people into absolute desperation and poverty and will thrust our planet towards extinction”.

Studies the foundation did over the past five years showed corporations, in particular those involved in mining, still had a long way to go  before they can be considered good corporate citizens.  “Profits are still put above everything else,” said executive director John Capel.

This is something that was also raised with me yesterday by Ogilvy Earth, part of the massive Ogilvy communications company – that the mining sector is behind on embracing “sustainability”.

Now we hear that large parts of Gauteng are experiencing more “seismic events” because of AMD, and that it is likely we will have to spend up tp R750-million fixing the AMD problem. That’s most of the R1-trillion the government wants to spend on infrastructure for the whole country. And if we don’t spend the money?

There is a massive argument with the mines about the “polluter pays” principle, and about who the polluter is deemed to be. The mines, in general, want the state to pay, and I can see why. Let’s hope that argument doesn’t stall getting down to putting in the massive infrastructure that is needed – the government has put aside R225-million, a fraction of what government-appointed cleaner upper the Trans Caledon Tunnel Authority says we need (the R750-million).

Of course, there are mining companies that will argue that they are taking on sustainability. No doubt there are, and I have heard of pockets where good work is being done, however, it appears that in general more could be done. Mining companies need to realise that while we and they need the minerals they extract from the ground, or the sea, we and they also need a place to live and be happy. If the business of mining, generally, carries on as it is now, by all acounts we and they are going to lose out. Big time.

Tags: acid mine drainage, Aurora, court, future, Grootvlei, infrastructure, Khulubuse Zuma, mining, polluter pays principle, sustainability, water, Zondwa Mandela