" Families to leave ancestral lands as coal mine expands" 3 May 2024

On a hot Wednesday afternoon in April, 59-year-old Emily Nkosi stood next to the ruins of her mud home in Kromkrans, Mpumalanga. Her family is one of seven to be relocated in terms of a court order, that will allow blasting to continue at the nearby Motshaotshile Colliery. For the past six years, she has endured deafening noise and shaking from blasting from the nearby coal mine. But despite being warned about the danger, she has been hesitant to leave her ancestor’s land. But the warnings became a reality when the whole one side of her late grandmother’s hut collapsed during blasting in April. “My grandmother’s hut was destroyed just like that,” she said.

Four families who lived even closer to the mine have already been moved. Police were sent to move the families when they resisted because most have the graves of their ancestors on their homesteads. [...]

In an order on 19 February 2024, the Land Claims Court directed that the families must move and that A Re Shomeng, which owns the mine, must provide new housing for them. The court said the families had agreed to move, but there had been a delay in building them new permanent accommodation. The mine had proposed temporary accommodation but the families had refused, saying this would be too disruptive. In the
meantime, mining ground to a halt, as the Department of Minerals and Energy had ordered blasting to stop. Unless blasting continued, the Court accepted, the mine would not be able to meet its commitments to supply Eskom and other customers with coal, the mine would close, and jobs would be lost. [...] The court also ordered the mine to engage with the families about the relocation process. But residents were unhappy about the relocation, and the community protested in February on Human Rights Day.