Beneath the rich agricultural soil around Middelburg lies a hidden treasure: the black coal that feeds the power stations whose cooling towers dot the horizon and which supply South Africa with its electrical lifeblood.

To get at the coal, the miners have to go through the farmers that own the land that covers the coal. This is often a source of conflict. The holder of a mining right is empowered to exercise that right, even if they don’t own the land where they want to mine.

The landowner has to make way for the miner, but the miner must pay the landowner. The miner wants to pay as little as possible, the landowner wants to get as much as possible. If the parties cannot agree on a price between themselves, they must involve a third party to arrive at a price through mediation or arbitration.

In the end, having been forced into a deal, the farmers often feel hard done by, and no wonder. Having a mine on the farm means dust and disruption. It means trucks and blasting. It means the inflow of people with little connection to the area. It often means an increase in crime, both petty and serious.

Importantly, it means a violent change in the landscape. The earth is ripped open as deep pits are dug, flanked by mountainous waste heaps. Black dust settles everywhere, and water decanted from the mine often pollutes the nearby dams and rivers used by the farms.

In theory, the miners are meant to rehabilitate the environment after they have extracted the coal. This is a duty the smaller mines regularly ignore with impunity. But even where the larger companies do rehabilitate, the destruction of agricultural value is immense.

To the untrained eye, it may seem that nature quickly reclaims the land once the trucks have left and new vegetation starts to cover the scars in the landscape.

But this is an illusion.

To a farmer, the before and after are like chalk and cheese. The complex arrangement of elements that made this particular soil so fertile has been disrupted: the soil structure has been upended. The nutrients are no longer present in the same concentrations. The capacity of the soil to hold water has diminished, or increased beyond measure.

All this means that the land yields far less than before. In the low-margin, high-risk agricultural sector this makes it no longer viable. This in turn means that less food gets produced for the nation and fewer job opportunities are available in farming.

Is it worth it? People need food but they also need electricity to power their lives − and the economy. Mining creates more jobs, but they disappear after a few years when the resource is tapped out and the mine closes. On the other hand, agriculture creates fewer jobs, but they can be sustained over several generations. Which is better?

Progress cannot be stopped, and nor should it be. But it would surely be appropriate for the damage caused by the coal miners in pursuit of short-term returns to be more accurately calculated, and for landowners, and especially farmers, to be more appropriately compensated.

One way to do this would be to give established farmers preference in obtaining mining rights on their own land, as they would be far more circumspect in protecting the environment in which they live − and which provides their livelihood − while managing the delicate process of extracting a critical energy resource that the entire country depends on.

In the meantime, miners must be held to account in upholding their rehabilitation commitments, and rehabilitation must be done in a way that is not just perfunctory but minimises harm to the environment and to its economic value.

This will go a long way towards protecting both South Africa’s food and energy security − and preserving the beautiful landscapes of the eastern highveld for future generations.

[Images: John Endres]

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contributor

John Endres is the CEO of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR). He holds a doctorate in commerce and economics from one of Germany’s leading business schools, the Otto Beisheim School of Management, as well as a Master’s in Translation Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand. John has extensive work experience in the retail and services industries as well as the non-profit sector, having previously worked for the liberal Friedrich Naumann Foundation and as founding CEO of Good Governance Africa, an advocacy organisation.