Mining donation ‘a drop in the ocean’
In donating over 270ha valued at R26m to the Rustenburg municipality, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) hopes to change the conversation around land reform in SA, says a Business Day report. But a detractor said the move is a drop in the ocean if mining is to truly redress its legacy of displacement and dispossession in SA.
The donation follows 204ha valued at R30.6m, which was given to the Rustenburg municipality in 2014. Complementing this is the company’s investment of R140m in bulk infrastructure.
‘Obviously it’s a good thing for big companies to donate land to government and is one positive spin-off of this disastrous expropriation without compensation debate,’ said Aninka Claassens, of the Land and Accountability Research Centre at UCT.
However, she said it is a small amount of land if considering how much land Anglo acquired at the expense of the land rights of rural communities in the former homelands.
‘Amplats acquired land all over Limpopo and the North West, through processes that the Constitutional Court has now ruled to be in breach of the law,’ she said.
Amplats said that the land donations were not to compensate or appease communities, but rather to demonstrate its approach in partnering with the Rustenburg municipality to make land available for development.
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