No Last Place to Rest: Coal Mining and Dispossession in South Africa is an exploration of the ongoing struggles faced by families whose lives have been upended by the relentless expansion of coal mining operations in the Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. These regions, burdened with the task of fulfilling the nation's energy needs and boosting the country's economy, witness daily the harsh realities of land dispossession that extend far beyond the mere loss of property.
Dineo Skosana, a researcher at the Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP) at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, presents a compelling argument that dispossession remains a present-day reality and crisis, contradicting the notion that it is merely a relic of the past in the post-apartheid landscape. She challenges the narrow perspective that measures land loss in material and economic terms only.
By considering the impact of grave relocations - a common occurrence in these mining-dominated locales - she demonstrates the profound spiritual anguish and dehumanisation communities endure as their lands are excavated and families lose their sacred connections to their ancestors. Skosana argues that the act of dispossession of both the living and the dead from their land wounds the collective soul of a people, eroding their cultural heritage, collective identity and sense of belonging.
BOOK: No Last Place to Rest: Coal Mining and Dispossession in South Africa by Dineo Skosana (Wits University Press)
Coal is South Africa's paradox; it is central to keeping our lights on and the economy going, but it is also the reason for the South African government to sign the Paris Agreement in 2015, pledging to phase out fossil fuels. Primarily, coal extraction comes at the cost of displacing communities and their ancestors - who were historically dispossessed during the apartheid and colonial periods. Ancestral grave exhumations and reburials, as well as household relocations which lead to the loss of land and land-based livelihoods, are a common experience in mining-affected communities.
This is the subject of No Last Place to Rest: Coal Mining and Dispossession in South Africa. The relocations are prevalent where thermal and anthracite coal is mined through an open-cast method also known as surface mining in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces. In these provinces, coal is mined either for the country's coal energy generated system or for local non-energy production use, and international exports. Coal extraction impacts families who live on private agricultural farmland as labour tenants and those who live on customary land under the authority of chiefs.
Here I focus on the experience of dispossession in Somkhele, in the KwaZulu-Natal province where at least 200 households have been relocated from at least four villages since 2008 for open-cast anthracite mining. These families moved to Somkhele because of segregation laws, and mostly, forced removals. Many others arrived in the area searching for fertile land, while others expressed being drawn to the area by its picturesque and lush greenery. The history of dispossession in the making of protected areas surrounding Somkhele also featured strongly as a primary reason for settling in the area. Second to dispossession, people were drawn to the area by various factors such as the land's fertility and the then presence of different water sources.
Alfred Mbuyezwe recounted how his family moved to Somkhele after they were forcefully removed from Dukuduku in St. Lucia in 1959. They lived on a farm with his labour-tenant father, who was born in 1913. He later moved to Johannesburg to work in the gold mines but subsequently came back because of the pass laws. "We loved that place. It hurts me because my father used to tell me how they were forcefully relocated from St. Lucia. Leyo mpilo yokuhlupheka yaqala kulabo [That struggle life began with that generation]. Ubaba uthi ngo 1959 umlungu washisa zonke izundlu zasekhaya [My father said the white man burnt all our homes in 1959. We had four houses]. We have claimed the land in Dukuduku. We are still waiting," he disclosed.
Subsequent to apartheid's torching evictions, they lived in Dukuduku from when he was four years old until they faced the mining-induced relocations in 2008. His story illustrates the burden of having informal land rights on customary land where the negotiations about mining or development are often facilitated with traditional leader. In Somkhele, like most rural communities, traditional leadership is at the centre of the decision-making about the rural political economy because of their customary law rights to land allocation.
Mining companies like Tendele, in this case, promise jobs and development to solicit consent from communities. However, noteworthy is that in these cases of relocations, communities were informed but not negotiated with bridging the constitutional and legislative requirement for meaningful consent.
The book highlights that continuous dispossession is not the only social problem in Somkhele, but grave exhumation and reburials for mining are an increasing social and cultural problem. Communities on tribal land bury on their homesteads - often next to the cattle kraal to keep a connection to their ancestors and for their ancestors to protect the home. The Mbuyezwe family and other families have continued that cultural practice of burying in the homestead, but their ancestral graves were also exhumed when the family home was scheduled to move.
Alfred Mbuyezwe shared, "I had four graves. My father, my child and my two grandchildren. My father was born in 1913. He died in 2000, August. I am 67 turning 68. My grandchild died in 2001 and the other in 2004. We were called to the mine. They said they will relocate the graves and gave us a date. It was 2009, 2010, I think. They then dug. My family didn't want to go, so I went alone. When they were exhumed, they were fairly fresh, they had not rotted. On the other hand, we found an aged blanket that still covered my father's remains. I took reed mats for the reburial."
He went on to share gruesome details about the funeral parlour, which did not bring coffins to rebury the remains but brought plastic bags instead. Following hours of brawling on the telephone with the headman, the coffins arrived after six hours. He and the funeral parlour had arrived at the cemetery at 08am. The exhumations were carried out in an hour, and they subsequently spent the remainder of the time waiting to rebury the remains which lay on the plastics until the coffins arrived. The reburial took place in a public cemetery because the chief and the municipality had not agreed on the site of resettlement for the Mbuyezwe home.
Alfred Mbuyezwe and others' accounts demonstrate that dispossession did not end with the democratic government taking over in 1994 in South Africa. Moreover, the book illustrates that in the historical and present discourse about dispossession the spiritual aspects of the loss of land have not been deeply considered by earlier scholars. No Last Place to Rest deals with not just the material aspect of loss but also the intangible loss which communities experience.
