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Our Burning Planet

Our Burning Planet

Coal hunters encircle Africa’s first wilderness and rhino sanctuary

Coal hunters encircle Africa’s first wilderness and rhino sanctuary
Elephants cross a tourist road in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Reserve. (Photo: Tony Carnie)
Tony Carnie
By Tony Carnie
9 Mar 2025
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The mineral commodities market is tightening its noose around one of Africa’s oldest game reserves, with a renewed flurry of coal, gas and mineral prospecting applications on the park’s boundaries.

The Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve is now almost completely encircled by fossil fuel hunters eyeing the region’s rich mineral pickings, primarily coal.

Over the past few years, several relatively unknown mining companies have applied for prospecting rights close to the 130-year-old wildlife sanctuary in KwaZulu-Natal, but mainly outside the 5km wide “no-go mining zone’ declared by the park custodians, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife.

More recently, however, some prospectors have extended their ambitions right up to the park’s boundary fence. Now, with the exception of the northern and southern tips, the reserve has been ringed by wall-to-wall mining and prospecting claims although some of these have subsequently been withdrawn.

Map of new mining rights applications More than a dozen companies have lodged exploration or mining right applications in close proximity to the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve, which was proclaimed in 1895. (Map: Siyanda Gelese)



This suggests that if viable mineral deposits are found and further mining rights are authorised via Gwede Mantashe’s Ministry of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, companies will be free to conduct daily dynamite blasting or strip-mining directly next to Ezemvelo’s flagship Big Five conservation area and tourism attraction.

The iMfolozi section of the reserve also incorporates South Africa’s first wilderness zone (a specially designated 30,000 hectare area where no vehicles, roads or permanent structures are allowed, in order to protect its primeval character). Tourists can enter only on foot during guided wilderness trails or while camping in tents or sleeping under the stars.

Outside the park, further coal discoveries are likely to trigger a series of impacts for rural communities, including potential expulsion from their traditional homesteads, loss of farming and grazing lands or daily exposure to clouds of coal dust, blasting noise and other effects from mining operations.

One of the main factors driving the latest exploration boom in this area appears to be its proximity to the nearby coal and bulk products export harbour at Richards Bay, where trucks laden with coal and other minerals have been lining up almost daily and creating regular traffic snarl-ups along the N2 freeway. 

According to the International Energy Association’s latest assessment report, global coal consumption has rebounded since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, especially in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that resulted in record global coal production and consumption.

Latest application


Makame Monnakgotla, AIT chair Makame Monnakgotla, chair of the Afri In Transit group. (Image: AIT website)



Afri In Transit CEO Denga Kwinda. Afri In Transit CEO Denga Kwinda. (Image: AIT website)



The latest prospecting application, covering a 7,500 ha chunk of community land in the Somkhele area (right on the boundary of Hluhluwe-iMfolozi), has been lodged by the Johannesburg-based Afri In Transit (AIT) group.

This junior mining group, with a base in the Sinosteel Building in Rivonia Road, Sandown, seems to have adopted a blunderbuss approach, requesting permission to prospect and drill exploration wells for a wide variety of mineral resources – including torbanite, coal, pseudocoal, oil shale, lithium, limestone, iron ore, general heavy minerals, graphite and fluorspar.

Billing itself as a “pit-to-port” mining and logistics company, AIT is chaired by Makame Monnakgotla, who lists himself as a former Michaelhouse old boy and a process specialist at several mining houses. The company’s CEO, Denga Kwinda, is a former commercial analyst at Grindrod and proclaims that her mining company aims to “spot gaps and opportunities in the global energy mix” and to supply minerals to growing economies.  

According to its website, AIT exports significant volumes of coal to Europe and India, along with chrome magnetite to China.

The company’s environmental consultant, Thevha Sustainable Solutions, recently circulated a background information document inviting interested and affected groups to register for a public consultation process. Once the consultant had drafted a basic environmental impact report, parties would have 30 days to comment on the report and raise concerns about AIT’s prospecting application.

Kwinda did not respond to Daily Maverick’s repeated requests for comment on why AIT is targeting such an environmentally sensitive area.

AIT is not the only company eyeing opportunities around the 96 000 ha wildlife reserve, with indications that more than a dozen mining or prospecting applications have been lodged in close proximity to the park.

Controversial projects


Homestead on the fence line of the Tendele open cast coal mine near Mtubutuba. One of the many homesteads on the fence line of the Tendele open cast coal mine near Mtubutuba. Since Tendele began mining in this region in 2007, more than 200 families have been removed and relocated to make way for coal mining pits, with hundreds more families in line to be shifted if the latest mine expansion drive continues around Hluhluwe-iMfolozi. (Photo: Rob Symons)



Mining pits owned by endele mining group Ringed by traditional homesteads, the Tendele mining group has established several mining pits in rural areas adjacent to the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve since 2007. (Screenshot image: Airbus / Google Earth Pro )



Two other companies, Zululand Anthracite Colliery (established in 1985) and Tendele Coal Mining (established in 2007) already have several mining pits close to the park that have sparked controversy in the past owing to a variety of impacts such as acid mine water pollution of the Mfolozi River, the illegal establishment of mine pits, the relocation of homesteads and other complaints.

More recent expansion of Tendele coal mining operations in the Somkhele area has also triggered several court cases by rural communities opposed to coal mining on their doorsteps, and raised concerns of further violence or intimidation following the assassination of 63-year-old anti-mining activist MaFikile Ntshangase in October 2020. Tendele argues that it plays a vital role in creating jobs and providing coal to industry and also offered a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Ntshangase’s killers.

Now, faced with the prospect of a multitude of new coal mines on the doorstep of the Hlhhluwe-iMfolozi Park, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife has protested strongly against the new AIT bid and several of the most recent exploration ventures, especially those located in the park’s 5km-wide buffer zone.

Ezemvelo noted that its management board decided in 2015 that any mining or heavy industry proposals in this strip were incompatible land use activities next to protected areas “as the impacts of mining, such as water, noise and dust pollution, visual intrusion, and vibration, threaten the very purpose and value of protected areas”. 

The board’s position statement advocates no new mining within 5km of Ezemvelo protected areas, though the legal status of this policy may be contested by mining houses.

In 2023, the eMalahleni (Witbank) company Jaments lodged two applications for coal prospecting rights around the park, both of which included large areas within the sensitive buffer zone.

However, Jaments director Bongane Simelane told Daily Maverick that the company subsequently decided to withdraw both applications in February 2024 after a public consultation process with local stakeholders that highlighted concerns about the proximity to the park.

Simelane said it was, therefore, “baseless and unwarranted” to suggest that Jaments had shown disregard for the potentially adverse social and environmental impacts of coal prospecting operations in this area.

“Jaments has and continues to respect the prescripts of mining and environmental legislation,” he said.

Tornowize, another eMalahleni company, also applied for prospecting and mining rights close to the southern boundary of the park in June 2023.

Withrawal of application


Tornowize director Sonwabo Debedu Sonwabo Debedu of Tornowize. (Image: Tornowize website)



Tornowize director Sonwabo “Sonny” Debedu said his company had also decided to withdraw the applications in February 2024. In a letter to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE), Tornowize consultants stated that: “During consultation with the chief and his council as the custodian of the land, access to conduct site assessment was denied as they are not in support of the application. It was also discovered during consultation and desktop studies that the proposed prospecting rights area is overlapping with the Tendele mine’s Mining Right area and this decreases the size and/ limit(s) the area available for Tornowize (Pty) Ltd to explore/prospect coal.” 

More recently, in November 2024, Shoshanguve businessman Thomo Moses Mashishi (director of TMM Auto) lodged a prospecting application for a 38,000 ha area along the north central boundary of the park.

A basic environmental impact assessment process began last year, but the progress with this application remains unclear as neither Mashshi nor his environmental consultant Vanessa Nkosi-Manyika could be reached for comment.

More worryingly, from a conservation perspective, a prospecting licence has been granted in the Fuleni area, directly adjacent to one of the most sensitive areas of the park, the designated wilderness area.

This prospecting right was granted to Imvukuzane Resources, whose three directors are Vuslat Bayoglu, his brother Serhat Bayoglu and Jerome Ngwenya, former chair of the Ingonyama Trust.

Vuslat Bayoglu is also MD of the Menar group, which has controlling interests in Canyon Coal and Zululand Anthracite Colliery, and is a director of the Richards Bay Coal Terminal. Ngwenya is also a director of Menar.

Responding to queries from Daily Maverick, a Menar spokesperson said the Imvukuzane prospecting right at Fuleni was valid for five years, until August 2028. 

“We have applied for the prospecting right to assess the presence of coal and determine whether it constitutes a viable reserve. We intend to comply with the conditions of the prospecting right as well as the accompanying environmental authorisations.”

Asked whether the group believed that coal mining was justifiable in such an environmentally sensitive area, Menar responded: “This question may be directed to the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, as they have the prerogative to grant or refuse prospecting right applications in South Africa.”

In the Mpembeni area, at the northern tip of the park, the Nomaphenduka group has applied for prospecting rights for titanium, heavy minerals, as well as aluminium, manganese and iron ore, directly within the 5km Ezemvelo buffer  

But Nomaphenduka director Khaya Khumalo asserts that his exploration claim near Mpembeni falls outside the Ezemvelo buffer zone. 

“There are homesteads there, so it can’t be inside the ‘buffer zone’. Ezemvelo is giving us a headache for nothing by objecting to our application. We don’t want to mine coal, so there will be no pollution if we mine that area.

“What surprises me is that other people from Mpumalanga have also applied for the same area that I applied for several years ago, but they [government authorities] are saying that I can’t mine a small area of about 5ha . Yet there are three other companies also applying in that area … To me it’s very political,” the Mtubatuba-based entrepreneur said.

At this point, the prospecting companies are obliged to appoint an environmental consultant to conduct basic assessment reports on the exploration phase, including test drilling – but not the actual impacts of mining pits on the people or environment of the region.

Environmentally sensitive


A notice warning motorists to slow down A notice warning motorists to slow down while driving through the Corridor section of the park. (Photo: Tony Carnie)



Elephants cross a tourist road in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Reserve Elephants cross a tourist road in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Reserve. (Photo: Tony Carnie)



While the companies appear to be complying with the mandatory legal procedures required by the mining department, their pursuit of mineral riches in such an environmentally sensitive location is bound to raise concern, and strong opposition, in several quarters – especially if the current exploration phase proceeds to mining approval.

Kirsten Youens, an attorney from the Durban-based All Rise law clinic, notes that such assessment reports during the prospecting phase do not consider the impacts of full-blown mining – or the cumulative impacts of a multiplicity of new coal mines.

All Rise, representing the Mine Affected Communities United in Action group and the Global Environmental Trust, also argues that coal mining forecloses other more sustainable land use options and subsistence-based livelihoods.

“Notwithstanding its smaller impact, prospecting cannot be assessed in a vacuum. Its whole purpose is to identify and evaluate coal deposits for future mining which, by its very nature, has significant adverse impacts,” Youens said.

“It is our experience that the decisions made by the government are too often blinkered by the promise of employment and other socioeconomic benefits, without weighing these benefits up against the significant adverse impacts and long-term costs borne by the affected communities.” DM

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