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Our Burning Planet

Our Burning Planet

Karoo Dust Bowl (Part II) — Farmers fight back against reckless mining practices

Karoo Dust Bowl (Part II) — Farmers fight back against reckless mining practices
The environmental assessment for an application to prospect at Hondeklip Bay [screen grab 1] on the West Coast incorrectly states that the area falls in the savannah biome, and includes this map [screen grab 2]. The DMR gave environmental authorisation for the application, not noting this serious error. (Supplied)
Leonie Joubert
By Leonie Joubert
28 Jan 2025
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The recent years-long drought may have tipped parts of the Northern Cape towards an irreversible dust bowl, following decades of heavy grazing and mining. Farmers are holding the line against a surge in new mining prospectors, but are overwhelmed by the volume, and are challenging the state’s ability to manage the region’s development as the climate emergency escalates.

This is the second of a three-part Karoo Dust Bowl series which considers recent desertification trends in the Northern Cape, the causes, and the likely consequences to conservation and livelihoods.  

Read Part one here.

If the appeal documents against the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy’s granting of a prospecting licence on a nearly 45,000ha area of land just south of Springbok in the Northern Cape is anything to go by, the department’s left hand doesn’t know what its right hand is doing. 

The farmers don’t take issue with cosmetic problems with the licensing application by Amonation Mining, such as that the consulting company that drew up the basic assessment report spelled the mining company’s name incorrectly — Amonstion Pty Ltd — 14 times throughout the 123-page document, or what this says about attention to detail. 

Their main objection is that the assessment fails to mention that nearly a quarter of the site earmarked for prospecting falls in the Vaalputs nuclear waste disposal site, where the Koeberg power station’s low-level radioactive waste has been buried for nearly 40 years. Some 350ha of the facility hold buried waste, which are surrounded by a 200m exclusion zone. 

The report by Yadah Consulting doesn’t flag this, or the safety risks of sinking the eight proposed 50m-deep boreholes in a site that is crisscrossed with trenches of radioactive material that are just 8m deep.  

More concerning, notes Namaqualand farmer Mari Rossouw, who compiled the appeal paperwork: the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy didn’t pick up on this omission, and approved the prospecting licence. The licence was granted on 3 July 2024, and allows drilling to proceed for five years.  

Decades of mining, often with inadequate rehabilitation, have fuelled the spreading dust bowl conditions, now accelerated by rising temperatures and a recent drought. Some ecologists fear the change may be irreversible in places. (Photos: Leonie Joubert)



The appeal notes that Vaalputs is run by the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation. The corporation reports to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, “the same department who issued the prospecting right for Vaalputs”.

“Many South African citizens may not know that Vaalputs is the national radioactive waste disposal site, but it is quite worrisome that this fact slipped by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy,” states the document.

Amonation Mining’s Veruschka Pekeur, a Kimberley-based chartered accountant who is moving into the mining sector, says she only learned about the presence of the radioactive waste issue when she visited the area by vehicle and came upon the Vaalputs facility with South African Nuclear Energy Corporation sign boarding at the entrance.

This appeal process comes as the recent years-long drought has tipped parts of the Northern Cape towards possibly irreversible dust bowl conditions. New research shows that rising temperatures and the prolonged drought have accelerated desertification trends linked with decades of heavy grazing and aggressive, often unrehabilitated mining activities. 

As the planet slips beyond the 1.5°C safe threshold of global average warming, and with Namaqualand set to become hotter and drier, it raises questions about how to manage this fragile landscape as a new mining rush inundates officials and local stakeholders.

Commercial and communal farmers seem to agree: they don’t trust the development gains and jobs promised by the mines — many of whom are inexperienced new entrants in the sector — and the government officials responsible for oversight. Too many have seen the damage left once the mines leave, with few jobs and plenty of desolation. 

They don’t want to inherit dust.   

Read More: Karoo Dust Bowl (Part I): Here come the dunes

Surge in mining interest overwhelms farmers — where is the state?


In response to the question of why the basic assessment report did not mention radioactive nuclear waste at the site where Amonation Mining hoped to prospect for rare earth minerals, among others, Yadah Consulting director Tshilidzi Magagula said “there was an indication (in the report) that there was a radioactive solar plant there”. She did not respond to clarification questions on whether she understood the difference between radioactive nuclear material and rare earth minerals, some of which can be radioactive.


There has been a surge in prospecting applications in the Namaqualand area since 2022, according to Rossouw, who is leading at least two appeal processes on behalf of Northern Cape farmers whose land is earmarked for prospecting. But she is aware of many more. 

This surge in applications has raised concerns about the quality of the environmental studies done by consultants, and whether the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy is able to process the paperwork thoroughly. 

Official numbers are hard to come by. The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy was unable to provide figures for the Northern Cape to show trends in the number of prospecting applications in the past decade, or prospecting approvals and mining licences that have been granted as a result. Northern Cape Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform senior manager Elsabe Swart confirmed that the department, which processes the environmental impact assessments on mining licence applications, had also noted an increase in mining applications.

“Mining within the Richtersveld area, on the South Africa side (of the border), has started booming for the past five years,” she says.

Western Cape farmers’ organisation Kliprand Landbouvereniging has compiled one of the most comprehensive lists available of prospecting interests in their coastal district, which borders the Northern Cape. This lists 47 prospecting applications on farms in the area since 2019. While only two of those have been approved so far and are currently under appeal, farmer organisations are battling to keep abreast with the volume of applications. 

Several of the appeals are on the basis that the applicants have failed to follow the public participation processes required by the National Environmental Management Act. 
A source in the conservation sector that closely monitors prospecting and mining licensing applications confirmed multiple instances of “grave errors” in the paperwork, similar to those in the Vaalputs and Hondeklip Bay applications.

Many of the basic assessment report studies are of “poor quality and insufficient for considering environmental authorisation”, the source, who asked to remain anonymous, said. Many applications do not have the necessary screening reports from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment fail to note the cumulative impacts of the proposed mining process, or to show evidence that a biodiversity assessment was done.


“The modus operandi of some ‘fly by night’ mining companies (is) to submit blanket prospecting and mining applications over large areas for basically every mineral possibly present in an area,” they said. “If these poor quality applications slip through and are successful in attaining environmental authorisation for prospecting or mining, these pop-up companies then sell these rights off to other ‘proper’ mining houses.”

In the Vaalputs case, farmers were surprised to learn that prospecting was about to begin on or near their lands, even though they were not notified that the application had been lodged, and the prospecting licence then granted. Both of these steps require the applicant to notify and engage with all stakeholders. 

While the failure to engage with stakeholders gives solid ground on which to build an appeal, farmers say, the workload is overwhelming. 

“I have sent (appeals paperwork) to NGOs in the Northern Cape to see if they can help because it just gets too much,” says Rossouw. “We are farmers. We have no training in these matters. We are lay people.”

The Kliprand Landbouvereniging is leading several appeals in the Western Cape, but the organisation’s Katrin Visser says their plates are too full, meaning that it is not always possible to engage fully in the public participation processes, which includes submitting written comments and attending public meetings.

Botched studies, missed mistakes, and trespassing 


It doesn’t take an ecologist to spot the error in the biodiversity assessment accompanying an application by a firm called Snivio (Pty) Ltd to prospect for heavy minerals and rare earths at Hondeklip Bay on the Namaqualand west coast. It just takes paying attention to the detail on a single map. 



The environmental assessment for an application to prospect at Hondeklip Bay (screen grab 1) on the West Coast incorrectly states that the area falls in the savannah biome, and includes this map (screen grab 2). The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy gave environmental authorisation for the application, not noting this serious error. (Images: Supplied)



The report by Pretoria-based Mora Ecological Services states that the coastal town falls in the savannah biome, with a map showing the footprint of the biome, which is typically a mix of grass and thinly spread trees. The nearest likely savannah to the coastal community starts about 500km inland.

Elsewhere, the report correctly states that the “dominant vegetation type found on the study site” is Namaqualand Coastal Duneveld. 

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy didn’t notice this error, and granted environmental authorisation to Snivio in October 2024, which is a key step toward awarding prospecting rights. 

The department did not respond to questions about this case, the Vaalputs application, or a request for detailed numbers relating to applications over the past decade.  

Stakeholders objecting to the lack of due process in the mining applications say that this kind of procedural bungling makes the appeal process easy to substantiate. 

What is less easy to pick apart is the fact that Snivio’s director is 31-year-old Rosy Mvala who, according to the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, is the director of 129 companies, all of whom have the same Kimberley address, according to the commission’s database. Ten of the prospecting applications on the Kliprand Landbouvereniging’s list of 47 in the Western Cape province are from firms directed by Mvala. These include Kheprisian (Pty) Ltd, Novari Services (Pty) Ltd, Khnemudial (Pty) Ltd, and Mobugem (Pty) Ltd. None of these firms have websites. Neither does Svinio (Pty) Ltd. 

Another of Mvala’s companies surfaced in an October 2024 notice in the local Gauteng press, announcing that the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy had given environmental authorisation to Cyentu (Pty) Ltd to prospect in the Carletonville municipal area. Cyentu doesn’t have a web presence, either.  

Unable to establish credentials


The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy denied a prospecting application to another of Mvala’s companies in 2023. When Business Day reported on mining firm Cienth’s bid to get prospecting rights in the Overberg near the town of Napier, reporter Greg Gordon was also unable to establish the credentials of the firm involved or raise Mvala on her only available contact, a Gmail address.

Early in October 2024, Therese and Braam Nieuwoudt found a crew of people operating a diamond prospecting rig on their farm near Strandfontein in the Northern Cape. The men were employees of Richwill Diamonds (Pty) Ltd, a mining outfit that years earlier had shown interest in applying for a prospecting licence, but hadn’t followed through. They’d nevertheless entered the property without notifying the owners, or with the correct paperwork.

“We found the company on our property pumping gravel, with a tractor, pump, pipes and apparatus that separates the gravel,” recalls Therese Nieuwoudt. “We confronted the owner, and he said he didn’t need our permission to be on our property.”

The Nieuwoudts begged to differ, and filed a case of trespassing at their local police station, who saw to it that the prospectors packed up and left. The Nieuwoudts have established that the company doesn’t have a prospecting licence. 

While the criminal case is pending, and the trespassing charges are a sure-fire way to keep this mining company off their property, there are another nine prospecting applications that have been lodged in relation to their farm that they know of. 

Like other Namaqualand farmers, they’ll have to brush up on the law if they intend challenging each of these. They’ll also have to look out for fliers tacked to a farm gate or electricity post, since that’s one of the only ways they’ll find out that there’s another mine wanting to drill in this remote area to see if there are mineral deposits buried beneath their feet.  DM

This article was produced with the support of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation, and is part of a research collaboration with the Stellenbosch University School for Climate Studies: Story Ark — tales from southern Africa’s climate tipping points. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

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