OBP Heroes of the Year: Activists who risk their lives to protect beloved land and community

Nonhle Mbuthuma is a fierce defender of the Pondoland Wild Coast. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)

25 Dec 2024

Their detractors call them anti-development, but Sinegugu Zukulu and Nonhle Mbuthuma stand firm in their defence of a pastoral way of life.

It takes guts to stand on the front line, resisting the siren songs of powerful commercial interests and politicians who promise to deliver economic progress and liberation to remote rural communities.

activist pondoland

For nearly 20 years, Sinegugu Zukulu and Nonhle Mbuthuma have been standing on that front line in the Pondoland section of the Eastern Cape Wild Coast, speaking up and out against a range of “development” plans that they believe will bring harm to their land, culture and natural heritage.

During this time, they have been pilloried as “anti-development”, subjected to death threats and have seen how fellow activists have been assassinated.

Zukulu (54) and Mbuthuma (46) both grew up in rural Xolobeni on the Wild Coast and attended Baleni Senior Secondary School. During his final year at Baleni, Zukulu gave extra lessons to younger pupils, including Mbuthuma, unaware at the time how closely their lives would be bound together, defending their people and land over the coming decades.

Sinegugu Zukulu takes a break on a Wild Coast beach. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)

Zukulu’s early passion for teaching continued and he later spent eight years as a geography teacher at Kearsney College, a top private school for boys, north of Durban.

Their paths came together again in the early 2000s, when the South African National Roads Agency announced plans to build a new high-speed toll road that would pass directly through the Xolobeni area, cutting their community in half.

At about the same time, an Australian company announced plans for an opencast titanium mine along a 22km stretch of coastline around Xolobeni.

Nonhle Mbuthuma is a fierce defender of the Pondoland Wild Coast. (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)

In response, local activists established the Amadiba Crisis Committee to resist the twin proposals they feared would have profound negative impacts on their communities.

Assassination

But opposition from Mbuthuma, Zukulu and other activists brought them into conflict with powerful international and local interest groups. In 2016, crisis committee chairperson Sikhosiphi “Bazooka” Radebe was assassinated by unknown gunmen. His murder remains unsolved.

More recently, in 2022, Zukulu and Mbuthuma mobilised the Xolobeni community again, and their campaign and court testimony played a key role in halting Shell’s plans to conduct seismic blasting tests in the sea off the Wild Coast.

In recognition of their long-standing activism, Mbuthuma and Zukulu were recognised internationally earlier this year when they were named as joint winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

The prize honours the achievements and leadership of grassroots environmental activists all over the world. Previous winners include Ken Saro-Wiwa (a Nigerian writer and activist hanged by the military government in 1995 for his campaigns against crude oil drilling in the Niger Delta), and the late Kenyan “green belt” activist Wangari Maathai, who went on to become the first African woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace.

In an interview with Daily Maverick, Zukulu recalled that he and Mbuthuma had both been labelled as being “anti-development” while putting their lives at risk by speaking out to protect the long-term future of their land and community.

“I have been an activist for more than two decades, but you are not doing this for monetary reward or recognition. We do it because it makes sense to us,” said Zukulu.

Mbuthuma, who was beaten up last year while trying to stop construction of a new property development in the village of Sigidi, said: “Activists are being targeted or assassinated all over the world… We are fighting for future generations.

“I am not ‘anti-development’. In fact, I am for development, but not when it destroys the environment we depend upon. The people and the environment are connected. There is no way they can work without each other, so development and ecology must meet halfway.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

Our Burning Planet

Assassination