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I refer to the item on page 8 of your edition of 27 February: “Planned township for Mopane now a reality”. 

Unfortunately, Musina Municipality does not seem to be very strong on reality, which includes the fact that publicly funded townships, unless established where there is a high demand for labour, only provide breeding grounds for all manner of social ills. Mopane already has serious water and crime problems, but – as the article actually mentions – it is in the middle of an area of commercial farming. Not only does farming employ very low levels of labour, but in the current wage climate of South Africa, farms can only remain commercial if they replace human labour with machines, however bad for the environment that may be.  Little prospect of employment there, so we can expect the worst.

It will be nice to have a primary school and a clinic at Mopane, but who will occupy the 986 proposed residential sites? People who must be willing to do without water, for a start, and it is very unlikely that they will be farm workers. Apart from the fact that most farm workers around here are actually Zimbab­wean, farms commonly provide accommodation for all but seasonal labour, and any worker would certainly prefer to live and sleep close to their workplace rather than travel 20km or more where there is no public transport. Or will transport also be provided?

As it is very doubtful if there will be 986 farm workers willing to live off-farm and in Mopane, one can only suppose that Musina Municipality is expecting the occupants of its proposed residential sites to be mine workers, as there have been proposals and negotiations for Coal of Africa Limited (CoAL) to begin open-cast mining in the Mopane area, among others.
This has been going on for several years, now, and it is still not clear if CoAL is in a financial or even environmental position to utilize the area. If it does ever provide employment for local people, which is very doubtful, such people will be lucky to be employed for 30 years, until mining is finished. All mines have a limited lifespan, as the people at Tshikondeni coal mine, further east, have already found.

Will other industries be started up at Mopane to employ 1 000 people or so? Unless Musina Municipality can be sure of this, they must seriously reconsider any building programme.  Providing homes for people desperate for water and for money in an area already considered a hotspot for poaching and crime does not seem a sensible development strategy. More sensible would be first to provide long-term jobs, and then the homes - bearing in mind that neither farming nor mining is a good source of jobs.

- Peta A Jones, (MSc, PhD, Donkey Power CC)

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

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