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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/i> The Olifants River estuary on the West Coast near Lutzville. (Photo: John Yeld)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
On the face of it, aside from the biodiversity, there\u2019s not much that the Selati Game Reserve and the Olifants River estuary have in common. Where the former, situated between the towns of Gravelotte and Hoedspruit in Limpopo Province, hosts a species of African cycad that can be found nowhere else on earth, the latter, situated on the Atlantic seaboard around 250km north of Cape Town, hosts the greatest concentration of birdlife on the Namaqualand west coast.<\/p>\n
In Selati you\u2019ll find rich grasslands, bushveld riverine ecosystems and an abundance of the \u201cBig Five\u201d; in the Olifants River estuary, it\u2019s all about lesser and greater flamingos, African black oystercatchers and Caspian and swift terns.<\/p>\n
Two different biomes, two entirely different worlds \u2014 which, if nothing else, speaks to the awesome depth and breadth of South Africa\u2019s natural heritage. But, in the complex paperwork that hardly anyone outside of nature conservation or mining officialdom reads, there is a thread that ties Selati to the estuary in a narrative of brazen environmental malfeasance.<\/p>\n
Looked at from Daily Maverick<\/em>\u2019s perspective, the narrative begins in April 2021, when we published the first part<\/a> of our \u201cMordor at the Gates\u201d series. Back then, while investigating the circumstances behind the mining application that had been lodged \u201cout of nowhere\u201d across 10,000ha of Selati\u2019s northern stretches, we came across a company by the name of Sakal and Tebo (Pty) Ltd. It was this small company that had been retained by the applicant, an equally small entity trading as Tiara Mining, to prepare the environmental impact documentation for submission to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.<\/p>\n Sakal and Tebo, it turned out, had submitted a final scoping report that was \u201cfatally flawed,\u201d with key information missing and an inaccurate description of mining activities. As for the environmental impact assessment, the more important document, the company neglected to mention that the entirety of the Selati Game Reserve had been classified as ecologically \u201cirreplaceable\u201d.<\/p>\n In the second part<\/a> of the series, when Daily Maverick<\/em> looked into the background of the company\u2019s sole director, an environmental assessment practitioner (EAP) by the name of Melvyn Mandla Masango, we found that he had misrepresented his memberships and affiliations on the official government forms. These breaches, it was clear to us, were in direct contravention of the codes of conduct of the two organisations that had been legislated to hold South Africa\u2019s EAPs to account \u2014 the Environmental Assessment Practitioners Association of South Africa<\/a> (Eapasa), and the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions<\/a> (Sacnasp).<\/p>\n What we didn\u2019t mention was Masango\u2019s partner on the project, an EAP by the name of Yvonne Gutoona, who had signed off on the documentation not only on behalf of Sakal and Tebo but in some instances on behalf of Masango himself.<\/p>\n Although Gutoona was not a director of Sakal and Tebo, she was, as Daily Maverick <\/em>knew at the time, one of two directors in a company called Archean Resources, which she neglected to disclose in the paperwork. This company, as our sources at Selati informed us, had also been hired by Tiara Mining \u2014 specifically, its founder Robert Michael Scholtz, who had been convicted of illicit diamond trading in 1985 \u2014 to prepare specialist environmental reports. The work, we learnt, had been farmed out by Archean Resources to third parties.<\/p>\n More significant than these irregularities, however, was the fact that neither Masango nor Gutoona seemed to be legally or technically qualified to compile reports on their own. In terms of the Natural Scientific Professions Act of 2003<\/a>, according to which all natural scientists need to be registered with Sacnasp in order to practice, there are three levels of qualification: candidate natural scientist at the bottom, certified natural scientist in the middle and professional natural scientist at the top.<\/p>\n As section 22(2) of the act states:<\/p>\n \u201cA certificated natural scientist or candidate natural scientist\u2026 may only perform work in the natural scientific professions under the supervision and control of a professional natural scientist.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Masango was registered with Sacnasp as a candidate natural scientist and Gutoona as a certified natural scientist, there was no evidence in any of the reports that either of them had been supervised by a professional natural scientist.<\/p>\n In the event, things turned out well for Selati. A few weeks after our second feature was published, we received word that the mining application had been withdrawn \u2014 partly due, we were told, to the \u201cpublic spotlight\u201d that Daily Maverick<\/em> had shone on the case. But in September 2021, when we began looking into a strange flareup of mining applications on South Africa\u2019s west coast, the thread picked up again.<\/p>\n On an alarming number of the new applications, Yvonne Gutoona, as a director of Archean Resources, was listed as the EAP.<\/p>\n II.<\/strong><\/p>\n At the outset of this investigation, we had two questions for Neo Motlholwa, the legal counsel at Sacnasp. First, we wanted to know, did the law require the name of the supervising scientist to appear on all forms submitted to the DMRE? Second, if not, was there any other way to check whether a candidate or certified natural scientist was working under the required supervision?<\/p>\n The law, Motlholwa informed us, was clear:<\/p>\n \u201cThe name of the professional natural scientist (the \u2018supervising scientist\u2019) not only needs to appear on the DMRE paperwork but the DMRE paperwork may only be signed off by the said professional natural scientist.\u201d<\/p>\n In the first four applications to the DMRE that Daily Maverick<\/em> came across, basic assessment reports and environmental management programme reports for a pair of companies named Cape Zircon (Pty) Ltd and Buchuberg Resources (Pty) Ltd, Gutoona, who was listed as the sole EAP, was also the sole signatory. Covering a combined area of about 118,000ha on the southern banks of the Olifants River \u2014 and abutting its precious estuary \u2014 the four reports are essentially an application for prospecting rights to diamonds, gold and a variety of heavy minerals. Given that the name of a supervising scientist does not appear anywhere in these documents, they are all clearly unlawful. But the lack of supervision, as Daily Maverick<\/em> would discover, came with a bunch of further consequences too.<\/p>\n In the general comments submitted to Gutoona on 17 May 2021, Natural Justice, a Cape Town-based environmental and land rights non-profit, points out<\/a> that the reports are all \u201cvague and high-level\u201d. They not only \u201cfail to provide site-specific assessments of impacts of the proposed activities,\u201d the lawyers at Natural Justice state, they also \u201cfail to provide sufficient details upon which a decision-maker can make informed and defensible decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n In the specific comments, Gutoona\u2019s work is then properly picked apart at its legally questionable seams. The objections begin with the \u201cneed and desirability\u201d provisions of section 24(O) the National Environmental Management Act (Nema), to which the former Department of Environmental Affairs \u2014 now the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries \u2014 provided a detailed guideline<\/a> in 2017.<\/p>\n Chapter 4 of the guideline, as Natural Justice notes, demands that the \u201cneed for and desirability of a proposed activity should specifically and explicitly be addressed\u201d throughout the entirety of the environmental impact assessment process. Yet, it appears, in each of the four reports covering this somewhat massive area of the Atlantic west coast, Gutoona has given \u201cbarely more than a page\u201d to need and desirability.<\/p>\n In this context, other than a \u201cvague reference to policy objectives that promote the applicants\u2019 own prospecting and mining plans,\u201d the reports \u201cfail to consider\u201d any planning, environmental, heritage or economic policy objectives of the local or provincial government.<\/p>\n The same thing applies, according to Natural Justice, when it comes to alternatives to mining that Nema requires all reports to assess, including the \u201cno-go\u201d option. The alternatives, it is alleged, have \u201cnot been fully explored\u201d while the no-go option is simply non-existent. In other words, for Cape Zircon and Buchuberg Resources, if we are to take their EAP at her word, not<\/em> mining is not an option.<\/p>\n This, aside from the legislative problem, is problematic for the following reason:<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to the West Coast District Municipality IDP and Spatial Development Framework Plan, traditionally the West Coast District\u2019s primary economic sectors consisted of agriculture and fishing.\u201d<\/p>\n It is here that Gutoona\u2019s \u201cfailure to consider\u201d climate change \u2014 only two brief mentions in the entirety of each 100-plus page report, it appears \u2014 comes into stark and disturbing focus.<\/p>\n As Natural Justice makes clear in light of the water usage requirements that these four applications represent:<\/p>\n \u201cAgriculture is also the biggest user of water in the district, mostly under irrigation, despite the district being considered as water-scarce. As such, the West Coast District Municipality recognises climate change as a threat to the environment, its residents, and to future development.\u201d<\/p>\n Given all of this, Natural Justice\u2019s position, as an \u201cinterested and affected party,\u201d is that the proposed mining activities are neither needed nor desirable. Here, again, the reasons for their stance are obvious: \u201c[Agriculture] remains one of the most important drivers of economic growth in the district, relying heavily on access and use of water to sustain and develop the sector for the benefit of the local economy and for the benefit of providing for food security.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet despite the above, we are still only a third of the way through Natural Justice\u2019s objections. Their issues with Gutoona\u2019s work continue for another seven pages, including \u201cfailure to assess water supply\u201d, \u201cfailure to consider availability of licenced waste disposal sites\u201d, \u201cfailure to adequately assess biodiversity\u201d and a general failure, outlined in a number of lengthy and detailed paragraphs, to fulfil the obligations of the all-important process of public participation.<\/p>\n III.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n So who, on this specific suite of jobs, are Yvonne Gutoona\u2019s clients?<\/p>\n A CIPC search reveals that Cape Zircon and Buchuberg Resources share the same directors: Lambertus Marthinius Cilliers, Jacobus Kotze van Niekerk and Vincent Sebatli Madlela.<\/p>\n Cilliers, it turns out, otherwise known as \u201cBertus,\u201d is also listed<\/a> as the \u201cHead of Angolan Operations\u201d for the Trans Hex Group, one of South Africa\u2019s largest diamond mining concerns. Van Niekerk, as far as Daily Maverick<\/em> could ascertain, is the same person named in a 2018 report<\/a> by Richard Poplak as the \u201cmanaging member\u201d of a company called Ambicor, which was on contract at the time to Alexkor \u2014 the state-owned diamond mining company \u2014 to perform environmentally devastating cofferdam jobs off the Northern Cape coast. Madlela we couldn\u2019t get a signal on, until we came across the minutes of a public participation meeting that Buchuberg Resources hosted at the Doringbaai community hall on 6 May 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Madlela used to be a legal consultant for MSR,\u201d the minutes stated.<\/p>\n This would be the same MSR, short for Mineral Sands Resources, that in 2019 was granted the right to massively expand its Tormin beach mining operation near Lutzville on the Olifants River. Owned by the Australian company Mineral Commodities Ltd, MSR was given the go-ahead by the South African government to mine 10 additional beaches \u2014 without having to apply for a new mining right or undertake a full environmental impact assessment for the expanded area.<\/p>\n In the high court challenge that the Centre for Environmental Rights subsequently brought against the decision \u2014 a decision that the government had doubled down on when they dismissed the appeals \u2014 MSR was required to disclose the environmental performance assessment reports for the entire Tormin operation, including the additional beaches.<\/p>\n Obtained by Daily Maverick<\/em>, the documents, which are a legislative requirement, had been signed off by a familiar name. Acting this time on behalf of Jomela Consulting, and referring to herself as an independent \u201cprofessional natural scientist,\u201d Gutoona\u2019s signature appeared on the 2019 and 2020 reports as the sole environmental consultant.<\/p>\n Was this a blatant misrepresentation of her qualifications? While Gutoona did not respond to Daily Maverick<\/em>\u2019s request for comment, there was one more document on which we found her name \u2014 representing Archean Resources again, the client was Moonstone Diamond Marketing, and one of the \u201ccontact persons\u201d was Madlela himself.<\/p>\n The document was a draft scoping report, submitted to DMRE on 30 August 2021, for an amended prospecting licence on a 70km stretch of coast directly north of the Olifants River estuary. According to the CIPC, Moonstone\u2019s directorships are all held by Trans Hex people, including chairman of the board<\/a>(and former Springbok rugby player) Marcus Wentzel.<\/p>\n Like his Trans Hex colleague Bertus Cilliers, Wentzel did not offer comment for this piece. Neither, unfortunately, did Madlela.<\/p>\n