“As long as we are alive, we will pursue Angloplat to get what is owed to us”.
So declares Esther Moloto who, with fellow villagers, is waging war against the world’s biggest platinum mining company, a subsidiary of London-listed Anglo American.
Her impassioned comment follows shortly after the Bengwenyama-ye-Maswazi community, successfully sued another miner in the country’s platinum belt for encroaching on its territory.
However, according to this article, it’s not just poor black South Africans who are feeling a “squeeze”. The mining industry itself – the platinum sector included – is stagnating. Each year between 2000 and 2008, it actually contracted by 1 percent in dollar terms.
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=10703.