State Governance, Participation and Mining Development: Lessons Learned from Dullstroom, Mpumalanga

ABSTRACT

Despite the advent of democracy witnessing government making considerable progress in developing the legal frameworks to manage mining development and include citizens in decision-making processes, this has largely been unsuccessful. Although it is known that the post-apartheid state may be ineffective in holding mining companies accountable for social and environmental abuse and engaging citizens in decision-making processes, it is unclear what may hamper effective governance and participation by the state. Since the popular tourist destination of Dullstroom, Mpumalanga has become under threat from an increasing number of mining applications for coal (and to a much more limited extend – diamonds), this paper presents viewpoints from key stakeholders to examine the effectiveness of the state to govern mining development and applications, including how the state (and industry) engages in participation with civil society surrounding mining development. Most participation literature have dealt with improving participatory processes rather than exploring the challenges towards successful participation. Investigations reveal a number of complex factors influencing governance and participation such as lack of government human resources, the ruling party promoting mining for social and economic upliftment, collusion between government and industry, and the Department of Mineral Resources domination of decision-making to promote mining limiting co-operative governance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 IAPs are those people who may be affected in some way by the development or have concerns surrounding the development. They could include surrounding residents and farmers, and private and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to name a few.

2 Two conceptual frameworks for civil society are used in this paper, namely local civil society (i.e. local residents and community leaders/representatives) living in the affected region, and external civil society (i.e. NGOs, the media, scientists and public interest law groups) who do not necessarily live in the affected area but provide support to local civil society actors (Leonard and Pelling 2010).

3 The DMR has existed under its current name since 2009 when the DME was divided and the Department of Energy was created.