Today, the Western Cape High Court granted an order in favour of the City of Cape Town to stop a company, who had been given a mining licence by the Department of Mineral Resources, from mining until permission has been granted under the Western Cape Land Use Planning Ordinance, 1985 for the land to be used for mining. You can download this judgement in PDF here.
In their judgement, Davis J and Baartman J also confirmed that the company, Maccsand, required an environmental authorisation in terms of the National Environmental Management Act, 1998 (NEMA) for two listed activities. The court also ordered Maccsand and the Minister of Minerals and Energy to pay the City’s legal costs.
Key quotes from the judgement:
- “…the Constitution does not refer expressly to exclusive national competencies. … When these sections are examined together, it is clear that the Constitution does not detail exclusive national competence but carves out areas for provinces and municipalities, leaving the balance, being areas which are not so specified, to national government. In other words, the functional competence of the national government is defined by way of an examination of the functional competences of
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Mine rehab ‘will take 2900 years’
Abandoned mines pose a threat to surrounding communities as rising toxic acid mine water becomes heavily pollutant.
Business Day, 2 September 2010
CAPE TOWN — It could take SA about 2900 years to fully rehabilitate all 5 906 derelict and abandoned mines if the Department of Mineral Resources continues at its present pace, MPs were told yesterday.
Abandoned mines pose a threat to surrounding communities as rising toxic acid mine water becomes heavily pollutant.
The department has rehabilitated only five mines in the past two-and-a-half years . The auditor- general has found that the department lacks a comprehensive strategy and the capacity to deal with the issue. Addressing a joint sitting of the standing committee on public accounts, and the mineral resources portfolio committee, the director-general of the department, Sandile Nogxina, admitted that the pace of implementation is not what it should be .
“Government has today expanded the inter ministerial task team that deals with the issue to include other departments such as science and technology ,” he said.
“The department was not capacitated to deal with the function of rehabilitation as we are primarily a regulatory, licensing and policy-formulation department, the new responsibility was not reflected in our…