[miningmx.com] — THE avarice of four landowners, assisted by environmental activist Mariette Liefferink from the Federation for a Sustainable Environment, is threatening the only solution to the longstanding pollution caused by 15 old tailings dams in Stilfontein and Klerksdorp.
This would mean an immediate end to 1 000-odd jobs in Stilfontein, apart from also threatening the viability of First Uranium Corporation’s Ezulwini Uranium Mine with its 3,500 workers.
The remaining shafts of the Buffelsfontein mine will also no longer have dumping facilities, possibly putting another 3,000 jobs at risk.
On September 16 the mining licence of Mine Waste Solutions (MWS), a First Uranium subsidiary, which plans to convert the 15 tailings dams and deposit them in a new mega tailings dam 15km outside Stilfontein, was suspended under pressure from Liefferink and the four landowners.
The four landowners, with Liefferink’s help, are allegedly attempting to disrupt the mine’s operations through trivial complaints and public pressure, so that First Uranium will eventually buy their land and end the unpleasantness.
One of the landowners, Johan Kondos, aided by Liefferink, objected to the mining licence.
Kondos, a well-to-do Klerksdorp businessman, is claiming R30m for 300ha of polluted land he bought ten years ago.
When Sake24 visited the farm last week, it was clear that it would be impossible to make a living from farming on that ground.
Kondos said he had had “one or two meetings’ with people from First Uranium.
On Friday he admitted that at one of the meetings he had told First Uranium’s two senior officials he aspired to having a wine farm in the Western Cape on which he could retire.
This was in a response to a question from First Uranium chief executive Deon van der Mescht as to what the company might do to resolve the differences.
Kondos openly boasted that the environmental group was being used to pressurise the mining company, and this had “started to work’.
Another landowner, Johan Appelgryn, bought the Buffelsfontein 443 IP farm three years ago shortly after the previous owner, named Barnard, had been paid R500,000 by First Uranium for a servitude for a pipeline along his boundary fence.
Appelgryn paid R12.5m for the property at an auction where the auctioneers had announced that a servitude was pending and was to be registered, and that the mega tailings dam would be constructed near the farm.
Shortly after bidding was closed, Appelgryn advised MWS that he would not permit any pipeline on the property and that he would not sign any documents for registration of the servitude in the Deeds Office.
Shortly after that he offered the land to MWS at a price of R27.5m.
When it became clear that MWS would not buy it, he proposed that MWS could instead pay him an “inconvenience fee’ of R15m.
Fifteen years ago the property was part of a game farm owned by Gengold, but the land, as well as that now owned by Kondos, was sold when Randgold took over portions from Gengold in 1995.
There are still game fences on the property and Appelgryn is apparently considering using the land, which has been without game for more than a decade, for hunting lion.
When Sake24 tried to discuss the matter with Appelgryn on Friday, he put the phone down.
Mine Waste Solution had been brought to a standstill by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) for ten days in August following complaints that Liefferink had lodged with the NNR on behalf of one of the landowners, Flip Jooste.
The NNR stopped the project last month on the basis of these complaints – the first time in the history of the NNR that it had halted a mining company’s operations. Liefferink is a member of the NNR’s board of control.
Questions put to her resulted in her voluntarily bringing copies of some of the four landowners’ court documents to Sake24’s office in Auckland Park in Friday.
MWS had paid Jooste R725,000 for a servitude for a pipeline and power lines to traverse his property.
Ever since the pipeline was built Jooste has continually complained about leakages.
Photographs he took of pipe leakages were used by Liefferink when submitting the claim, but closer inspection by the NNR has shown that the photos were taken of other pipelines used by an aggregate company on a different property.
Last week analysts and fund managers began an investigation to establish whether the project, in which foreigners have invested R8bn, is still viable.
– Sake24
