BUSINESS MAVERICK: Joint operations centre set up to quash platinum belt unrest

The eastern limb of South Africa’s platinum belt, which curves up from Lydenburg in Mpumalanga before cutting an arc across a swathe of Limpopo, is in flames. It may sit upon some of the planet’s richest platinum group metals and chrome deposits, but the wealth that has been generated from beneath the soil has clearly not been spread widely enough.

The target of the discontent varies: service delivery protests against corrupt and incompetent local governments disrupt mining operations, while tribal authorities have been the subject of community wrath over suspicions about the dispersal of revenue payments. Demands for jobs are another trigger in a region that mining sources say has an unemployment rate of close to 80%, more than double the appalling national average.

In 2017, Impala Platinum’s Marula operation in the region was on the verge of closure because of community protests sparked by a chrome project set up with a local tribal authority that went sour amid perceptions that the revenue flows were not transparent. The terms of the project were then renegotiated to make it more transparent. But flare-ups still occur around the mine and it was shut for a week in March by community protests.

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