Horrifying stories this month of manganese ore dust offloaded in Gqeberha making residents ill has underlined how the Buffalo City Metro narrowly missed the mining environmental impact bullet.
In 2013, the Daily Dispatch exposed how then ANC chief whip Stone Sizani and controversial Irish property entrepreneur Niall Mellon staged a hostile board takeover of Elitheni Coal in Indwe.
However, only one series of trucks loaded with 30,000 tonnes of thermal coal made it to the East London port for a sale value of R15m before the company crashed.
Many of those trucks are standing idle on Garry Rieger’s business property outside Gonubie and he told the Dispatch he wanted to turn them into refuse skips to be rented to the Buffalo City Metro.
He said this deal would make the metro a lot cleaner and healthier.
On September 14, The Herald said in a leader that trucks carrying manganese to the Markman industrial area had left business owners and motorists in the area fuming because they suddenly had to contend with a flurry of huge trucks on the roads over the past two years.
The paper said the economic benefits to business had to be weighed up against traffic chaos and claims of health and environmental risks.
Markman businessmen described widespread respiratory problems among staff and called for urgent testing to check for manganism, a debilitating nervous system disease caused by years of inhaling ore dust.
At a meeting at precast concrete manufacturer Algoa Cement, Freight Solutions owner Philip Darne said manganese operators seemed to act with impunity. He said his staff were all getting sick.
Some employees complained about respiratory ailments, headaches and black dust when they blew their noses.
Strong calls had been made for the city to clamp down on the movement of manganese ore, while the municipality was criticised for not acting quickly enough to resolve the problem.
Not only is the manganese ore dirtying our city, the trucks are damaging the roads and there are potential health risks
Three weeks earlier, that metro’s public health committee called for the immediate shutdown of manganese handlers operating illegally in the area, saying they were failing to control the air pollution.
But there had been hardly any movement and “the pollution continues unabated”.
The Herald called for health tests to be conducted on employees and residents in the surrounding areas to determine whether there were any health effects from the ore.
It could not be “a free-for-all without consequences”.
“Not only is the manganese ore dirtying our city, the trucks are damaging the roads and there are potential health risks. For those reasons, this cannot be ignored,” it said.
The Herald had reported on September 13 that Algoa Cement, based in Chrysler Street, had been reduced to an mangled, ore-dust-laden mess since the manganese freight industry exploded in Markman during the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020.
Darne said: “We’re all getting sick.”
Employees often have headaches. They blow their noses and black stuff comes out
Koenie de Jager, of mining equipment specialist Weir Minerals Africa, expressed concern about the effects of ore dust from where it was offloaded in the city on many thousands of people living right next door in Motherwell.
Andrew Stern, of furniture components factory Sternwoods, said his staff continually suffered from respiratory ailments.
“Employees often have headaches. They blow their noses and black stuff comes out.
“It’s not nice and the real fear is the long-term effects.”
Algoa Cement’s co-owner, Chris Collett, said the situation was untenable.
“We can’t work with the place like this.
“The dust is everywhere, over our staff and our products.
“As you can see, Chrysler Street is being ripped up.
“Telephone poles and fire hydrants have been knocked down.
“Surely the municipality should be interested in protecting municipal interests?”
On August 24, The Herald reported pavements in Markman had been damaged by overloaded manganese trucks and ore piled up along roadways.
Residents and business owners accused operators in the manganeseindustry of stockpiling and said ore rocks were flying off open-haulage trucks.
Two operators were ordered to halt work due to a lack of air pollution controls and several other businesses were fined.
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