We are not poor, say Amadiba
There is a difference between poverty and poor infrastructure.
THE people of the Amadiba area on the Wild Coast have taken issue with a South African Roads Agency (Sanral) description of their home as being one of the poorest areas in the country.
The Pondo people from this area have lived their traditional way of life for centuries. However, the proposed Xolobeni Heavy Mineral Project, which would see the dunes mined along a 22km stretch of the Wild Coast, and the government’s controversial plan to build the N2 highway across their ancestral ground, have polarised the community.
Some hail these developments as beacons of economic hope for a poverty-stricken region. Others, including members of the anti-mining Amadiba Crisis Committee, fear the road and the mining as the beginning of the destruction of a way of life.
Nonhle Mbuthuma, a spokesman for the crisis committee, brought up the matter during a question and answer session after the Ramsgate screening of The Shore Break, a documentary on the wild coast mining controversy. “When will this stupidity stop?” she demanded, pointing out that the Amadiba people could not be described as poor when they had land. They grew maize, sweet potatoes, yams, potatoes, onions, spinach, carrots, lemons and guavas, selling some of the crops for cash. Agricultural development is the type of progress that is needed. she said.
“We fish and we eat egg and chicken. We have cattle for weddings and traditional rituals. We have goats for ceremonies. We are not among the quoted one out of four South Africans who go hungry to bed. We have a life here,” said Nonhle.
There was a difference between poverty and poor infrastructure. While the government was pushing for an N2 highway that would allow the rich to rush through the Eastern Cape in their luxury vehicles, the secondary access roads were deliberately left to be washed away, she alleged.
“The N2 Highway Toll Road across our ancestral land is not for us and, of course, it is not for tourists. It makes it faster to drive from Durban to East London. It will also support the plans of the Australian company MRC for the Xolobeni open cast mining,
Should the mining and the toll road projects go ahead, people and graves of ancestors would have to be moved. She and her committee believed that, rather than bringing prosperity to the Amadiba area, these projects would threaten food security and the very fabric of a functional traditional community.
