Introduction
Most scholars draw upon Harvey’s (2003) concept of accumulation by dispossession to characterise the new global processes by which land is enclosed, its users dispossessed, and its mineral resources exploited. Central to Harvey’s (2003, 2006) proposition is that accumulation by dispossession, with its genealogy in Marx’s primitive accumulation, entails accumulation of capital through extra-economic means in the context of neoliberal capitalism and globalisation. However, Harvey’s argument takes an overly omnibus and materialist approach in trying to cover a very wide range of global processes of dispossession. I therefore distil accumulation by dispossession’s three central features of coercion, non-voluntary consent and corruption to enhance its local explanatory power of both material and incorporeal dispossession in post-apartheid South Africa. Incorporeal dispossessions refer to intangible losses of spiritual capital, heritage and belonging through grave relocations. This approach magnifies our academic understanding of how a triumvirate of traditional leaders, state officials and the Ivanplats platinum mine continue to dispossess marginalised people as the mine aims to become the world’s largest producer of platinum group metals. It is located on the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex or platinum belt in Limpopo province, South Africa. The Bushveld Complex underlies an area that contains 80% of the world’s known platinum group metals, spanning Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga provinces and covering more than 65,000 square kilometres (Capps 2012a; Mnwana 2015, 1). With the Bushveld Complex covering large communal lands under the jurisdiction of traditional authorities but attracting new mining investments, it becomes the primary site of the new community struggles over land (Claassens and Matlala 2014; Capps 2012a). A focus on the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex, through the distilled prisms of accumulation by dispossession, allows an explanation with original empirical research of the actors involved, the process of dispossession, the resultant crises of agrarian-based livelihoods coupled with loss of incorporeal possessions and the tokenism of the mine’s welfarist projects and how all this generated local resistance. Before delving into the empirical findings, the next section justifies the crystallisation of accumulation by dispossession and extends the analytic horizon to non-material issues.
Accumulation by dispossession and beyond
Some Marxist political economists dismiss accumulation by dispossession as an amorphous term that lacks explanatory power because it covers an extraordinarily wide range of issues relating to the operation of contemporary global capitalism (Brenner 2006; Fine 2006; Wood 2006). Beyond the enclosure of land and other natural resources, Harvey (2006)’s accumulation by dispossession covers issues such as: the privatisation of social housing which leads to market speculation and eventually to dispossession of poor owners who cannot borrow from the banks; state redistribution of contracts to big corporate companies signifying unfair wealth distribution; the state’s withdrawal of welfarist projects, loss of health-care rights and loss of pension rights; the abuse of government power to expropriate private property and convert it into public use; financialisation through the deregulation of the financial sector leading to control of money in circulation by commercial banks for their private gain, the raiding of pension funds and the creation and manipulation of global financial crises like stock market crashes, credit crunches and high interest rates to deprive poor nations of access to resources, and therefore forcing them to adopt neoliberal policies.
As Fine (2006, 154) argues, it homogenises different contexts. However, I intend neither to dismiss the term wholesale nor to ‘inflate the concept’ (Brenner 2006, 24), but to disentangle three of accumulation by dispossession’s central features that are useful in explaining new forms of ongoing local processes of capitalist accumulation in post-apartheid South Africa. First, non-voluntary consent in land acquisitions for mining in communal areas under the jurisdiction of tribal authorities is an important and applicable characteristic of accumulation by dispossession. Non-voluntary consent refers to affected communities accepting investments under undue influence and/or without adequate information. This is usually accompanied by state backing and investors’ marshalling of rural elites such as traditional leaders and hired gangs to acquire land (Harvey 2006). Second, the use of coercion by intimidation and violence is central to accumulation by dispossession and is a long historic feature of capitalist accumulation (Harvey 2003). Third, fraud and corruption, which refer to irregular conduct that benefit the investors and deprive communities, are central to Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession and there is certainly often corruption involved in any large-scale land development project (Harvey 2003). In short, accumulation by dispossession, in this form, is useful in analysing the ‘processes by which land and other resources are enclosed, and their previous users dispossessed, for the purposes of capital accumulation’ (Hall 2013, 1583).
I go further to use these three central features of accumulation by dispossession to help shed invaluable light on another dimension of dispossession. Marxist political economists who have critiqued accumulation by dispossession have ended up with overly materialistic frameworks. For example, Brenner (2006) prefers the term primitive accumulation to explain contemporary dispossession as he resists the dialectic of space and time. Wood (2006) sees accumulation by dispossession being more useful as a manifestation of extra-economic power in the acquisition of natural resources. Even Arrighi, Aschoff and Scully (2010) have applied the term accumulation by dispossession to critique dispossession on a limited economic basis: asserting that it inhibits successful capitalist or socialist economic development through a negative impact on domestic markets, reproduction costs and quality of labour. This approach ignores different values attached to land in rural Africa that are political, historical and spiritual (Alexander 2006). Consequently, ‘the loss of incorporeal possessions such as history and belonging and the dislocation of the memory attached’ (Skosana 2019, 14) and including, for example, grave relocations should feature as an aspect of South Africa’s post-apartheid dispossession story. For the capitalist investors, graves are ‘materially reduced to commodities, movable and replaceable things that stand in a way of profit-making’ (Skosana 2019, 14) but for communities they have a deeper, intangible meaning. These non-material or incorporeal ideas are more abstract but necessary to provide a theoretical entry point that offers more concrete investigations of specific cases as the one in this article.
Contradictions in mining reforms and securing informal land rights
At the advent of democracy in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) inherited a white-dominated platinum industry and millions of impoverished black Africans living in communal areas under the jurisdiction of tribal authorities. The Africans were dispossessed from their prime land through a long historic process of colonialism, apartheid and capitalist development that started in 1652 (see Wolpe 1972). The ANC government therefore faced a dialectical policy problem of promoting platinum mining investments, stopping non-voluntary dispossession of people living in communal areas and dealing with the powers of traditional leaders through legislation and related policies.
The three important pieces of legislation were the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act (IPILRA) (No. 31 of 1996), the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (No. 28 of 2002) (MPRD Act) and the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act 41 of 2003 (Traditional Leadership Act). IPILRA is meant to protect informal rights to land such as the right to use, gain access to or occupy land under customary law in the former homelands of South Africa. IPILRA requires that the holder of informal land rights must consent to dispose of such a right. Section 2(1) states that ‘no person may be deprived of any informal right to land without his or her consent.’ South Africa’s jurisprudence has strengthened the right to give consent. In 2018, the North Gauteng High Court ruled that the Xolobeni community has a right to reject a mining project, in line with IPILRA. This is also in line with the international principle of ‘free, prior and informed consent’. Free, prior and informed consent gives people the right to approve or reject developmental projects, therefore upholding the universal right to self-determination (FAO 2014).
The MPRD Act, on the other hand, embodies contradictory proposals to promote big mining investments and redistribute the resource base to racially transform the mineral property system in line with commitments to social justice (Capps 2012b). In terms of acquiring land from the informal land rights holders, Section 5(4) of the MPRD Act stipulates that the investor must notify and consult the lawful occupiers. However, the MPRD Act’s guidelines require a consultation report but do not allow a host community the explicit right to reject a proposed project (CLS 2015). Participation is further undermined by other laws such as the Traditional Leadership Act of 2003 – which was revised as the Traditional Leadership Act of 2019 on 28 November 2019 – that interact with the above-mentioned acts to govern customary tenure. The Traditional Leadership Act centralises chiefly power in a way that contradicts participatory accountability mechanisms (Mohale 2019). Traditional leaders interpret it to mean that ‘only they, and officially constituted and recognised “traditional councils”, have the right to call meetings, to access information and to represent people living within the tribal jurisdictions delineated during apartheid’ (Claassens and Matlala 2014, 118). Within this context, recent studies on platinum mining in the Bushveld Complex have gone beyond a focus on labour regimes, mining strikes and violence (Bolt and Rajak 2016) to understand land politics and wider dispossession (Mtero 2017; Shackleton 2020).
The new dispossession: current debates and limitations
An important genre of the literature looks at the long struggle to control communal land among the traditional leaders, locally based clans and ‘outsiders’ around long-established platinum mines in Rustenburg in North West province (Capps and Mnwana 2015; Claassens and Matlala 2014; Mnwana 2015). At the heart of this contestation is that the land was historically purchased by African groups by the 1860s and registered to the state ‘in trust’ for a recognised local chief and his ‘tribe’ (Capps and Mnwana 2015, 608). In this specific context, traditional leaders are becoming major shareholders in platinum mining operations in a trend of ‘chiefly accumulation from above’, but locally based clans are laying counter-claims to ownership of land based on the history of group land-buying stated above (Capps and Mnwana 2015, 609–610). People are contesting the versions of custom that propel chiefs to exclusively own their land, mineral rights and by extension mining royalties and business transactions (Claassens and Matlala 2014, 118). It is a struggle to be included for a share of the mining profits. Understated here is the articulation of struggles over land for alternative agrarian-based livelihoods and incorporeal benefits. This can be starker in a different context like Limpopo, where communities that eke their livelihoods from agriculture are facing a new wave of dispossession, and mineral rights are seen as a preserve of the state.
I therefore focus on major Limpopo studies that seek to understand the effects of mining on agrarian-based livelihoods in ways that resonate with my work on accumulation by dispossession, although they do not use the same concept (Mtero 2017; Shackleton 2020). For example, Mtero (2017) used the livelihoods approach to analyse the impact of Mogalakwena platinum mine on rural livelihoods in the Mapela traditional authority area. In a separate study, Shackleton (2020) used a similar approach in the study of Ga-Molekana village which lost around 8000 hectares of land to mining in the 1990s. Both studies found that households lost land for crop cultivation, financial income and food sources and access to grazing land for livestock and non-timber forest products, with few gaining employment (Mtero 2017, 190; Shackleton 2020, 10). However, Mtero (2017) is silent on incorporeal dispossession, and Shackleton (2020, 8) only made reference in one sentence to the local people’s failure to conduct rituals and the arbitrary movement of graves. This has been a theme pursued by Mnwana, Mtero and Hay (2016) and Saccaggi (2012) in the context of massive and ‘silent’ processes of grave relocations by expanding platinum mining companies (Steyn 2009).
The story of dislocation of graves has been framed in the context of wider dispossession (Mnwana, Mtero and Hay 2016) or in terms of ‘legality, referencing the National Heritage Resources Act and the Constitution of South Africa’ (Saccaggi 2012, 14). Saccaggi (2012) extensively studied how Potgietersrus platinum mine relocated 150 ancestral graves in 2008 from Blinkwater farm to Sekuruwe village. Mnwana, Mtero and Hay’s study (2016, 31) also made reference to the relocation of 2200 graves by Amplats platinum mining near Mokopane. Some of the inhabitants followed ‘traditional customs of ancestral veneration, which considers the spirits of the deceased as integral parts of everyday life’ (Saccagi 2012, 39). From both studies one can deduce five community dissatisfactions. First, the general absence of voluntary consent over the relocation of ancestral graves. Second, the use of violence against the dead as graves were damaged, skeletons broken and some bones lost during relocations in violation of the National Heritage Resources Act. The third is inadequate compensation for grave relocation. Fourth was powerlessness, as state institutions failed to regulate the companies, which made communities believe that these institutions were corrupted. Fifth was the violation of the constitutional right to enjoyment of cultural life. This resulted in people’s spiritual relationship with the dead being damaged, resulting in psychological trauma. This is because ‘the ancestral spirits are thought to bring fortune, and stave off the evil powers which cause misfortune’ (Saccaggi 2012, 39). I observe that violence, non-voluntary consent and corruption remained at the centre of dispossession in ways that captured global interest.
Given growing international attentiveness, ActionAid South Africa (ActionAid 2018), Human Rights Watch (HRW 2019) and the South Africa Human Rights Commission (SAHRC 2018) carried out separate studies that covered part of Limpopo and which were meant to understand challenges faced by mining affected communities. All three studies found legislative gaps and non-compliance with consultation laws, housing laws and environmental laws, inadequate compensation for the dispossessed and widespread human rights violations, with little economic benefit for the communities. However, the major limitation of the three reports is that they employ a narrow legalistic approach and an overemphasis on extra-economic means as the primary problem. Dispossession does not always have to be illegal for it to have devastating consequences: sometimes it occurs legally through neoliberal state policies such as the MPRD Act intended to attract foreign investments. The consequences for the poor are dire, whether through economic or extra-economic means. In addition, SAHRC (2018) and HRW (2019) argue for state institutions to regulate dispossession by mining companies. For ActionAid (2018), the solution is building community agency. The recommendations pay little attention to the power relations embedded in a triple coercive structure of the state, capital and traditional leaders, as we shall see. I now provide the specificities of my grounded case study to further aid our understanding in Limpopo.
Ivanplats platinum mine: ownership structure and power relations
Data on who owns the investments and distribution of shares are usually opaque in cases of land dispossession (Hall 2011). In this case, however, I can provide details on the investors, the ownership structure and the decision-making framework. I argue that there was unequal distribution of power in decision-making between the community and the foreign investor, which reproduced day-to-day capitalist relations of domination.
First, the mine is owned by Ivanplats (Pty) Ltd, formerly Platreef Resources (Pty) Ltd. Ivanplats has a 30-year mining right granted on 30 June 2014 and this was legally executed on 4 November 2014 (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016). It is a subsidiary of the Canadian majority shareholder Ivanhoe Mining Ltd, which has a 64% shareholding in it (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016). A Japanese consortium, Tochi, holds 10% shares in the investment (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016). Tochi allegedly bought the 10% using pension funds from Japan (Interview no. 20, Phadishi Moremi, 24 April 2018), further demonstrating capital’s search for new frontiers of investments (Hall 2011).1 Tochi is composed of Itochu Corporation; ITC Platinum, an affiliate of Itochu; Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation; and Japan Gas Corporation (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016). The third partner holds 26% of Ivanplats, as required by the Broad Based Socio-Economic Empowerment Charter for the South African Mining and Minerals Industry (2004). It is registered as Platreef B-BBEE Private Limited and constitutes local communities, local entrepreneurs, and staff (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2006; Interview no. 20, Moremi, 24 April 2018). The Platreef B-BBEE private limited shares were distributed as follows: 20% of shares were held by 20 directly and indirectly affected villages under Kgoshi (Chief) Lesiba V. Kekana in Mokopane, amounting to about 150,000 people; Ivanplats workers had 3% shares and 3% was for local entrepreneurs, making up the 26% held as the third partner. However, Ivanplats created some companies intended to service the mine in catering, construction and transport, and these held the 3% for local entrepreneurs (Interview no. 20, Moremi, 24 April 2018).
Decision-making powers were vested in the Ivanplats eight-member board of trustees. Only three trustees represented the community and each had one vote. One of the three trustees/directors seconded by the community in 2014 was an employee of Ivanplats but the deed of trust was silent on issues of conflict of interest. All three trustees were men. The other five trustees were distributed as follows: one trustee was appointed by Ivanplats, one trustee was appointed by the secretary of the trust and three trustees were ‘independent’. These five trustees were paid some remuneration, unlike the three community representatives who were not paid, because of a clause in the agreement that barred them from receiving any remuneration (Platreef Communities Umbrella Deed Trust 2014).
Moremi reported his experience as a trustee:
We have no access to bank accounts. We do not even know who the bank signatories are. Our work is to rubber stamp as Ivanplats controls the money. They draft financial reports for meetings but do not attach any supporting documents, no bank statements to back that up and not even receipts. … Community members always ask us [community representatives] who are the signatories and how much money is in the bank but we cannot provide answers. … In 2014, we demanded the B-BBEE agreements, but the company said they were confidential. How can they be confidential when we hold 26% shares? (Interview no. 20, Moremi, 24 April 2018)
Two community representatives ended up complicit with Ivanplats. Moremi, one of the original community representatives, had remained critical of Ivanplats. As a result, the chair of the board of trustees stated in a letter that Moremi’s tenure had ended on 30 June 2017 (Makwetla 2017). Moremi tried to challenge his removal, which he deemed illegal, through an application to the Master of High Court but he faced resource constraints (Interview no. 20, Moremi, 24 April 2018).
The investor was the majority shareholder and had financial power and access to information. These unequal power relations shaped the dynamics of decision-making, reproducing relations of domination unveiled through further research.
Researching dispossession
For a detailed story of processes of dispossession, consequences on wider livelihoods and resulting responses, I used qualitative research methods. Fieldwork was carried out in four different periods between October 2016 and November 2019 in order to capture any patterns of change in the dispossession processes. The study covered 12 out of the 20 affected villages, namely: Magongoa, Kgobudi, Madiba, Masodi, Maroteng, Masehlaneng, Mokaba, Masenya, Moshate, Polar Park (Ga-Manyama), Mountain View (Ga-Kgosana) and Malepetleke villages. In the affected villages, community mining activists from the following three local institutions were interviewed: Limpopo Stakeholders’ Network Forum, Mining-Affected Communities United in Action, and Kopano Formation Committee. Their leaders acted as key informants because they had details about mining investments and they represented a wide range of the affected communities. One might view these as biased sources. However, clear patterns similar to their accounts emerged across different segments of the community, a range of which I draw on in the final analysis. Hence, I also interviewed two traditional councils, namely Masodi tribal council and Malepetleke tribal council. For more diverse views and triangulation, representatives of the Mogalakwena Municipality were interviewed. Individual households were also interviewed for an in-depth understanding. In addition to field data, reports of non-governmental organisations, companies and communities and government laws and policy documents helped to shed light on dispossession. Media articles were also of use. Company and community reports at times offered distinctly different views, but a careful reading of both revealed closer accounts of developments on the ground and of the political rhetoric that surrounded them. Next, from such a mix of research methods, I build on Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession to demonstrate how non-voluntary acquisition, coercion and corruption aided land dispossession.
How was the land acquired?
Ivanplats largely consulted with Chief Kekana and his network of traditional leaders instead of the people who held the land rights. The investor seemed to understand the chief as the bastion of rural power as in the apartheid era. A member of the Limpopo Stakeholders’ Network Forum (Interview, 18 October 2016) explained that ‘when issues are discussed, it is the chief and the mine involved, the people are not part. They are just verbally informed of the outcomes. Whether what is said is true or not – only the chief knows.’ However, communicating such land agreements to the communities was not always easy. As a result, in Madiba village, traditional leaders faked the meeting agenda. As community member Pearl Kekana (Interview no. 10, 11 December 2017) explained,
Chiefs call meetings on the pretext that they would discuss employment, so people will attend because there are no jobs. In these meetings, traditional leaders will say the mine was offering jobs. You submit the curriculum vitae and tick the register. Chiefs then attached the attendance register to an already existing land acquisition agreement with the investor as proof of consultation.
In other villages, traditional leaders told people the investor was ready to give money and jobs in exchange for land. As a result, people in Masodi village agreed to stop ploughing and gave their land away ‘voluntarily’, as attested by one of the dispossessed (Interview no. 2, Betty Tshabalala, 19 October 2016). The lack of accountability by chiefs in mining communities is well documented (see Capps and Mnwana 2015; Claassens and Matlala 2014). According to a number of key informants, acquired fields were compensated with a one-off payment of 2000 rands per household. In some localities, the traditional leaders consulted a few who supported the investments (Interview no. 18, Solomon Kwetse, 21 April 2018). These were largely the local rich men. A gendered dynamic to consultations led by patriarchal chiefs emerged. As a local mining activist, Betty Laka (Interview no. 14, 18 April 2018), explained,
Women are the most affected by traditional leader-led consultations. Yet we want women to be part of the decision-making process. In our culture, men say women are not allowed to speak. We say, let us allow women to speak at consultation meetings. Loss of land really affects women who have to feed the children.
It was evident that decision-making became highly centralised at the apex of the traditional leadership as citizens became subjects. I am inclined to cite Mnwana (2015, 502), in that ‘local chiefs, as assumed custodians of communal resources, have become mediators of mineral-led development and mining deals’ but in violation of IPILRA.
However, some community members contested the notion of the chief as owner of the land. For example, Mokete Khoda (Interview no. 13, 18 April 2018) stated that
the chief is not the owner of the land. The land belongs to us, the community. The chief never bought the land. We should be the ones to give the Department of Mining authority but with government, it is not like that.
Nevertheless, there were also contradictions within the institution of traditional leadership, with a few still favouring an accountable consultative process over acquisition of land. In such cases, those who opposed were dethroned and there was superimposition of traditional leaders who were submissive to the dictates of capital. For example, Moses Madiba, whom the community recognised as the rightful heir to the throne and opposed to mining, was sidelined by Chief Kekana. A submissive induna (a sub-chief presiding over a particular village) was appointed ahead of him. Madiba (Interview no. 15, 19 and 21 April 2018) emphasised, ‘the Chief did not give me the appointment letter. This is because they do not want me to be an induna because I do not agree with the way the mine is doing business in this area.’ Most community members said they wanted Madiba to be registered as a legitimate induna so that Ivanplats could go through him and their land rights be supported (Interview no. 12, Solomon Kwetse, 12 December 2017). Despite the complaints, the compliant traditional leaders dominated the decision-making process, as an all-powerful investor and the state supported them.
In a context where accountability was absent, perceptions of corruption were widespread. Some traditional leaders were allegedly corrupted by the investor through bribes. Langa alleged that ‘Kekana receives a R30,000 a month salary and other unspecified benefits from the company … he speaks for Ivanplats, not us’ (Nyale 2016). Betty Tshabalala (Interview no. 2, 19 October 2016) corroborated ‘any project contemplated by any investors, the Kgoshi will be the first one to be bribed and he will just instruct his indunas to conform.’ Jeremy Michaels, Ivanplats’ spokesperson, denied that the payment was a bribe. He explained that ‘the Chief was paid reasonable remuneration for time he has rendered to the company and company-related activities … including holding meetings and facilitating the company’s exercise of its prospecting rights’ (Nyale 2016). With such a hefty payment in a society where the majority were poor, this was bound to raise suspicion and compromise the perceived independence of the chief.
Corruption allegations also involved government officials. The community stated that:
Mr Vinesh Devchander [government official in the mining department] received a kickback [gratuity] for improperly assisting Ivanplats against an objection Kopano lodged with Regional Mining Development and Environmental Committee (RMDEC). The alleged kickback is indirectly received from Ivanplats as a rain-water harvesting contract awarded to his wife. He was introduced at the Ga-Kgobudi traditional council sitting as ‘the contractor’ for the water harvesting contract on 3 July 2015. We allege that the kickback is for his abuse of his position of authority, forbearance and violation of administrative justice. (Community Petition 2015)
However, Michaels agreed that Varuna Rain Water Harvesting (VRWH), solely owned by Devchander’s wife, got three million rands to supply water tanks to the community, but he insisted that tender processes were followed (Nyale 2016).
This was not satisfactory to most members of the community as many voices echoed that corruption was a central feature of dispossession. Derick Tsita (Interview no. 16, 19 April 2018), a community member, elaborated:
Our government officials are corrupt. They take bribes. We have knocked on every government door, but our concerns are on deaf ears. No one is above the law, but capital can get away with it. Maybe Cyril Ramaphosa [South Africa’s president] will bring change because he stated that he is anti-corruption.
Violence was also at the core of dispossession and an inherent but undesirable feature of capitalist expansion. Madiba and his wife believed they were shot at their homestead in 2016 for opposing the mine. Madiba (Interview no. 15, 19 and 21 April 2018) narrated:
I was shot by local gangsters paid by the mine, on the upper side of my left arm. My wife was also shot with three bullets in her breast. This is well coordinated by the mine because I am against the way the mining is doing business.
as activists we fear for our lives. If you expose the mine, they can send people to come and kill you. However, we are ready to die. This is our land; this is our community. (Interview no. 13, Khoda, 18 April 2018)
Crises of livelihoods
Ivanplats fenced off land and water sources, which affected crop harvests, undermined household food security and limited local accumulation from agricultural activities, and in so doing paved the way for capitalist accumulation by Ivanplats. The bulk of the affected were farmers mainly growing food to feed their families and occasionally to sell. Alongside was a smaller group of market-oriented farmers who mainly grew for the local markets. From the interviews, the local farmers used to grow maize, sorghum and sweet potatoes in bulk. These were important sources of carbohydrates for families. They also grew sugar beans and groundnuts, which were important sources of fat and protein. Other crops were cabbages, onions, tomatoes, spinach and carrots by the riverbanks and in homestead gardens. These were important sources of vitamins. The enclosure of land forced locals to concentrate on growing maize as a staple food and sugar beans as the main relish. Respondents outlined that yields per hectare had reduced since the establishment of the mine. As Molebogeng Masanabo (Interview no. 23, 27 October 2019), a dispossessed farmer explained,
Farming is very central to our livelihoods. However, the mine fenced off all the land. My family and I no longer have access to the land. This has affected us in a bad way. We used to produce about 20 bags of maize and sorghum, 10 bags of sugar beans and some groundnuts. This was enough to feed the family for the season. Now we only rely on the homestead garden and we can only produce three bags of maize [from] the yard. Most of our money from the social grants now goes to buy food.
Households that used to drill water from boreholes to irrigate their gardens now had to rely on rain-fed agriculture. Ivanplats enclosed 216 boreholes for mining operations that had previously supplied water to the communities (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016). As (SAHRC 2018, 38) observed, ‘mining operations utilise large quantities of water, and can affect significantly on availability and quality of water resources through the depreciation of water sources and their potential contamination.’ Even though Ivanplats designed a plan with the municipality to provide potable water to the community through the controversial VRWH owned by a government official's wife, as explained earlier, the amount supplied was insufficient in quantity to meet domestic uses, let alone gardening and stock. As a community member remarked, ‘currently the community does not have water, instead the municipality is delivering water in a tanker once a week’ (Interview no. 4, Ntona Lebelo, 20 October 2016). As a result, farmers like William Malla, who was involved in a large agricultural project and epitomised a group of the well-to-do farmers, stopped garden farming because the boreholes were enclosed and thus no longer available to local people (Interview no. 17, Vista Malla, 19 April 2018). Water scarcity in the area was bound to worsen for local farmers as the investor continued to search for new paths of accumulating the ‘public good’ into a ‘private resource’ for mining. As Woodhouse and Ganho (2011) argue, capitalist foreign investors get priority access to water in cases of scarcity.
In addition, the mine-enclosed part of the common grazing fields in ga-Magongoa, Mzumbane and Tshamahansi villages and some households lost their livestock for lack of fodder. This adversely affected their livelihoods, as described by a dispossessed Vallrey Kgosana (Interview no. 7, 7 and 8 December 2017):
Our livestock has nowhere to graze and, as a result, we are forced to sell them, yet the livestock value in our lives cannot be replaced by one-off cash payments. We used donkeys for ploughing, to transport our crops after harvest and to fetch water in times of drought. The goats were important for cultural and religious rituals. When a child falls sick, we slaughter a goat and do our rituals for spiritual healing. Sheep are also important because during a marriage ceremony one has to slaughter a sheep. Cattle is the mainstay. We use it for meat, to sell to cover basic household costs and [it] is essential for relish during funerals. Now without grazing land and with contaminated water sources, we are losing our livestock, we will continue to lose it and, no doubt, we will be poorer.
Non-material losses
Beyond the loss of economic assets, there was dispossession in the form of grave relocations through non-voluntary consent and violence. Ivanplats noted that ‘55 burial grounds were identified within the Platreef Project areas … . All of these sites are located in proposed infrastructure footprint areas and will be impacted on by the proposed development’ (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016, 397). The graves stood in the way of mining and had to be relocated. There was no consultation with the relatives in some of the reburial exercises and, as affected local, Vallrey Kgosana (Interview no. 7, 7 and 8 December 2017) explained, ‘mines disrespect our graves. They relocated some graves without the knowledge of the families. Yet there are cultural issues that must be done to appease the dead before relocation.’ Letty Mboyana, a member of the affected community, also complained about lack of consultation in the reburial exercise. She lamented,
As a family, we practise African cultural and religious beliefs. The graves of our ancestors were relocated to Mukapa and we are not sure where exactly. The family was not invited for exhumation. It is a taboo. They went ahead with exhumation without us. When exhumation took place, we should have been there. A proper traditional funeral should have been done. They have not respected the dead. It is difficult to say what can be done to atone. (Interview no. 19, Letty Mboyana, 22 April 2018)
As acknowledged even by the investor, within the Platreef Project areas, burials
are still connected to those inhabitants residing in nearby villages. They are part of the living heritage of the communities and are significant as shown by the comments made during public meetings. Community members still visit their ancestors as shown by various burial grounds showing signs of on-going maintenance. (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016, 397)
the story of grave relocations features as an aspect of dispossession, in which communities also lose ties to their ancestors. This results in spiritual insecurity – a state in which the living are anxious about their standing with ancestors. (Skosana 2019, 1)
When I visited the reburial sites, I personally witnessed graves cracking with huge holes, and some were collapsing. This showed that Ivanplats used non-durable and cheap materials. During the drilling activities, there was damage to two family graves. In addition, graves that were not relocated continued to be desecrated. For example, in a letter of complaint to government the community stated that
at the site inspection of the 10 June 2015, we pointed out the burial ground of [a] family which was previously unknown to Ivanplats. A month later Ivanplats was still using an access road that traverses the burial [site] … Ivanplats has failed to immediately cease using the access. (Community Petition 2015)
Local accumulation?
The Ivanplats mining venture was not necessarily dispossessing to everyone. Some elites employed by government and other sectors from nearby urban areas such as Polokwane moved into the area to invest their wage earnings into entrepreneurship projects. They started small businesses that supplied food and other items to the growing mining community. With the population influx into the area, some locals rented out houses and built lodges that increased their financial returns. Whether they will be able to sustain their new investments will depend on the extent to which the local economy relies exclusively on the mine, which has a productive life only until 2044.
Another expected benefit was employment. However, the new mining economy only absorbed a few local workers on a long-term basis, with others employed on a casual basis. Skilled labour was sourced outside the affected 20 communities even as far as overseas. Glenn Monye (Interview no. 1, 18 October 2016) explained: ‘in terms of labour, the mine brings its own people who will be using the machinery brought from Canada.’ This was corroborated by Tshabalala (Interview no. 2, 19 October 2016) who said:
Permanent employment for our children is non-existent. The mine will prefer to employ skilled people from other mining towns throughout South Africa and our children are not working. When they are employed, it is for low-paying casual labour and not permanent and secure jobs.
In summary, this is what Bernstein (2010) would conceptualise as a systemic crisis of livelihoods, a process whereby capitalism is dispossessing people but is failing to provide adequate and secure livelihoods for the poor. To atone for this, Ivanplats engaged in corporate social investment projects from 2016 to 2019. The main projects focused on training, education, and health and sanitation. Sanitation units were built in local schools (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016). At Bokwalakwala clinic in Moshate, Ivanplats constructed two wooden houses used as consultation rooms for the sick. Ivanplats had seven interns from the community getting on-the-job training mainly in geology, environmental management and metallurgy, human resources, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016). However, the training and education was focused on instilling a ‘mining ideology’ and creating a cheap labour base. Ivanplats also trained 578 community members in plumbing, bricklaying, basic electrical skills and HIV/AIDS peer education (Ivanhoe Mines Ltd 2016). Some community members argued that the training did not make a valuable contribution to their livelihoods as compared to their traditional land-based livelihoods (Interview no. 1, Monye, 18 October 2016). These were welfarist, rather than production projects generating capital for local accumulation. It served to legitimise a brutal exploitation by capital. However, communities were not passive agents, as demonstrated next.
Resistance to dispossession
Given the nominal benefits from this extractivist investment, overt local and nationally coordinated resistance to land dispossession was a common feature that posed a threat to capitalist accumulation from 2014 to 2019. ‘Toyi-toying [dance of protest] has become the order of the day in the area’ (Interview no. 2, Tshabalala, 19 October 2016). For example, on 26 November 2014, members of the community blocked the entrance to the mine, demonstrating against the decision by the Department of Mining to award a mining licence to Ivanplats without their consent (Interview no. 9, Molebogeng Masanabo, 9 December 2017). Consequently, the police arrested 13 demonstrators and charged them with public violence (Interview no. 8, Aubrey Langa, 8 December 2017). Here, state force was mobilised to enhance dispossession, which is a key characteristic of accumulation by dispossession (Hall 2012). The demonstrators later appeared at the Mokorong Magistrates’ Court on 18 December 2015 and the magistrate acquitted them. On 21 May 2015, the Mokopane community protested outside the South African Heritage Resource Agency (SAHRA) in Pretoria and demonstrators forced themselves inside the office (Interview no. 2, Tshabalala, 19 October 2016). The protestors demonstrated against the violation of graves, as argued earlier. An official from SAHRA, Hussein Kopole, addressed the protestors, promising to institute an investigation into the matter (Interview no. 11, Mokgaetji Dikutla, 12 December 2017). As Adnan (2011, 3) has observed: ‘the seizure or denial of lands necessary for their means of livelihoods has often activated the poor peasants to resist such process despite their lack of wealth and influence.’
Another protest by the Mokopane community took place on 21 May 2015 outside the Canadian High Commission in Pretoria (Interview no. 6, Mapela Tijale, 6 December 2017). The protestors demanded the recognition of their land rights and for Canada to compel Ivanplats to uphold national and international laws and to stop corrupting South African government officials in return for their support (Interview no. 6, Tijale, 6 December 2017). The demonstrators blocked the entrance to the High Commission and waved placards denouncing Ivanplats (Interview no. 5, Margret Molomo, 20 October 2016). One of the placards had the following message: ‘IVANPLATS, ROBERT FRIEDLAND ALIAS MR TOXIC BOB PLS RETIRE FROM DAMAGING OUR ENVIRONMENT OUR ANCESTRAL GRAVES AND BURIAL GROUNDS’ (Langa 2015). This attracted widespread local and international media coverage and outrage in human rights circles, prompting the company to respond through a press statement, albeit in a defensive manner. The community forged alliances with Nkuzi Development Association, a civil society organisation working on land rights. With Nkuzi, they organised protest action in Pretoria at the government’s offices on 4 August 2017 (Mohale 2017). On 24 April 2018, the Mokopane community joined other mining communities from rural South Africa to demonstrate at the Northern Gauteng High Court (Interview no. 21, Lethabo Keetse, 27 October 2019). They demanded that the court grant mining communities the right to consent, in line with the principle of free, prior and informed consent (Mohale 2019). A total of 180 community members participated in a national protest in Pretoria on 5 June 2019 against the government’s decision to award traditional leaders greater powers in making decisions on behalf of the people living on customary land (Mohale 2019).
Litigation has also been an integral part of the community resistance to dispossession from the onset. With the help of Nathan Jacobs, from Lawyers for Human Rights in South Africa, the Kgobudi community won an order to nullify the interim interdict by Platfree that banned community members from coming within 200 metres of Ivanplats’ drilling operations (Blaine 2012). Judge Jody Kollapen delivered the judgement on 16 October 2012 in North Gauteng High Court (Blaine 2012). The ban effectively barred members of the community from gaining access to their crops, grazing land and in some cases, their homes. Due to high costs of litigation, communities also negotiated for free legal assistance from the Legal Resources Centre and Richard Spoor Attorneys. Their main demand was to seek the enforcement of legislation such as IPILRA and to claim their right to say no to mining (Interview no. 3, Shimane Kekana, 20 October 2016; Interview no. 22, Aubrey Langa, 27 October 2019). When these interviews took place, the case was as yet not filed in the courts due to lack of financial resources. Within this context, some felt that ‘mines are big companies using their financial muscle to buy the justice system and have their way … ; hence, it is difficult in South Africa to challenge the mines in court’ (Interview no. 3, Shimane Kekana, 20 October 2016).
The dispossessed engaged in overt resistance, transcending Scott’s (1985) disguised ‘everyday forms of resistance’. However, unequal power relations constrained forms of resistance. As already stated, Ivanplats had the backing of the state. As Tshabalala (Interview no. 2, 19 October 2016) said: ‘when we demonstrate against, the police force is always on the side of the mines.’ Coercion remained a central feature of capitalist accumulation in post-apartheid South Africa, making the environment unstable.
Conclusion
The article has made four distinct contributions. First, rather than dismissing accumulation by dispossession as an omnibus term (Brenner 2006; Fine 2006), I have enhanced the grounded explanatory power of Harvey’s (2003, 2006) accumulation by dispossession through crystallising it into three explanatory features – coercion, non-voluntary consent and corruption – to explain material and incorporeal dispossession in post-apartheid South Africa. This approach has magnified our understanding of how the triumvirate of traditional leaders, state officials and the Ivanplats platinum mine continue to dispossess marginalised people in Limpopo. Second, I have gone beyond the economic dimensions proposed by some Marxist political economists to aid our comprehension of ongoing incorporeal dispossession. Third, by using this analytic approach, I have broadened the literature on mining in South Africa by going beyond a focus on mining strikes that have dominated world news (Bolt and Rajak 2016), as well as beyond rural struggles over control of customary land in order to benefit from platinum mining revenues in distinct contexts (Capps and Mnwana 2015; Claassens and Mtlala 2014) and the legalistic attention to dispossession (HRW 2019; SAHRC 2018). This has been done through my attempt to bridge the gap between an overly focused agrarian political economy analysis (Mtero 2017; Shackleton 2020), on the one hand, and incorporeal dispossession on the other (Sacaggi 2012; Skosana 2019), to gain a more holistic understanding of the process and material and intangible consequences of accumulation by dispossession for communities living under tribal jurisdictions on mineralised customary land in Limpopo. Fourth, I have substantiated my argument with original empirical research that shows how accumulation by dispossession led to non-voluntary dispossession of locals by a powerful triple alliance of investors, state officials and traditional leaders. Dispossession resulted in crises of agrarian-based livelihoods for many, coupled with the loss of incorporeal possessions which led to overt and covert resistance by the community despite Ivanplats platinum mine’s token welfarist projects. In sum, the ANC’s post-apartheid mining policies have largely failed to stop non-voluntary dispossession of people living on mineralised customary land.