Usurpers – old and new

I have never been a fan of Cecil John Rhodes. My opinion, shaped by history teachers, is most certainly biased.

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They left me with a thorough dislike of Rhodes’s imperial dreams for Africa, especially as his machinations, spurred by greed for the country’s mineral riches, resulted in South Africa’s second war with Britain. As a child, the thought of the thousands of women and children dying in concentration camps really got to me. So I can understand Rhodes’s statue being a source of outrage for those who see it as a reminder of a bleak time in our history.

And those who suffered under apartheid are likely to feel the same about statues representing their oppression. At the same time, I wonder how the descendants of the clans forced off their land by King Shaka feel about having an airport named after him? He is reputed to have killed more than a million people, but black-on-black violence never seems to receive the same scrutiny as white-on-black violence or vice versa. The world’s differing reactions to the slaughter of 147 students in Kenya and those killed in the Charlie Hebdo shooting in France is a case in point.

But I don’t wish to become embroiled in another debate about what to do with symbols from our past that cause offence. The reason is that the past is little different from the present. While people are upset about historic ‘usurpers’, present-day ‘usurpers’ are helping themselves to our resources – natural and man-made. As in the days of Paul Kruger, when mining taxation was the main source of income for the Republic, mining still plays a key role in the economy.

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According to the Chamber of Mines, in 2013 the industry spent R188 billion on purchases and operating costs, R112 billion on salaries and wages, and in 2014 paid an estimated R6,4 billion on royalties and taxes. Taking into account the shares some government officials and the ruling party hold in mining companies, it’s small wonder the government is welcoming foreign-owned mining with open arms. And this takes place alongside talk of land ceilings and commercial farmers needing to ‘give up’ 50% of their businesses to farm workers.

Some argue that this and other proposed legislation will result in government owning or ‘holding in trust’ large percentages of mining companies as well. But there is another ugly aspect to the whole affair: the cost of all this greed to the environment. Mining companies are misusing our natural resources for short-term gain. Penalty fees for failing to rehabilitate mining sites are laughable.

Furthermore, the impact of mining in sensitive areas is irreversible: heritage sites, protected areas and water catchment areas are destroyed while we sell off our clean water, arable soil and diversity, all in the name of capitalism.

Cecil John Rhodes must be smiling in his grave.