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EXCLUSIVE

Zimbabweans cast out to die?

Last May the special dispensation that allowed Zimbabweans open access to cross South Africa’s borders came to an end. All undocumented Zimbabweans living in South Africa were given until December 31, 2010, to apply for work or study permits, or for asylum, and to regularise their status. The moratorium on deportations of all undocumented Zimbabweans was to be lifted at the end of July, 2011. The date was postponed twice more - to the end of August and then to the end of October. What will become of undocumented, HIV-positive Zimbabweans if they are detained and then deported back to their country – many of whom have accessed antiretroviral therapy (ART) here? What is the situation like for someone trying to access ART in Zimbabwe? Is Zimbabwe’s public healthcare system equipped to handle a mass deportation, if this materialises? Are these people being sent home to die? people investigates and lets you decide.
By David A Steynberg

Catherine holds her son as the bus rocks on the road that leads to Johannesburg. Cholera has taken hold of her body, and were it not for the HIV in her blood, she would not have left her husband and 10-year-old daughter in Chitungwiza – a low-income settlement 20km outside of Harare in Zimbabwe.
“I came here because I was sick,” says the 35-year-old, HIV-positive Zimbabwean who hiked into South Africa in search of treatment in January 2009 together with her then six-year-old son, Blessing. “In Zimbabwe there was no [antiretroviral] medication. There was no treatment.”
When her son was six years old, a massive healthcare worker strike coincided with the cholera outbreak of 2008, forcing many public hospitals and clinics to close their doors. When she was finally able to visit the clinic in January 2009, she was told she was HIV-positive. But even then she couldn’t access antiretroviral treatment. Her son, Blessing, had the virus in his blood too – no-one had tested her for HIV prior to his birth in 2003.
Catherine made the difficult decision to leave her HIV-positive husband and 10-year-old HIV-negative daughter, to seek treatment some 1100km away. With her son in tow, she made the trek into South Africa and finally arrived in Johannesburg with the “help from some free busses”. By this time her health had already severely deteriorated, with the HIV in her blood rendering her CD4 count at only 5. This made her highly susceptible to infection as her immune system was virtually non-functional.
Catherine was, however, able to access treatment at the Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (MSF) clinic which operates in downtown Johannesburg and provides primary healthcare and referrals to hospitals. On average, the clinic deals with 2300 consultations a month – with many of the shoes stepping through their doors belonging to Zimbabweans who call the inner-city slum buildings home.
Today Catherine’s CD4 count sits at over 600, but she worries about her son. She has had to wait for Blessing to be put on treatment. After this, she says, she will return to Zimbabwe and her business, selling vegetables to passersby on the streets of Chitungwiza. “I haven’t tried to get any papers yet,” she tells us as Blessing play-chases two black boys down the city sidewalk with a long, silver bicycle spoke. “I’m just begging. There’s no food at home and sometimes we go to bed hungry.”
Sister Caroline Masunda of MSF says that because children are so vulnerable to infectious diseases, the initiation of ART when the CD4 count is 250 – as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation – does not apply. “Environment, poor diet and living in overcrowded spaces poses the risk of TB and other infections,” says Caroline. “He (Blessing) is eight years old but he looks three years old. He gets sick a lot.”
MSF explains HIV, respiratory tract infections (including TB) and skin ailments are the main pathologies seen in patients by clinic staff. This, says MSF, is directly linked to unhygienic and overcrowded living conditions.
Catherine and Blessing live in one of the over 1300 inner-city slum buildings identified by the City of Johannesburg, where high overcrowding exists, basic sanitation is either poor or non-existent and mostly comprises Zimbabweans and other migrants seeking asylum. With no job, Catherine almost-ashamedly admits that “sometimes I look in bins for food”. This, she tells us, makes her very uncomfortable.
Without a passport, asylum application documents or any permits, Catherine is in this country illegally. She spends her days begging on the corner opposite the High Court but says she is not afraid of the police and has never been harassed for money. “If they ask for papers I just say I don’t have any,” she says, boldly telling us that she’s not afraid to go back to Zimbabwe. “It’s hard being a Zimbabwean in this country now. I only left for treatment. After my son is on treatment I will go back home. I need the papers for my son to get treatment.”
But not all undocumented Zimbabweans living in South Africa are as willing to return home. People like HIV-positive Johannes who has lived illegally in South Africa for the past 17 years – aided by the fraudulent ID “I acquired in ’94 because at that time they wanted everyone to vote ANC”.
Despite the Department of Home Affairs granting amnesty to those possessing fraudulent South African identity documents, Johannes, who is a qualified welder but works as a night shift security guard, is holding onto his because “I don’t know how they work there (in Zimbabwe)”.
Born in Bulawayo, Johannes failed his final year of school and decided to come to South Africa as a 21-year-old. “It was not okay there,” he tells us outside the block of flats on Nugget Street where he pays R600 a month to share a room with “I don’t know how many people”. Johannes got married as a young man and in 2004 his wife got sick and passed away. His wife never told him she had HIV.
Johannes tested positive for the virus in 2005 but waited three years before he sought treatment. Despite applying for legal residency in South Africa Johannes explains, as he shows us a conformation SMS from Home Affairs, that he fears being detained or, worse, deported.
Johannes worries that his ART regimen will be interrupted if he is held in detention, and if deported how quickly and easily he will be able to access ART in Zimbabwe.
Paul Foreman, Head of Mission for MSF in Zimbabwe, explains there is still a long way to go. “According to the Global Fund report about 300 000 HIV-positive Zimbabweans are on ART,” he says. “But there are over 600 000 who qualify for ART based on the WHO-recommended CD4 count threshold of 350. But interpretation of these numbers depends on geographical location. In the urban areas 50% of the population has access to ART while it is less than 50% in the rural areas.”
Foreman says one of Zimbabwe’s biggest healthcare challenges is that many of its doctors have emigrated. “Between 2008 and 2009 the health system was not paying salaries,” he explains. “In some rural districts there is no district medical officer.”
ARVs, too, are a medical hot potato. While Foreman says government policy is provision of free ARVs, there are no guarantees of this.
Sarah Katenhe managed a successful, but small, catering business servicing the suburbs surrounding Harare. But two years ago Sarah’s life changed. Slowly she started selling her catering equipment and, one by one, she lost her customers. She and her husband moved from Harare’s Glen Norah to a high-density settlement called Mufakose, west of Harare city. Sarah, a wife and mother to three boys, was HIV-positive.
Her brother, Lucky, together with the rest of his family, only discovered Sarah was HIV-positive in March this year, literally weeks before she passed away on March 24. Sarah died when she was only 37 years old and was buried beside her father in rural Hurungwe, some 300km north of Harare.
Sarah’s brother, Lucky Katenhe, says his sister died because she did not have the money to buy ARVs. “She could not continue with her business and this caused her to sell most of her catering equipment so that she could buy herself medication and ARVs,” Lucky says. “I think because the drugs were expensive, that’s why she kept on selling her goods because she couldn’t afford them anymore. Even though we as a family tried to send her money to purchase the ARVs, she still struggled to access them because the drugs were quite expensive. They were also not found anywhere else but from the black markets where they were being sold at an exorbitant price.”
Lucky, who lives in Cape Town and works for People Against Suffering Oppression and Poverty (Passop), bemoans the country he fled in 2008 amid pre-election violence. “In Zimbabwe the health sector has collapsed,” he says. “People are no longer able to access medical treatment due to the absence of drugs, unavailability of medical practitioners who fled to other countries, poor infrastructure and lack of HIV/Aids education.”
Lucky agrees with Foreman that resources are lacking in certain rural areas. “Limited access to healthcare in the rural areas means that people with sexually transmitted diseases are unable to get treatment. Lack of diagnosis and treatment increases the risk of transmission. For those who have access to ARV drugs, they are taking the drugs without the proper supervision of a doctor and they don’t receive the much-needed periodic medical checkups.”
Though healthcare is a possible reason for the estimated 1.5-million Zimbabweans currently living in South Africa, senior researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits University, Jo Vearey, says it would be disingenuous to assume that people, especially Zimbabweans, would leave their country to access our healthcare. “The majority of people moving from anywhere want to improve their livelihoods,” says Jo, her British accent exposing her roots. “You also have a group that is moving because of fear of violence and persecution, but we don’t come across individuals reporting access to healthcare as a motivator for moving.”
Jo doesn’t believe that people like Catherine and her son are the norm. “We need to be rational when presenting cases like this as they can accidentally fuel the fear in South Africans that there is this tsunami of [foreign] people in need of treatment,” she says, adding that we perceive urban areas to have better healthcare, and that we perceive South Africa to be better in the region in terms of healthcare. “It means we perceive people are moving here for those reasons. Zimbabwe does have ART programmes. They’ve struggled at times but generally they’ve managed to keep people on treatment. They also have an established prevention campaign. It depends where you live.”
Bulawayo-born-and-raised Melt Sinala, MSF Johannesburg outreach supervisor, agrees that Zimbabwe has a good HIV prevention campaign, but says the challenge is access to treatment and ARVs. “There are unscrupulous guys selling ARVs illegally,” he says. “The health delivery system has gone down. HIV-positive people wait longer to get on treatment because of backlogs. If an HIV-positive Zimbabwean is deported back to Zimbabwe he must make sure he has his transfer letter from his clinic so he can be placed on the same regimen in Zimbabwe. We don’t want to encourage interruptions in treatment.”
Jo echoes Melt’s sentiments. “It could become a public heath issue and not just one of individuals,” she says. “Once an HIV-positive individual is off treatment, their viral load shoots right up and they become more infectious.”
But NGOs like MSF are working in Zimbabwe to make treatment accessible to more people. “MSF started scaling up five or six years ago,” says Foreman. “The clinics where MSF is training will be able to provide ARVs, much like we did in South Africa.”
Foreman adds that if there is an influx of HIV-positive deportees, MSF is willing to battle the problem. “It depends how big the influx is,” he says. “If all return at once it would be an exceeding challenge.”
The Department of Home Affairs had been sketchy on the subject of deportations. But in early October, Home Affairs minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma clarified government’s stance, and thus removed any confusion as to who stood to be deported: “…the moratorium applied to specific people who entered South Africa at a specific time,” the minister told journalists, referring to the special dispensation granted to Zimbabweans until May 2010. “There is no moratorium for Zimbabweans who come into South Africa today and break our immigration law, from deportation…there has always been a confusion that there is a blanket exemption for Zimbabweans. It can’t be. How can we say as a country, if you are from Zimbabwe you can break our immigration laws with no consequences? The moratorium therefore applied to a particular period. This is why people had to register. If you break our laws, we will arrest you.”
But Braam Hannekom, founder of Passop, says his organization is aware of documented Zimbabweans being arrested and detained. “In Johannesburg a group made up of undocumented Zimbabweans and those with valid asylum seeker status were detained,” he says. “It seems the police are itching to get back to deporting Zimbabweans.”
He adds that despite everyone in South Africa, even undocumented immigrants, being able to access ARVs, a move back to deportations would be counterproductive. “With the lifting of the moratorium on deportations, undocumented Zimbabweans are afraid and therefore resist accessing hospitals,” Braam tells us. “Discouraging people from obtaining medical assistance, which is meant to be available to everyone, also hampers the containment of infectious diseases.”
Both Jo and Braam maintain that lifting of the moratorium won’t be in anyone’s interest. “Somebody who has HIV and is deported back to Zimbabwe is part of the 80% [of people in Zimbabwe] who are unemployed, and who are not in a position to access ARVs and to maintain good nutrition,” says Braam.
In October, two months after first meeting her, Catherine could no longer be found. It could not be confirmed whether she had managed to get her son on treatment, if she had been detained or deported, or if she had taken a chance and returned home. She had disappeared as easily as she had arrived. If she is back in Zimbabwe, Catherine and her son’s chances of survival would likely depend on where they end up. Still, it is concerning that no-one knows where she is. Has the whole system failed those who already have so much difficulty accessing and exercising their basic human rights?

investigative

Cry the little children

While a private home in Kempton Park for abandoned and abused children stares foreclosure in the face, the greater issue of human trafficking and child exploitation begs for someone to stand up and for something to be done.

By David A Steynberg

For nine years, a small, private non-profit organization has been quietly helping abused, abandoned and street children reach their full potential by developing their God-given abilities, and transforming those abilities from potential into reality.
The boys and girls who have arrived at Siphumelele as hungry, scared, traumatized and sometimes, glue-sniffing street children, quickly adjusted to the structured and disciplined routine followed at Siphumelele, diligently attended school and have left as educated, respectable adults ready to contribute to a society that may have ignored them at a traffic intersection many years before.
In December, people visited the home in Kempton Park after receiving an impassioned plea for ensuring the future of the home which faced closure. We met incredibly gifted children who excel at everything they do. One such child is Angie, a 17-year-old girl who left her violent home environment in Mpumalanga three years ago. Says the founder of Siphumelele, Elsabe Coetzee: “Angie is one of the most well behaved, smartest children I have met in a long time. She’s also a gifted singer! Apart from Angie, Siphumelele has also produced provincial gymnasts, athletes, school prefects as well as soccer and rugby players.”
Siphumelele is the next best thing to a loving and caring home with the children’s real parents. It gives children the opportunity to grow up in a mix-match family of different backgrounds, world views and histories. It teaches the boys a sense of responsibility and a high respect for women, and the girls a healthy perspective of themselves. Each year they set off on a new school year dressed in new uniforms, while Elsabe, one of the care-givers, Prudence, and other dedicated volunteers attend every child’s school event and parents’ days.
With all this good being done, rescuing children from the clutches of a life of crime and unspeakable abuse on the streets, it is damn shame that, come Christmas 2010, Siphumelele’s doors could be shut and the happy voices of children, long forgotten.
“From time to time the police drop off kids here – abandoned children and street kids,” volunteer and occupational therapist, Velda Frankim begins with the story that may just seal Siphumelele’s fate. “The police must issue a Form 4, which means a child is removed from the parents or guardian because of abuse or imminent danger. It has to be approved by the court within 48 hours, a social worker assigned to the child, and children’s court procedures started.”
According to Elsabe, children are often brought to Siphumelele by various government departments and SAPS due to a lack of proper places of safety where the children can remain until they are either placed in foster care, a children’s home or alternatively, re-unified with family. Some children, however, do remain at Siphumelele.
“Over the past three years, we’ve been identifying one of the worst forms of child abuse; exploitation of infants and toddlers in order to generate money for often ruthless child abusers and criminals,” Velda says.
The story starts on a hot summer’s day last year when Elsabe saw a woman begging at a street corner with a baby on her back and a little boy weaving dangerously through traffic, following the begging woman. “The baby was dressed in winter clothing and was virtually unconscious,” Velda tells people, adding that after Elsabe finally managed to get the Kempton Park police to take the woman and the children to the police station, two Form 4s were issued and the little ones, a 15-month-old baby girl and four-year-old boy, were placed in Siphumelele’s care. “The baby was severely deprived and developmentally delayed. She couldn’t sit independently and wasn’t walking yet. All the toes on her right foot had also been burned off! There is no way the mother was fit to take care of these children who had clearly been abused.”
The next day, a similar incident occurred in Edenvale. Again a Form 4 was issued by the Edenvale police and a three-year-old little girl was placed by the police at Siphumelele.
But three days later the unthinkable happened. A police van pulled up to Siphumelele’s gate and took back the three children, only to return them to their so-called mothers’ care. “It seems the police made a deal with the women that they could get ‘their children’ back, if they provided bus tickets back to Zimbabwe as proof that they would no longer beg with the children in South Africa,” Velda tells us. “Under normal circumstances it would have been okay, had it not been for the fact that according to South African law, once a Form 4 has been issued the child cannot be placed back in a parent’s care without a court making that decision. These women had very little or no means to support and care for these children – no proof of permanent residence, no proof of being the legitimate parents or that they were legal South African citizens!”
Shockingly, Velda reveals to people that babies are now being exploited in a whole new way. “One of our sources says that babies are being rented out to begging women for the day,” Velda says, adding that the little ones are easily sourced from a building in downtown Johannesburg called The Chambers. (people will bring you more on this as we uncover more.)
“The babies are apparently popping out left, right an centre. Think about it, who would you rather give money to, a healthy, able-bodied adult or a mother with a child?”
Considering the lucrative nature of such an exploitative business, the events that followed on December 10 last year were probably inevitable.
Three days after the police returned the children to their supposed mothers, Elsabe was once again alerted by a concerned member of the public that a little girl, begging with a woman in Edenvale, was ordered by the woman to pull off her panties and urinate in full view of motorists. When Elsabe arrived, she found three women begging with children.
One of the children was in fact the same three-year-old little girl who was just three days earlier removed from the woman by the Edenvale police and given back to the same woman two days later by the Kempton Park police! Once again the Edenvale police were called to the scene, the three children were again removed from the women (who were again not asked for any form of identification), three Form 4s were issued and the kids were again placed at Siphumelele by the Edenvale police.
“On Thursday, December 10, certain policemen directed a group of Zimbabweans to Siphumelele to ‘get their stolen children back’, endangering the lives of the 27 other children at Siphumelele,” Velda remembers, recounting the events of that day. “The mob proceeded to storm the house and abused and threatened several of the children and the caregiver. The founder of Siphumelele, Elsabe Coetzee, was physically attacked and assaulted by a drunk, illegal Zimbabwean man, in full view of three police officers and 27 severely traumatized children, several volunteers and care workers.”
As fate would have it, two of the children had been sent to the nearby crèche while the youngest, a dehydrated, weak and very sick baby, whom on arrival at Siphumelele was seen by a doctor and had a temperature of 40ºC, lay sleeping in a cot inside the Siphumelele house. After refusing to give the children back to their so-called mothers, despite the women being unable to show any proof of legal guardianship, and refusing to tell the police where the other two children were, Elsabe was arrested and led through the angry crowd to an unmarked police vehicle. Her rights were not read to her, nor did the captain whom arrested her tell her on what charges the arrest was based. She was also denied the right to lay a charge against the man who would only moments later assault her.
“The police captain took the little baby without a bottle, a dry nappy or his medicine and just gave him to the crowd,” a feisty Elsabe tells us. “As I was led outside I looked at the woman holding the baby and said, ‘That’s not even your child!’ And that’s when one of the men in the crowd punched me in the face. In front of the three officers! I was absolutely horrified and shocked!”
As a dazed and angry Elsabe was taken to the Sebenza police station, the rowdy crowd got a lift with the other two officers to the station with the ill baby, still demanding the other two children back.
Elsabe told the captain as well as the station commander at Sebenza police station that she would only release the other two children on condition that new Form 4s were issued and the children were placed in an alternative place of safety until a court of law could decide what was in the best interest of the three little ones. All these negotiations were done in the presence of witnesses and Elsabe’s attorney. The captain agreed and said the new forms could only be issued by the Edenvale police as they initially removed the children and issued the original Form 4s. Elsabe and a volunteer were allowed to leave the Sebenza police station to fetch the two children from the crèche while her attorney and another volunteer accompanied the captain and the illegal Zimbabweans to the Edenvale police station. Elsabe says that when she and the children arrived at the station an hour later, it became clear that she had been lied to by the police as an order was given to the crowd, by an inspector who claimed to be in charge, to “use any means of force necessary” to remove their stolen children from the volunteer’s vehicle. The crowd proceeded to storm the vehicle with bricks and sticks. As Elsabe tried once again to intervene, she was arrested for a second time, locked in a holding cell, all her personal belongings removed and body searched while the inspector removed the two children from the volunteer’s vehicle and handed them over to the crowd who still had not provided any proof of legal guardianship, according to Elsabe. “The children were taken into the night; I don’t know where they are or what happened to them. Nor do the police,” she says, adding that the youngest was very sick and probably has not survived.
“I’m extremely upset and frustrated,” she admits. “I want South Africans to know that illegal criminals have more rights in this country than law-abiding citizens trying to make a difference. Exploitation of children is regarded as human trafficking and I am terrified for the safety of children, especially with the World Cup being only months away. I’m a target now and how do I convince the children that they should have respect for the authorities after they have witnessed this incident? How long do we have to put up with incompetent officials who are supposed to protect and serve but instead have lost the handle on crime? The situation is out of control – we’ve been getting more and more children on our streets since this incident. Why are the police not acting to protect the voiceless and most vulnerable of children?”

BOX: So, What Now?
The police stations in question have been requested to compile a report on the events that took place that day, and will be made to answer questions relating to why the Form 4s were initially not filled in correctly by the relevant police station; why Elsabe Coetzee was arrested (allegedly both times not being read her rights) and never charged nor allegedly granted the right to open a case against the man who assaulted her; and how the crowd of illegal Zimbabweans could be given back the children without first providing any proof to the police of legal guardianship over the children.

BOX: Stop The Traffick
The national conference in human trafficking was held in Durban last year and was attended by among others, Sister Melanie O’Connor from the Catholic Church’s anti-trafficking desk in South Africa. The following stats reveal how big the problem of human trafficking and child exploitation is and that those in the most danger are women and children.
• Every year about 1 000 Mozambiquan girls are trafficked across the Mozambique border to Johannesburg and are sold as sex slaves or wives to Mozambiquan mine workers.
• South Africa’s modern infrastructure and healthy tourism industry make it an ideal destination for the trafficking of humans. Countries with trafficking links to South Africa include Angola, Botswana, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
• While all children are at risk, street children are particularly vulnerable to being trafficked and exploited. It’s important to understand that child labour is a form of child exploitation – and this includes adults using children to beg for them.
• While it has been reported that many adult prostitutes are against the exploitation of children as sex workers, traffickers apparently intermingle trafficked girls among local prostitutes. What makes this even more shocking is that prostitution is illegal in South Africa, never mind the prostitution of underage children!
• In 2000, anti-child abuse agency Molo Songololo estimated that there were around 30 000 child prostitutes in South Africa.
• Human trafficking is big business, and the UN estimates that child trafficking generates $7 billion to $10 billion internationally every year.

BOX: Organisations You Must Support
• Elsabe Coetzee from Siphumelele: 082 962 9953.
• Sister Melanie O’Connor from the Catholic Church Anti-Trafficking Desk: (012) 323 6458.
• Umthombo in Durban: (031) 337 9222.
• Molo Songololo in Cape Town: (021) 762 5420.
• Childline: 0800 055 555.
• Network Against Child Labour: (011) 836 9942/3.

investigative

Seal clubbing: controversial conservation or simple greed?

While animal rights groups call for a boycott on Namibia to put an end to that country’s annual seal cull, the man on the other side of the controversy, Hatem Yavuz, says if he doesn’t do it, someone else will.

By David A Steynberg

A thousand barking baby seals huddled together in a tight circle is where a grainy YouTube “graphic content” video of the impending Namibian seal cull begins. Men in blue overalls, gumboots and brandishing wooden clubs descend on the nursing baby seals, having just separated them from their mothers watching helplessly maybe a few hundred feet away. And then it begins: the man lifts his club high over his head and brings it down hard, making contact with the soft skull of a months-old Cape Fur Seal. His is the first strike that sparks the others to bring their clubs down on the baby seals, some of which go down and stay down after the initial head trauma. Unfortunately, the men, who are seasonal workers, don’t always deliver a killing blow the first time, and are forced to hit the seal a second or third time.
The annual Namibian seal cull starts on July 1, and will run for 139 days when a quota of 85 000 baby seals and 6 000 bulls will be culled.
Obviously, this is an emotive issue for many people, specifically animal lovers, expressing strong views against the method and basis for the cull. So much so, that on 15 March, which was Anti-Sealing Day, Fur Free SA, Beauty Without Cruelty, Sea Shepherd SA, PETA as well as a host of local celebrities called for a boycott of all things Namibian until the cull is ended permanently.
“I want to see this stopped,” Cito, front man for Wonderboom, says. “I can’t believe the total disregard for life – especially for the seal pups. I didn’t know this was happening up until very recently.”
Commercial sealing has in fact been taking place off the Southern African coast since the 17th century. By the late 1800s, 23 colonies had already been destroyed with sealing restrictions being introduced to Southern Africa in 1893, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw). Only 29 years later, in 1922, were these restrictions introduced along the Namibian coast.
Though South Africa suspended its commercial seal cull in 1990, seal clubbing still takes place in Canada and Greenland, with the “king of the cull” Aussie-Turk Hatem Yavuz, controlling about 60% of the global seal fur market.
Speaking to people from Turkey (he has a factory in Istanbul where 130 000 seals are processed annually), Hatem speaks frankly that “it’s my job” and that “if I don’t do it someone else is going to do it”.
“I’m a furrier and leather guy,” he tells us by telephone. “I realized they were dumping the whole animal after the cull. The government was financing it. It was bad because they were wasting the animal.”
Hatem has a contract with the Namibian government until 2019 to pay the workers to do the clubbing, and to process the pelts, meat and oil. “I get a very nice product out of it,” Hatem says. “I’ve got demand from all over the world.”
Hatem apparently pays $7 (around R50) per pelt to the Namibian government which, if he fulfills the quota of 85 000 nursing baby seals, makes the government a handsome $595 000 (R4.2-million).
According to Sea Shepherd SA’s Patrick Dickens, the annual seal cull amounts to less than 1% of Namibia’s gross domestic product (GDP), while, he says, tourism accounts for 13%. The tourism industry is expected to account for 16% of GDP by 2020.
“It takes around six to eight baby seal pelts to make a fur coat,” Pat tells us, adding that the coats are sold for $30 000 (R210 000) each. “We believe that sustainable eco-tourism can provide 10 times more revenue than what is currently being generated from this slaughter.”
But it’s that 13%, as well as Namibia’s export products, where Fur Free SA and its partners hope to apply pressure on our northern neighbour to end seal culling permanently.
“We have a database of over 20 000 supporters, and we will start the boycott campaign by encouraging all tourism agencies in South Africa to demote Namibia as a holiday or tourist destination until the clubbing stops,” says Anneke Brits, chairperson of Fur Free SA. “Anyone interested in going to Namibia will be…discouraged to go there.”
But Francois Hugo, who heads up the renegade one-man Seal Alert SA rescue organization, thinks boycotting will result in the opposite from happening. “…a campaign (to boycott Namibia) will do more harm than good, because if tourism or the economy is affected, Namibia will likely increase its seal cull to replace the revenue and jobs lost due to tourism boycotts,” he writes on his Facebook profile.
Back in 2009 Francois offered to buy out Hatem’s business – an offer which Hatem accepted, but for the price of $14-million (around R98-million) – and thus put an end to the annual cull.
“If I kill, they make money,” Hatem tells people, referring to Seal Alert SA’s Francois who, he alleges, kept the money that was raised. “Business has grown as a result of the campaign against me. As long as there are seven billion humans, as long as there are farmers and fishermen; as long as there is demand; as long as seals consume 40% of their body weight per day and affect the cycle of the fish in the area – I will continue to make a good product. You must look scientifically at this, not emotionally.”
Pat, however, disagrees that the annual cull is the result of dwindling fishing stocks. “Of the 91 000 quota (85 000 pups and 6 000 bulls), 85 000 of these seals are still nursing from their mothers,” Pat says. “They are on the teat and are not eating the fish. Solids begin to be consumed at about eight months. These seals are beaten to death at seven months. Since independence, Namibia increased its annual fishing harvest from 300 000 tons to 600 000 tons. Put simply, irresponsible and gross mismanagement of their own resources.”
It’s, however, difficult not to get emotional when viewing the material available of the clubbing. “That’s not conservation,” says model Candice Brink, who has joined the boycott. “It’s so sad. Anyone with a heart will agree.”
Hatem, however, maintains that clubbing remains the only and most humane method of culling the pups. “Because they’ve still got soft skulls a sniper rifle will cause them more pain,” he says. “We sniper the bulls because they’ve got hard skulls, leave the cows, but have to hit the pups with a club that has a nail in it. That is the most humane way. Namibia has the most ethical method on the planet – go have a look at what they do in Canada.”
Pat again counters, saying the club used does not have a nail in it: “The Namibian seals are not beaten with a spiked club. That is taken out of context. It was a quote that Hatem Yavuz used: ‘To feel less pain they need to be hit with a club that has a nail in it.’ An initial blow is supposed to cause their skulls (which are very thin) to implode. The initial strike however is often not sufficient to kill the animals. These animals are repeatedly beaten until they are either dead or unconscious. They are then stabbed in the throat, often while still alive.”
Despite there being calls each year for Namibia to stop the cull, that government maintains that it won’t be prescribed to by anyone. Will this boycott achieve what no other protests have in years past? That remains to be seen. What is clear is that as human populations grow, jobs become scarcer and competition between humans and animals for food and habitat increases. Is a compromise the answer? Perhaps the question should be who has to compromise.
• Our requests to get comment from the Namibian SPCA as well as their Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources were ignored.

Digging for solutions at the coalface of exploitation

By David A Steynberg

“We were planning on farming here for the next 40 years. Our sons were supposed to take over from us,” say brothers Sas and Douw Coetzee of Blaaubank Farm on the outskirts of Carltonville, about 120km southwest of Johannesburg.
The brothers have for the past few years been kicked from pillar to post by the gold mines in their area in a battle over the mine effluent which has entered their water supply and subsequently destroyed their soil and their dam – the only water source on the 2 250ha property. But their search for a solution continues.
In 1998 the brothers noticed that their green mealies were displaying unusual signs of stunted growth and noticeably lower yields, as well as appearing yellow in colour. “We first thought that the problem lay with us so we checked the fertilizer, pesticides, seed and anything else we could think of,” says Douw. “We also had our soil tested and discovered high levels of sulphates.” It was later discovered that significantly elevated levels of heavy metals such as uranium were also present in the sediment.
According to environmental activist and CEO of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment Mariette Liefferink, the uranium-rich sediment could under possible environmental conditions enter the water column.
As second-generation farmers on the same land, the brothers could only conclude that the heavy metals were coming from the water in the dam they used to irrigate the mealies and water the 1 000-stong Brahman herd. The dam gets its water from the Wonderfonteinspruit which flows from Randfontein to Potchefstroom – an area with some of the richest gold deposits in the world.
“It was strange, when we irrigated the mealies wouldn’t grow but would just survive. Then when it rained they would shoot up and green out,” says Sas, adding that the sediment buildup in the dam was also having a negative impact on their ability to irrigate optimally. “The pumps are at the lowest part of the dam – where the sediment, which we thought was just mud, had settled.”
In December 2001 the brothers’ father, Andries Coetzee, decided to break down the wall of the dam so that he could drain it and remove the sediment. Then in January 2002 the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) arrived on their doorstep and asked them who had given them permission to remove the mud. Stunned, Sas realized that something was wrong. “They told us that the dam was radioactive,” says Sas, adding that the heavy metals had settled in the sediment and when disturbed became mobile with the water.
“Besides the heavy metals, uranium was, and still is, present and is apparently a thousand times higher than the background concentrations allowed by the NNR.”
Soon after the dam wall had been broken down and the water released, which in turn carried parts of the uranium-rich sediment with it, Potchefstroom Municipality discovered traces of uranium in its drinking water and took out an interdict against Blyvooruitsig mine – the closest gold mine to the municipality and the Coetzees – to rebuild the dam wall. The mine also hired Bigen Africa to test for other heavy metals and that’s when it discovered high levels of cadmium. “We had cadmium levels that were 16 000 times higher than EU standards,” says Douw. “Cadmium is a key causer of pancreatic cancer.”
While Blyvooruitsig mine complied with rebuilding the dam wall, it failed to honour all the commitments it originally agreed to. “Blyvooruitsig had to remediate the dam and clean out the sediment, as well as clean the land upon which the spills occurred,” says Mariette.
Unable to irrigate with polluted dam water, Andries decided in 2003 that the best option for their future was to allow the mine to buy them out. “He wrote letters to the mine inviting it to buy the farm but received no response,” says Douw. “So my brother and I inherited the problem.”

The brothers’ search for answers would, however, continue for the next six years. They have resolved to get the mines to admit failing the community, and in effect the country, and to take proactive and remedial steps in preventing the problem from getting any worse than it already is. “The mines have to date never admitted to anything and continually tell everyone that they are helping the community with a problem in the area,” says Douw. “But all we’ve seen are numerous unproductive meeting and no action.”
In a meeting with Harmony, as directed by the NNR, the brothers were given directives to stop using the dam for watering the cattle and for irrigation as it posed a health risk to both animals and humans, and because of the risk of the heavy metals entering the food chain. “We asked what we were supposed to do with our herd of 1 000 cattle,” says Douw. “And the dam is the only source of water on the farm for the cattle. We therefore had to install an expensive water filtration system so that our family and our workers’ families could drink the borehole water.”
The Coetzees unfortunately never got any of the earlier directives in writing. “We were raised as farmers are to trust people,” says Sas, adding that in a Wonderfontein Action Group meeting in early 2007 with the regional office of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry the department said it would lay piping to the farm and pump water from the Carltonville municipality to water the cattle. “That is absurd,” fumes Sas. “Who would choose supplying water at such great expense to cattle over people? The cattle also drink 50 000 liters of water per day, so we asked who would pay for that. The regional director said it would be funded by the taxpayer.”
To date, however, no pipes have ever been laid.
According to senior manager of Water Quality Management at the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (Dwaf), Marius Keet, Goldfields agreed to supply Andries’ cattle with water but nothing seems to have happened since then.

Slowly but surely their workers started leaving, seeing no future in a dying farm. With nothing being planted on the farm and the financial cost of employing a lawyer to aid in the legal aspects of fighting the mines, the brothers were unable to pay and accommodate their workers. “Now we’re only left with one worker,” says Sas. “He manages the feedlot while my brother and I, including my son and some of his friends from school, do everything else. This is such a big farm; it’s impossible to manage it with so few hands.”
In 2007 the Coetzees were invited to an imbizo in Potchefstroom where the NNR, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, the Department of Minerals and Energy and the mayor of Potchefstroom met with the community to answer questions regarding the severity of the uranium levels in the town’s water and what remedial steps would be taken. The brothers were instructed beforehand that they would only be allowed to ask one question of no more than three sentences, and that they would not be permitted to speak again.

“We asked: ‘How are we supposed to water our cattle and keep on farming if we have all these directives against us?’” says Sas, referring to the NNR’s order that the Coetzees could not irrigate the land nor water the cattle with water from the dam. The NNR denied ever giving any directives. “Each representative was given over an hour to speak,” says Sas. “The mayor addressed me and told me that I should drink the water from the dam, eat the meat of my cattle and drink the blood of my cattle too as there was nothing wrong with the dam’s water. I don’t know what he meant about drinking the blood of my cattle but I won’t drink the water in my dam because I know what it contains.”

As the farm wastes away with no healthy source of water to irrigate the land and water the cattle, the brothers have been left with precious few options. With both the land and water sources contaminated, very few people will even consider buying the land.
However, in June last year Goldfields said the mining interest group would buy them out and a purchase price was agreed upon. “The previous CEO of Goldfields, Ian Cockerill, promised us that the transaction would be finalised by December 2007,” says Douw. “We only received the first documents in May this year. On 21 July we met with their lawyers and told them that the documents contained certain unreasonable conditions that were impossible to comply with and that they were unacceptable. We’re still waiting for their response; nothing has been finalised.

It seems none of these tactics have been used on the estimated 43 of the Coetzees’ neighbouring farms. “Upstream there are about 43 farms which also get their water from the Wonderfonteinspruit,” says Sas. “They were all bought out by the mines and while we are willing to settle, our efforts for over a year have resulted in nothing being finalized. There are no more farmers upstream of us.”
Not knowing the truth about the state of their neighbouring farm’s soil, the Coetzees leased the nearly 1 000ha property to add on to their initial 1250ha. The property is owned by the Far West Rand Dolomitic Water Association (FWRDWA) which is made up of all the major gold mines in Gauteng, including DRD Gold, AngloGold Ashanti, Harmony, Gold Fields as well as the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.
To add to their already big headache, Andries recently received a draft court order and summons from the FWRDWA demanding the payment of a R100 000 rental for the neighbouring farm.
“We were so surprised to get a draft court order and summons as we had received no formal written warning prior to the summons,” says Douw. “Due to all the battles we’re currently fighting and with dwindling financial reserves we previously asked the FWRWDA if it could give us an extension on the payment, which it originally agreed to. I don’t know why it has changed its mind.”
Sas says that they’ve had to start selling off the equipment on their farm. “We’re left with an old tractor now as we had to sell our air-conditioned, GPS-coordinated Landini 160 dt,” says Sas, adding that the sheds have already been sold. “All this will be gone in two months’ time,” says Sas pointing to the remnants of a once thriving farm. “Next will be one of our irrigation systems. What can we do? We can’t steal to survive. We just want to get on with our lives – we’ve already lost so much.”

BOX: AMD and poisoning
The acid mine drainage-rich and declared radioactive water of Robinson Lake, into which Harmony Gold’s Krugersdorp mine pumps its decant water, has allegedly seeped into the surrounding water table, according to environmental activist and CEO of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment Mariette Liefferink.
Preliminary water sample results taken from a property adjacent to Harmony’s tailings dams, which have over the past 23 years encroached closer and closer to the property, show electrical conductivity levels of 253 millisiemens per metre (mS/m) which reveals the high presence of heavy metals in the water. “It’s totally unfit for human or animal consumption as the water should not exceed 70mS/m,” said Liefferink. “The cattle, sheep and American Saddle Horses have died over the period of a number of years and now more recently.” Liefferink adds that the water’s pH of 6,4 is “too low for certain toxic metals, such as manganese, copper, cadmium, cobalt or nickel to precipitate”.
Liefferink says that the property owner had bought the land 23 years ago when it was, according to the property owner, still in pristine condition. But as the mine expanded its operations the owners started writing letters of complaint that were never answered. “It’s immoral and obscene that these people have to live in the conditions they do,” says Liefferink. “No-one will buy that property from them now. We’ve requested that Harmony supply the owners’ cattle with alternative drinking water and that the mine buys them out.”
While it was understood previously that Harmony would consider paying damages for the recent losses suffered, concerning specifically the recent deaths of the livestock, as well as rehabilitating the land and preventing the same environmental incident from occurring again, it seems there’s been a change of heart.
Harmony’s representative, Rex Zorab, says that damages have to be proven first before payment for damages will be considered.

BOX: Why the Wonderfonteinspruit?
“One must have no illusions as to why the Wonderfonteinspruit is so special,” says previous Potchefstroom peat farmer Paul Potgieter, who has also been negatively affected by the contamination of the Wonderfonteinspruit. “That river has billions of rand worth of gold in it. That’s why it’s such a concern for the gold mines.”
According to a Council for Geoscience report, entitled “Contamination of wetlands by Witwatersrand gold mines – processes and the economic potential of gold in wetlands” the Coetzee dam was found to contain gold concentrations of 13g/t of sediment. “During 2002, two studies of a farm dam immediately west of Carletonville, found elevated levels of heavy metals, particularly uranium (Wade et al., 2002, Coetzee et al., 2002b), and gold concentrations of up to 13g/t,” the report reads. “These studies also found that the uranium was found in a reduced state in the dam sediments and recommended that the sediments be kept under water, to prevent oxidation and remobilisation. The potential remobilisation of uranium and other metals was of particular concern as this dam lies upstream of Boskop Dam, which supplied part of the domestic water supply for Potchefstroom.”
The report goes on to state that the recommendation to keep the sediments under water was ignored. “During 2003 a decision was made to mine the sediments in the dam for their gold content, and the dam was drained, exposing the sediments to an oxidising environment of the remobilisation scenarios described in the reports,” the report reads. “At this point, the Potchefstroom City Council took legal action against one of the gold mines responsible for the draining of the dam, the farm owner and the Minster of Water Affairs and Forestry. This case was settled out of court, with the mine agreeing to rebuild the dam wall and to rehabilitate the environment.”
In 2002 when Paul and his daughter René purchased the farm an environmental impact assessment was conducted. “There were no negative tests of the water or the land in the EIA,” says René, adding that there was a “marked deterioration in the water quality” after the Coetzee dam wall was broken down. The Potgieters’ farm is 30km away from the Coetzee dam.
“We can’t use the water for the peat because that is used to grow mushrooms,” says Paul. “I’ve also drilled four boreholes and none of that water is any better.”
According to René they were farming 200ha of peat and wanted to establish a fish farm too. “We wanted to start an ecotourism business where people could catch fish,” she says. “But because the water is contaminated we can’t do that anymore.”
Paul believes that if the gold mines truly intended to remediate, they wouldn’t buy out the farmers. “Fourty-three of the Coetzees’ neighbours have already been bought out so why haven’t the mines remediated any of those properties? The mines have basically said ‘take the money or leave it because we can keep you in court for the next 80 years’.”

What Dwaf is doing
According to senior manager of Water Quality Management at the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (Dwaf), Marius Keet, Dwaf has already appointed a specialist task team to look at the possibility of the Wonderfonteinspruit. “Areas of concern have been identified and those with higher levels of radioactivity may be remediated,” says Keet. “While the Coetzee dam has been identified as a concern, it does not contain the highest level of radioactivity. We’re flying in specialists from Canada in September and together with them we will make a decision on what would be the best remediation solution or if it would be best to leave it as is.”
This will be the first time such as remediation strategy is attempted in South Africa.

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