Abstract
Although several legislative tools (e.g. MRPDA, Mining Charter, EIA’s etc.) have emphasized the need for mining companies to contribute signifcantly to local development in South Africa, recent reports and events in South Africa show that the relationships between local communities and the mining companies are still tensed because, according to communities, mining companies are not contributing enough towards local socio-economic development, but instead are aggravating their living conditions. The aim of the present study is to formulate a framework or meta-model with which one can explain the determinants of people’s perspectives on mining operations in the Moses Kotane Local Municipality (MKLM), North-West Province, South Africa. To this end, site visits, group discussions and semi-structured interviews were used to collect various socio-economic and demographic data as well as the perspectives of five communities along a distance gradient from the mining site in the MKLM. Data collected were analyzed by fitting a Structural Equation Model using the R function psem implemented in the R library PiecewiseSEM. In total 158 repondents participated in this study. The proposed framework linking socioeconomic and demographic data to people’s perspectives fit well to the data and reveals the complexity of the determinants of people’s perspective on mining industry in the MKLM (Fisher C value = 0; P = 1.00, n = 158). Firstly, the analysis of community perspectives in term of service delivery by Pilanesburg Platinum Mine shows a huge disparity between expected vs actual services delivered as the proportion of services delivered represent only 4- 8% of communities’ expectations. Surprisingly, the analysis further shows that closest communities do not benefit significantly more services than communities further away (ᵡ 2=2.71, Df=4, P=0.60). Secondly, the analysis of communities’ perspectives in terms of happiness (were they happy when they first heard about the establishment of the mining operation in their community?) and satisfaction level (how does the community rank their satisfaction level regarding the actual services delivered by the mining company?) reveals that there is no significant difference in the proportion of highly satisfied people from the closest community to the furthest community from the mining site. However, the proportion of moderately satisfied people tends to increase while the proportion of dissatisfied people decreases from the closest community to the furtherest community.
M.Sc. (Environmental Management)