The class action brought against Anglo American SA by human rights lawyers for high levels of lead contamination near the defunct Kabwe mine in Zambia raises mixed emotions.
Yes, mining companies must be penalised if they are responsible for harming the health of their employees and people in nearby communities, and degrade the environment without rehabilitating and fixing it. There’s no question of that.
The pursuit of SA gold mines for billions of rand for the nasty lung disease silicosis, caused by inhaling silica dust by thousands of mineworkers, is a case in point.
So, what to make of the case brought by Mbuyisa Moleele Attorneys in Johannesburg and Leigh Day, a human rights law firm in London, against Anglo American SA for the lead pollution at Kabwe that is still making children and adults ill, damaging brain development and organs and affecting cognitive abilities and resulting in stunted growth.
Lead poisoning is ugly. But there’s this point to consider.
Anglo American SA was involved in Kabwe between 1925 and 1974 when the asset was nationalised by the Zambian government, which then continued to operate it until 1994.
The immediate question is why single out Johannesburg-headquartered Anglo American SA and not pursue the Zambian government or the state-owned mining company too for the environmental legacy that was the focus of a stuttering World Bank project in 2016?
Having visited the Zambian Copperbelt in recent years and seen formerly nationalised mines that are rusting, barely functional eyesores, it’s a legitimate question.
It’s a fair bet to say environmental rehabilitation was not high on the list of capital expenditure projects. To counter this argument, Richard Meeran, the de facto face of Leigh Day’s battles with mining and resources companies on behalf of communities, says studies showed that about two-thirds of the lead contaminating the soil around Kabwe came from the five decades up to 1974.
That still leaves one third of the lead pollution on the Zambian state’s books, but the government is most certainly not the target in this case brought before a SA court on behalf of 13 representative plaintiffs in a class-action case that could include 100,000 people from in and around Kabwe.
Why isn’t the government being hauled into court?
An easy, flippant answer might be that the Zambian government has no money. It is in negotiations with holders of $1bn (R16.2bn) worth of Eurobonds to defer $120m of interest repayments for six months. The bond matures in 2024.
Meeran is careful to point out this case is not aimed at Anglo American Plc, the company set up in the late 1990s when the company moved its domicile to London and changed its primary listing to the London Stock Exchange (LSE).
The reason Anglo American SA, a subsidiary of the London company, is singled out is because of its involvement in Kabwe as one of a number of shareholders in the operation, and because SA is apparently a fertile legal battleground for those lodging class actions.
Anglo has distanced itself from the historical pollution at Kabwe, pointing out it was one in a group of investors in the operation and, that by having the mine nationalised and run by the Zambian state, it does not believe it is “in any way responsible for the current situation”.
Interestingly, Anglo CEO Mark Cutifani has spoken a number of times of the company exploring in Zambia, but without giving much detail.
Funny how life works. Work in Zambia, have an asset nationalised, say you won’t go back, then go back for a bit of exploration and then get slapped with a class-action lawsuit for the mine you were involved in 40 years ago.
Mining is a rather easy target, one it is fairly simple to whip up negative sentiment around.
The statement on the launch of the class action touches all the right emotional buttons. The 13 people chosen for the start of this case include “children under 18, and girls and women who have been or may become pregnant in the future”.
The action wants an unspecified compensation payment to these children, girls and women. It wants blood screening for children and women in Kabwe and a cleanup and remediation of Kabwe.
Surely the Zambian government has to play some role in this? When the operation shut in 1994, what happened to remediation and rehabilitation by the state of those assets? Twenty years of operating the mine and smelter surely generated cash. Shouldn’t some of that now be used to clean up Kabwe?
The World Bank, in a 2012 review by an independent valuation group, noted that along with the enormous amounts of sulphur dioxide released from copper smelters in Zambia, which contaminated soil and led to respiratory problems in nearby communities, that about 50,000 people, of whom 9,000 were children, were affected by high levels of lead in the soil at Kabwe “due to naturally occurring mineralisation as well as the impact of the smelting and mining operations”.
A lead contamination mitigation programme in Kabwe was showing reductions of levels of lead in children’s blood through nutritional supplements and other treatment. But other parts of the programme were meeting with mixed success due to lack of funding and slow-moving local government action.
There’s a problem in Kabwe, that much is clear from the various reports the World Bank and others have released. That the problem needs immediate and concentrated attention is beyond question. Whether Anglo American SA should be singled out when there are other role players who also contributed to the problem with their actions is debatable.
But that’s what courts are for.
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