Dear Minister of Environmental Affairs,
We demand that you revoke the operating license of Enviroserv Shongweni Landfill due to lack of integrity that has been expressed multiple times. Multiple meetings have been held, complaints have been supplied sufficiently, sicknesses such as cancer levels in the area up to Hillcrest have risen and cattle from surrounding communities have been destroyed.
Why is this important?
Here are the facts as strong reasons from the most affected communities, black communities to demand the dump site to be closed down immediately:
1) The site is physically located within the close proximity of black communities (Ntshongweni, Dassenhoek, KwaNdengezi, Buxfarm and Cliffdale) while EnviroServ is legalized to take-in highly hazardous waste.
2) There is no Social Impact Analysis (SIA) component complimenting the Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA), which should speak into the social and cultural effects of the landfill for Black communities
3) There has been, multiple times, breach of promise to deliver Air Quality Monitoring Systems in Black communities, which are by the way more proximate to the landfill. Instead, these systems have been placed in elite white communities “because they complaint more” in directly quoting EnviroServ’s reply to the question. This reactionary model of EnviroServ is rather appalling and resonates with the neo-liberal nature that favours the needs of the resourceful (elite). The poor in this scenario is totally neglected simply because they lack resources to perform EnviroServ’s job.
4) EnviroServ organized multiple meetings during the intensifying season of complaints since April 2016 in which none of them were convened in the most affected, Black communities but in the elite convenient centers such as Assagay Hotel.
5) The absence of robust community engagement strategy for an operation such as EnviroServ can only confirm that Black community sensitivity is absent within this multi-million corporation.
6) The minority Black that was part of the monitoring groups confirmed on a public meting that they have been raising these concerns and EnviroServ neglected them.
We as the affected black communities demand the removal of this site with immediate effect as it does not reflect a human-centered development but top-down approach or even the sustainable development principle which failed to consider the future generation's needs in an effort to help the current meet their needs today. We are that future generation that was not forethought of when the site was approved by the Apartheid government in 1992.
.png)