MiningWatch Canada expresses our solidarity and support for the parliamentary petition to the government of South Africa presented by Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA) on mining accountability, capital flight, and community abandonment, and for the relief requested therein.
MiningWatch Canada is aware of the historic and present role of Anglo American in despoiling the environment and dispossessing communities across the globe. We are concerned that the present initiative to merge Anglo American with Teck Resources will not only bring diminished accountability to Teck’s operations, but will facilitate Anglo American’s abandonment and abrogation of its obligations to South Africans for reparations and restitution of the harms generated through its century-long history.
The impacts of Anglo American’s extraction of South Africa’s wealth and exploitation of its people’s labour is carefully documented in the MACUA petition, as are the impacts and impunity of its operations in other countries, from Zambia to Chile. Teck, for its part, has a track record of environmental contamination in British Columbia at its Trail smelter and recently-divested Elk Valley coal mines, and in Peru, a key element of the proposed merger is the opportunity to combine Teck’s Quebrada Blanca operation with Anglo American’s troubled Quellaveco mine nearby.
Anglo American must be held accountable for its past and present profiteering and concomitant environmental and human rights abuses, in South Africa and elsewhere. It must not be allowed to dodge its liabilities. As highlighted in the petition, the Anglo American case points to the pressing need across the mining sector for binding legal and financial obligations to FPIC (Free, Prior, Informed Consent), mine closure, and rehabilitation; corporate reparations for historic harm and ecological debt; and stronger oversight of corporate disinvestment and transnational mergers.
For our part, MiningWatch Canada urges the Government of Canada to ensure that Anglo American’s obligations and liabilities are not marginalized, externalized, or extinguished in a merger with Teck Resources. Canada should be helping ensure that such obligations are honoured, not undermined, in any such transaction. A “net benefit” to Canada must not come at the expense of South Africans. No Exit Without Justice.
Watch MACUA's full press briefing on youtube here.