Former miners hit gold with poultry farming gcis vuk uzenzele > By gcis vuk uzenzele - 23 July 2021 - 07:00 Chairperson of the Ubumbano Secondary Cooperative Mzimasi Sotyatho (left) shows off the cooperative s chickens to officials from Rand Mutual Assurance and the Eastern Cape Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform. Image: Supplied.
Five former miners started a legacy agriculture project that not only aims to put food on tables, but to also stop their grandchildren from becoming mine labourers.
The men started the Ubumbano Secondary Cooperative in Gobothi village in Ngcobo, Eastern Cape, after falling on hard times when they left their jobs.
“We were faced with a lot of poverty in our families and we saw that the best way of ending this was to enter the agriculture sector,” says the cooperative’s Chairperson, Mzimasi Sotyatho (71).
Since April 2019, the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) commissioner Zodwa Ntuli has been on the warpath, insisting that several of the longest-established black empowerment schemes are operating in breach of the legislation, claiming BEE “ownership points” to which they are not entitled.
This is surprising for several reasons, not least because there has been no change in the intricate laws and regulations covering approved BEE since 2015.
Ntuli is an employee of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) who was appointed by the minister in early 2019.
The main Broad-Based Ownership Schemes (BBOS) have made repeated calls on the DTIC to clarify the situation. The most recent was on 8 February 2021. But they have got the run-around from government.
NGO pushes payment for ex-mine workers
MASERU-A non-governmental organisation, Justice for Miners, wants the government of Lesotho to nudge South Africa to pay former and current mineworkers who are suffering from silicosis and tuberculosis.
Justice for Miners is a coalition of interested parties in the mining sector which was launched at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg last year.
The association’s Lesotho secretary general, Booi Mohapi, told a press conference on Monday that after a class action lawsuit against 32 gold mining companies which resulted in a M5 billion settlement, the mineworkers have still not been paid.
This is despite the fact that the Johannesburg High Court had approved the setting up of the Tshiamiso Trust to facilitate payment by the companies to affected miners.