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PRESS RELEASE
Date: 20 October 2003. The Department of Mineral and Energy recently released a draft radioactive waste policy. This is the first time that South Africans are getting a say in an issue which will affect people for 7 million years to come. Earthlife Africa Cape Town believes that the policy process has been designed to exclude and distort public participation. Why do we believe this? The Department appears to have designed a extremely limited form of public participation which fails to adhere to the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) principles and seems designed to undermine our attempts to engage with them. The Department of Mineral and Energy (DME) set up four public meetings, one of which was in Cape Town on the 14th October. This meeting was only advertised in the newspaper, assuming that everyone is rich enough to buy a newspaper. The advertisement did not reach all affected communities. From the onset we observed flaws that made the whole process very difficult, especially for the community organisations. We were finally able to locate Mr Schalk de Waal, the official in charge from DME, and requested translated versions of the policy (into Xhosa and Afrikaans) and other necessary documents useful for the meetings. He assured us that the documents would be delivered by the 9th October but failed to deliver nor did he respond to repeated phone calls. Secondly we requested transport assistance, the venues were made very difficult to access via public transport and very far from the people and again in this case the DME failed to deliver. (the Cape Town meeting was held at Duynefontein at the Koeberg club, very convenient for nuclear proponents but unheard of by anyone else). During the meeting, the language used was highly technical and made it difficult yet again for everyone to engage meaningfully. As everyone's grandchildren and great grandchildren will be affected by the choices we make in this waste policy process, this should be not the case. But it seem as if the process was designed for the elite only, those who can interrogate technical and scientific issues in great depths. Unfortunately, the meeting was flooded with nuclear technology proponents, who appear to have a vested interest in the program?… or is this an apartheid hangover renaissance of some sort? Further by choosing a nuclear proponent to present very biased information to the public while on the other hand claiming objectivity as the department, they show themselves to be biased. We should be asking ourselves a question, which criteria did the department used in identifying a French man, Jean Claude Guais, vice president of Cogema (reprocessing waste is their business), who favoured reprocessing as their "international expert"? Relevance to the PBMR: There?’s the PBMR project that has been approved and that is planned to be constructed at Koeberg Nuclear Power Station. The project is expected to produce high amounts of radioactive waste and the record of decision from DEAT has made it a condition of approval that there must be a Waste Management Policy. If this policy in place quite rapidly, then this would make it easy for the PBMR proponents to convince the authorities to give them the go ahead.. " Drawing up a policy is quite easy as it is just a piece of paper, but opting for a practical waste disposal method can be very difficult as it has yet to be done, and would therefore need some kind of an OK from the public using whatever method DME have (government and industry) opted for. The Civil Society can be very noisy and this could delay their process, therefore, we believe that the process was made very difficult for everyone to participate and it appears that the venue was chosen very carefully not to be accessible to everyone" said Sibusiso Mimi, ELA campaigner. Conclusion: We need to change the government's thinking. DME should be showing real interest in the civil society?’s input, rather than romancing the nuclear industry. We therefore welcome the Department's decision to extend the deadline to the 31st December after civil society pressure, but we need confirmation that they are serious about public participation. The DME agreed that they would be meeting with civil society again before the extended deadline in order to ensure that all people can participate. The pressure applied to the responsible DME officials was essential in this case. The officials are very far removed from the people issues on the ground, and do not necessarily know or understand or want to understand the civil society?’s role in sustainable development. We have written to DME with the following request: o A workshop in an accessible venue o All documents simplified and translated into Afrikaans and Xhosa. o All documents to be given to participants timeously, ie 10 days before the workshop o People must be enabled to participate through the provision of transport to the venue. o Experts who attend the workshop in order to unpack the waste policy must truly independent and not serving the interests of the nuclear industry. These should be agreed beforehand with us. We have proposed two dates in November and we are now awaiting their response. Sibusiso Mimi Earthlife Africa Cape Town 072 494 1395 for more info on the waste policy click here ?? |
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