ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: Environmental Racism, a Lingering Legacy of Apartheid

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Danielle Knight

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, Apr 3 2001 (IPS) - The former government’s practice of locating polluting mines, industries and toxic waste dumps near black and mixed race communities is one of apartheid’s lingering legacies that many communities say has proven to be one of the hardest to remedy since the new government took power.

Bobby Peek, one of South Africa’s most prominent environmentalists says the apartheid pattern of placing potentially hazardous industries adjacent to or downwind of black and immigrant communities is still enforced by economics.

“Whether its South Durban or on the Cape, hazardous sites are always near black and coloured communities,” says Peek. “It’s South Africa’s historical blue print.”

This pattern hardly changed overnight once the African National Congress took control of the government in 1994, he says.

Here where Peek grew up, in the southern industrial basin of this South African coastal city which is mostly made up of poor black, Indian, and mixed-race communities, there has been five major toxic gas leaks in the past year alone. Workers and residents, including hundreds of school children had to be hospitalised.

Not only does the area host several crude oil refineries, including the largest one in southern Africa, it is also home to the city’s airport and 150 factories, including many chemical plants and a pulp and paper mill.

While no formal studies have been done on the health impact of pollution in South Durban, an investigative report last year by a local journalist concluded that the rate of leukaemia in the area may be up to 24 times higher than in other parts of the country.

Two years ago, the city government released an environmental assessment of South Durban which concluded that certain residents living close to industrial operations should be relocated.

But area residents like Desmond D’Sa, who were forced to relocate under the former apartheid regime from certain areas because they were not white, are adamantly against any relocation.

“We don’t want to move, we want to stand up and fight for a cleaner environment,” says D’Sa, who is an active member of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, a local organisation.

Part of the problem says D’Sa, and other members of the advocacy group, is that there are currently no legally binding air pollution regulations in the country, only non-binding “guidelines”. South Africa also lacks any kind of regulatory or enforcement body such as the US Environmental Protection Agency and relies on self-regulation of industry.

Stepping into the enforcement gap, local residents have begun testing their own air using an inexpensive bucket air sampling device that was developed by environmentalists in the United States. The air samples are then sent by courier to an air pollution laboratory in Los Angeles in the United States, since there are no government approved air testing facilities in South Africa.

Several of the samples taken near the oil refineries have revealed elevated levels of benzene, a chemical classified as a known cancer causing substance by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Levels of benzene near one of the refineries operated by Engen, a subsidiary of Petronas, a Malaysian company, were up to 15 times higher than World Health Organisation guidelines and several times higher than recommended levels in the United States.

D’Sa says that corporations operating in the area, such as British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell, which are based in industrialised nations that have legally binding air pollution standards, should know better.

He points out that the US company, Mobil, which has now merged with the oil giant Exxon, is currently being sued in the United States by widows of employees who worked at the company’s refinery (now operated by Engen) here several decades ago.

The lawsuit claims that the company did not take adequate measures to protect the health of the workers, who have died from diseases allegedly related to their jobs at the plant.

“I went to a Shell refinery in Denmark and there was no smell at all,” says D’Sa. “And when we looked at the data we found that there was 85 percent less pollution from the refineries in Denmark than here.”

Richard Parkes, managing director of Sapref, the petroleum refinery company that is jointly owned by Shell and BP, says this is not the case. He says that compared with other Shell refineries worldwide, the refinery in South Durban emits about the same amount of pollution or less.

“While it is impossible to process 180,000 barrels of crude oil a day without having an impact, we want to reduce that impact, control it and remove it where possible to the point where the good we do exceeds the disadvantages,” he says.

But he acknowledged that the company emits very high amounts of sulphur dioxide, a larger amount than the company previously estimated.

To deal with this pollutant, Sapref launched a 40 million dollar investment in a new sulphur recovery unit and gas treating unit last month which the company says will dramatically reduce refinery emissions of sulphur dioxide in South Durban.

Narend Singh, provincial Minister of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs, sees this recent step as a good example for other industries in South Africa, but he says further reductions in emissions are needed.

“The previous government was careless about the effects of industrial development on the environment … regulations controlling pollution did not keep up with developments and needs,” he says. “We must not repeat that mistake.”

The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance is currently calling on the city government to conduct an overall health study, but local health authorities have only allocated funds for a risk assessment.

Michelle Simon, director of the advocacy group, says a risk assessment is welcome but an epidemiological study of the illnesses present in South Durban should also be pursued.

“The pollution is quite a drain on people’s pockets,” she says. “People here do not have the money to buy medicine or see the doctor again and again.”

Peek blames the national policy makers for not allocating enough funds for cleaning up the environment in poor black neighbourhoods that have been historically marginalised. He says each year the budget for environmental protection decreases.

“We were so excited when the government included section 24 in our constitution, which ensures the right to live in a clean and healthy environment,” says Peek. “But our government is not following through.”