Malawi, South African, Zambian mines face responsibility challenges

Lusaka, Zambia - Mining companies in Malawi, South Africa and Zambia have a "long way to go" before being recognised as responsible corporate organisatio n s, a study by Bench Marks Foundation, says.

While there are differences between mining in South Africa, Malawi and Zambia, e ach of these countries faces similar challenges in meeting all the requirements o f Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the report suggests that CSR and Cor p orate Social Investment (CSI) be prioritised and practised.

The study, entitled "Policy Gap 2", provides indepth research on the CSR status of platinum mining in Limpopo, gold and uranium mining in the North West and Gau t eng provinces of South Africa, as well as coal mining in Mpumalanga, and mining i n Zambia and Malawi.

Proper regulation has, however, not stopped bad environmental management and pra ctices in Zambia which run like "golden threads" through the mining industry in t hat country.

The study said the privatisation process of mines in Zambia resulted in major de trimental socio-economic impacts such as loss of jobs, increasing levels of pove r ty and others, while the small-scale mining industry is surrounded by immense co n troversy, mainly due to the concealed nature of gemstone mining.

Poor practices have resulted in serious health problems such as Tuberculosis, silicosis, Wilson's Disease and HIV/Aids, while safety is a huge issue and challenge in Zambian mines.

Labour issues also need revisiting, as is evident from all the strikes and labour unrest, said the study.

In Malawi, the study expressed concern at the high percentage of diseases in com munities in close proximity to mining operations.

Malawi faces a different set of challenges, according to "Policy Gap 2", includi ng a need to urgently review its outdated mining and associated legislation and r egulatory regime.

The report said civil society structures needed to be strengthened to provide an alternative point of reference for communities "in the face of rampant mining e x ploration and development in ecologically sensitive areas."

Also urgently needed is an organised labour force in the mining sector to addres s extremely low wages and appalling working conditions.

The research suggests that pressure be put on institutions such as Standard Bank , which finances the Paladin Kayelekera Project, to ensure socially and environm e ntally sound investment.

In South Africa, the main challenges centre around concerns that the various ass essment processes in which mines engage are "merely formalistic" since prospective licencees do not have to secure community consent or agreement in order for mi n ing licences to be obtained.

They merely have to demonstrate that they have consulted such communities. There are also perceptions that the South African Police Services are not impartial and fair, and that the Department of Minerals and Energy is "prostituting" itself t o accommodate the mining industry, the report stated.

The phenomenon of "junior mining companies" in the South African mining industry has resulted in "opportunism" by what the study describes as "treasure hunters" and, in some cases, "get-rich-quick" schemes.

"The phenomenon has led to the corruption of government officials, to flagrant c onflicts of interest and to often extremely divided communities," the research adds.

Bench Marks Foundation is an independent verification agency monitoring corporat e performance in the field of CSR.

Malawi Clergy to Mediate Peace Talks Between Government and Opposition

Members of Malawi’s clergy are expected to meet today (Thursday) with President Bingu Wa Mutharika’s government and the opposition to try to mediate the ongoing political impasse. This comes after tensions reportedly escalated when former President Bakili Muluzi and several members of the opposition were arrested for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Mutharika government. But the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) is accusing the government of attempting to weaken the party ahead of next year’s general elections. George Mtafu is the leader of the opposition UDF in the Malawi’s parliament. He tells reporter Peter Clottey from the capital, Lilongwe that he hopes today’s negotiations would be fruitful.

“The discussions between the government and the opposition in the past I would say from May to some two and half weeks ago, and those discussions actually collapsed. And that is why there was therefore this idea of bringing in external mediators to try and look at the issues once again,” Mtafu noted.

He said although some progress was made in previous negotiations with the government, there was a need for goodwill ahead of the peace talks.

“There has been a little bit of progress, but definitely not the progress to proceed. So, the mediators who have come in now, I think there is quite some hope that they will succeed. Some of the people on that panel have been mediating in a similar complex matter last year around September. They did not succeed, not that they did not succeed, but that the government side want to sign the agreement, which those people have prepared,” he said.

Mtafu said he is hopeful Thursday’s negotiations would go a long way in bringing down the brewing political tension in the country.

“We hope that with this panel now, which includes two of the people who were mediating last year, I think this grouping of five clergymen will definitely succeed,” Mtafu pointed out.

He said President Mutharika’s government should be willing to compromise to help resolve the escalating tensions in the country.

“I would say that I still do have some hope that government would make some movement. Last year we could not succeed, and that is where the mediators last year could not book a 100% success. But this year, I think government ought to move because as you would remember we were cheated last year,” he said.

Mtafu said the government failed to live up to its side of the bargain after the opposition agreed to pass the budget.

“We (opposition) agreed to make some huge movement, only to be deserted by the government. The government run away without completing the program last year. The program last year was that if we started with the budget we would then come to section 65 and then do the bills thereafter and then confirm senior officers of government. After passing the budget the government just run away, and our fear is that we might be cheated once again this year. The slogan goes or the idiom, “once bitten you are twice shy”. But we hope that the government begins to make some movement,” Mtafu pointed out.

Staging a recovery

Sarah Boseley meets members of a theatre group in Malawi dedicated to helping women put the country's sex trade behind them

Ellen Machemba has a mop of curly hair and vivacious eyes, though at the moment they are troubled. She is 29, she has a son of 13 and she is modestly dressed in a long skirt and a second-hand T-shirt. Her legs are curled under her as we sit on a rush mat outside a friend's house in Mchessi, an area of rutted earth roads and straggling houses with flaking plaster and tin roofs that is part of the capital, Lilongwe. She is talking about life for impoverished women in Malawi. She is talking about sex work.

"I was 23 when I began. I was married and then divorced. My husband had been the only man I knew. I met him as I was going to the market and we had a relationship for nine months before we married. But then he got another girlfriend, so he married that other girlfriend. So I had no support," she says.

It's a story that you hear time and again among the unskilled, uneducated women of Malawi. They marry, they have children, the husband leaves and there is nothing else they can do to get money. It's called sex work, but it looks more like poverty. And it is not a way out – women like Ellen who frequent the bars at night run big risks for little money.
"I really wish I could have married again," she says. "But most of the men I meet just lie to me or stay for a month and off they go."

Her dream is to set up a small business. "If I had a chance maybe I could buy and sell rice," she says. But that needs capital. Her rent is 4000 kwacha (£14.50) a month, she has school fees of 650 kwacha (£2.35) a month to pay for her son and then they have to eat. Selling your body in Malawi is not a lucrative business. You can't save.

"Sometimes depending on the person they might give me 500 kwacha (£1.80)," she says. And sometimes they refuse to pay. "Most of the time I don't get enough money to cover my expenses at home."

Respectable women in Malawi wear dresses and skirts. Under Hastings Banda, the post-colonial president who ran the country for nearly three decades, it was illegal for women to wear trousers. The ban was lifted in 1994, but now denim jeans, which became a badge of liberation for a generation of women in Europe and the USA, are the mark of sex work in Malawi. When Ellen goes out at night, she wears a bodysuit and jeans, she says. Then everybody knows the score.

Edina Ambulosi has three children – a boy of 21, a married daughter of 16 and Matola, an 18 year-old boy whose mental age is far less and who will need his mother's help all his life to survive. Edina's husband left them for another woman in 2002, when she was 39.
Edina tells a story that would be hard to believe if she were not so matter-of-fact about it and if her friends did not nod in agreement.

"I was taken by satanic people," she says. "They wanted to kill me. They said they wanted my blood and my body parts." I'm doubtful but when I ask other people they say yes, there used to be stories about such things in the papers all the time, though not so much any more.

"I didn't know the men. There were four of them. They picked me up at a bar and said let's have a night at a Lilongwe hotel. I accepted. But when they reached the hotel they didn't stop and went straight past on the road to Dedza."

Eventually the car stopped on a lonely stretch for two of the men to relieve themselves, Edina said. It was about 2am.

"The two guys went to the bush. I said to the others 'what are you trying to do?' They said wait and you will see. I was outside the car but they tied my arms so I didn't run away."

Then she saw a truck on the road coming towards them. "I started to run. I fell into a deep well. The water was up to my neck. I stayed there until morning. The guys were looking but did not find me. I was there until 5am. Then I climbed out and started walking. I walked for two days until I reached Lilongwe. I thought I was going to die."

Sex work is illegal, so there can be no recourse to the police. The women are frequently beaten up. Edina shows me her lower arm, which has set badly from a break above the wrist.

These days Edina goes to the local bottle stores of Mchessi, closer to home. They have a feel of the American frontier town about them – a porch and a yard, a wicket gate and a fence. A few plastic chairs are scattered in the yard and beyond the low fence out of reach of the light from inside the bar lies impenetrably dark bush.

Abiti Peturo bottle store is full of men with unfocused eyes, drunk and getting drunker. Their geniality feels paper-thin, overlying potential violence. All the women inevitably have HIV – some infected by the husbands who left them and some by the men they meet in the bottle stores. They say they carry condoms, but men in Malawi don't want to wear them. The drunken commercial transactions that go on in the bars, night after night – sex for survival - feed the pandemic.

Patrick Young, who runs an organisation called Theatre for a Change in Malawi, is helping women organise themselves into support groups and pressing local chiefs and the national government to help them.

"Sex workers are regarded as the lowest of the low," he says. "They spread HIV. They are loose immoral women. But the truth is they are wonderful people who are on the edge of survival. They have absolutely reduced choices."

Edina and Ellen now belong to a group of 16 women, all from Mchessi, all in the same dire plight – bringing up children alone, without jobs or skills.

Theatre for a Change gives the women donated food. "We know a lot of the women are going into sex work because they haven't enough to eat," says Young. That has cut the women's need to visit the bars.

Instead, they spend time acting out their difficulties with enormous enthusiasm, performing every Sunday for local community leaders, the police and anyone who wants to watch. The stories are their own – of women forced to go to the bottle stores, of family who shun them, of men who beat them up and of HIV.

Young's hope is of achieving policy change right at the top. Local chiefs have been supportive and a women's caucus of MPs in parliament is interested, he says. In the meantime, the women themselves have started a savings scheme, putting aside tiny amounts of money each week to help one of them, and then another and another, start a small business and hopefully get out of sex work forever.

African leaders review African problems

The African leaders acknowledged at the annual World Economic Forum on Africa opened here Wednesday that mismanagement, lack of democracy and reliance on handouts are partly to blame for the continent's woes.

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said Africa should stop using its colonial past as an excuse and accept that "mediocrity" of leadership kept it underdeveloped while Asian countries forged ahead.

More than 800 business and political leaders from 50 countries are attending the conference, which runs through Friday under the theme of "Capitalizing on Opportunity."

In a report before the meeting, the World Economic Forum said it should be possible for Africa, which is benefiting from high raw material prices, to sustain its 5 percent growth despite risks from food and political insecurity.

Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika said Africa was the world's richest continent in terms of natural resources and needed to change its mind-set to achieve its full potential.

"We have huge agricultural land and huge water resources and virtually every crop can grow on this continent and we are unable to feed ourselves," he said. "Can't we turn things around? Yes, we can," he said.

Malawi, he said, had the potential to become a major rice producer soon.

Mutharika said in the 25 years after independence from Britain, Malawi, an impoverished southern African nation, saw itself as dependent on food handouts, and its president performed an annual begging ritual. But he said when he was elected in 2004 he told the country's farmers they were capable of growing the food themselves and, since then, Malawi has had surpluses.

"If Malawi can do it, surely the rest of Africa can," he said.

Mutharika said another challenge facing the continent was that "Africans have not learned to share power," and cling instead to the principle of "winner takes all."

South African President Thabo Mbeki said that generally the continent was moving in the right direction. But he warned that a "belt of instability" across the Sahel stretching from Mauritania in the West to Sudan in the east had negative repercussions for the rest of the continent.

Ghana's President John Kufuor said the biggest mistake was not allowing free rein to the private sector. "If we have the leadership, Africa will catch up, because we have the resources," he said.