Risks and vulnerability in uranium mining: A synthesis of local perspectives in the Great Karoo region of South Africa

Land, conflict and radical distributive claims in South Africa's rural mining frontier

“…The discussion on the character of these struggles contributes to the growing scholarly debates on mining-related conflict, and the complex, multi-dimensional struggles of the rural poor in mining-affected areas. These struggles can, variously, involve processes of resistance, negotiation, and accommodation among different elements of mining communities, with conflict often centring around defending environmental rights and livelihoods threatened by the expansion of mining, but also involving intra-community struggles to capture the (often scarce) economic opportunities created by mining companies in the form of employment, procurement contracts, CSR programmes, and royalty schemes (see Gilfoy, 2021 in this volume;Issah and Umejesi, 2018;Rajak, 2011;Welker, 2009;Bebbington et al, 2008;Frederiksen, 2019). In a study conducted in Indonesia, for instance, Welker (2009:143) details describes how violent attacks on local environmental activists by local elite groups protected mining capital and enabled its expansion and the destruction of local environment; Welker labels these groups 'the agents and defenders of capital'.…”