Thapelo Molefe
Deputy President Paul Mashatile said he is satisfied with the progress made in restoring better living conditions for the people of Jagersfontein following the devastating mine dam disaster in 2022.
During a visit to the area on Wednesday, Mashatile commended the Free State Provincial Government, the Kopanong Local Municipality, and the Jagersfontein Development Project for their collaborative efforts in addressing the challenges faced by the community.
A mine dam wall collapsed on the 11th of September 2022 in the Free State mining town, and the disaster resulted in a mudslide that damaged infrastructure and homes, leaving about 140 residents without access to basic necessities.
About 106 houses have been handed over by the Jagersfontein Developments Mine to families affected by the dam wall collapse during the disaster.
However, over 90 families have opted to have the mine rebuilt and renovate their homes, while the rest are taking the legal route to have the mine reimburse them.
Mashatile, who was delegated by President Cyril Ramaphosa to lead rapid response interventions in service delivery hotspots, undertook a service delivery oversight visit to Jagersfontein in May last year.
The visit brought together government, private sector, and civil society representatives to discuss mechanisms to improve municipal functioning and address community concerns.
Mashatile praised the Jagersfontein Development Project for delivering on its promise to build houses for affected community members.
“The remarkable progress we continue to make brings us closer to restoring better living conditions for the people of Jagersfontein,” he said.
Free State Premier Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae said the handover of houses marked a significant milestone in efforts to provide relief and support to the victims of Jagersfontein.
The mine’s representative, Billy Bilankulu, said this progress marked a different step towards a good relationship that they needed to start having with the community.
“We came in at a point where we were supposed to introduce ourselves to the community, and the disaster happened immediately. We made a commitment to say we will try and fulfil our promises of rebuilding their lives, which is exactly what we’re trying to do,” Bilankulu said.
However, David van Weyk, a researcher at the Benchmarks Foundation, said that some of the community members were not satisfied with the houses they received, and they received keys to empty houses.
“No one will move into their houses because there’s no furniture in the houses, and a lot of the property that people lost is still unaccounted for,” Weyk said.
The researcher said they received photographs of the houses and visited the area a month ago, but the quality of the houses was not the same as the quality of houses people lost there.
“The building is very shoddy, the plumbing is very shoddy, and the workmanship generally is generally not up to scratch, so that is a problem,” he said.
Weyk further said the other problem was that there’s been no culpability, who is responsible for the disaster, because there’s been no commission of enquiry to keep anyone responsible, which should have been the first and immediate step to do, and then to determine what needed to be done and how to fix things.
He said there’s been a lot of problems in the building of these houses.
“There were labour disputes in May. Many of the houses already have cracks in them. Some of the plumbing and piping and so on is not what it should be, from what we could observe,” he said.
He said the other thing that concerns him is that most of these houses are built exactly where the previous houses got washed away.
“They’re on the wrong side of the tailings facility of that mine. They’re right in the dust line when the wind blows, and all the dust from the tailings blows into these houses. They’re also right in the middle of the area where the wetland is, which, in our opinion, caused the tailings collapse and failure,” Weyk said.
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