A project to mine titanium in the Xolobeni region of Eastern Cape, South Africa, granted to Transworld Energy and Minerals (TEM), has been stopped in its tracks by Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica after an internal appeal from a community organisation, the AmaDiba Crisis Committee, represented by the Legal Resources Centre. The licence to mine, originally granted by the minerals and energy department, was supposed to come into effect at the end of October 2008. But the committee appealed the licence, saying that it would change the community’s traditional way of life and result in the forced eviction of people from their ancestral homes, loss of grazing land, and relocation of their ancestral graves. In its appeal, the committee said the consultation process TEM was obliged to undertake was flawed.
