Presidential Climate Commission: Durban communities speak of petrochemical toxic legacy

Desmond D’Sa speaking during Presidential Climate Commission public consultations in Durban. Image: Lunga Bhengu

23 March 2022

The corporations that have polluted south Durban cannot be allowed to just cut and run. In its first meeting with a community affected by the petrochemical industries, the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) was told that the big refineries, Engen owned by Petronas and SAPREF owned by BP and Shell, have both shut down. So south Durban is in transition but it is not a just transition.

The refinery shut down has cut the air pollution, but there remains a legacy of health impacts on the people of the community that stretches across four generations. These impacts start with the unborn child. Professor Rajen Naidoo at Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of KwaZulu Natal told the commission that when mothers are polluted, their unborn child is already affected as genetic changes take place in uterus. That child is then vulnerable for life and many do not develop as they should. And once they are born, they are immediately affected by the direct impact of the pollution. Children are frequently sick, frequently miss school and then cannot get work. So the cycle of poverty is reproduced.

Apartheid divided the people, said Des D’Sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA). But pollution knows no boundaries and the struggle for a clean environment has brought them together. They are now calling for justice in the transition.

Rich transnational corporations have taken the profits, but they will leave the community with a terrible environmental burden. Beyond health, people from the community told the PCC that toxic chemicals saturate the ground where the refineries have stood for the last 60 years to the depth of several metres. And their pollution runs into the groundwater and to the ocean. They called for the refineries to be properly decommissioned and the land rehabilitated.

The pollution of the ocean is made worse by offshore exploration for oil and gas. The damage starts with seismic exploration and continues with drilling and oil and chemical spills. This has already had an impact on the livelihoods of fishers.

South Durban is home to the workers who built South Africa’s oil and gas industry, from the local refineries to Sasolburg and Secunda. This has been a defining element of the local community. They always knew that these industries were toxic, but they nevertheless depended on them for an income, for enough money to take their children to hospital. These workers are now being abandoned. Engen closed following an explosion at the refinery in December 2020. SAPREF announced in February that it was ‘suspending’ operations. Contract workers who arrived for work in the morning were sent home the same day. There was no notice and no consultation.

The decommissioning of the refineries is now the last hope for workers and for local service companies. They must be first in the queue for contracts and jobs. They know the refineries and they have a database of workers and their skills. Preference cannot be given to outsiders and, if it is, the community will blockade them.

The community as a whole must be part of the decision making for the future use of the land. The people called for an industrial transformation in south Durban, from polluting fossil fuel industries to clean industries supported by small enterprises. The closure of the refineries has been on the cards for decades, but government has not planned to bring in new industries, making solar water heaters or PV panels, that would use the extensive local skills base.   

Government has also excluded people for decisions around planning. The whole area is being turned over to logistics. In Clairwood, people find that trucking companies have moved in next door to their homes. And Clairwood racecourse, the one green lung in in the area has been given over to warehouses and packing sheds. This was also the designated gathering point in the case of disasters. Now, there is nowhere to go.

Disaster is always threatened at the refineries, chemical tank farms and other local industries. Over the last two decades, there has been an average of three major incidents a year, including massive explosions and fires, and a host of smaller incidents. Such incidents are traumatic. The shock of explosions is followed by the fear of what toxic compounds are going up in smoke.

Yet government has consistently failed to develop a proper disaster management plan. And when plants and warehouses burn, neither the fire fighter nor the local communities know what is burning. This is because companies are allowed by government to withhold information from the community, subject to ‘commercial confidentiality’ on the pretence that it safeguards competition.

This is an outcome of government colluding with business and putting corporate profits before people. Too often, government officials are absent from critical planning discussions in which the future of the area is being decided. And too often, they show no sign of having listened to what people say. A just transition in south Durban must put people before profits and engage people in deciding their own future.

The community insisted that the PCC cannot count this meeting as the beginning and end of participation. They called on the commissioners to return and report on what they had done. They also noted that the PCC is a stakeholder body but the commissioners present were those who represented civil society and labour. The business reps were conspicuously absent. So were the government ministers who are regulars at the PCC’s national meetings. The people of south Durban and elsewhere in KwaZulu Natal want to see them. They want to engage them in open discussion. The future of the area cannot be left to the minister of minerals and energy talking to the refinery bosses behind closed doors.

Contacts
Tsepang Molefe
+27 74 405 1257
media@groundWork.org.za

Desmond D’Sa
+27 83 982 6939
desmond@sdceango.co.za