Lithium mining for green power triggers eco-outcry from South African farmers

Mining lithium for batteries is a growing part of South Africa’s plan to use the global shift towards green energy to revive its economy, but now it faces a challenge from thousands of angry farmers who fear losing productive land to open-pit mines. On the southeast coast, where a lithium mine operates and more than a dozen prospecting licences have been granted since 2023, scores of generations-old farming communities are relocating. A coalition of activists is launching objections to the prospecting, which according to one group, the South Coast Guardians Association (SCGA), threatens 30,000 jobs in farming, labouring or services in this sugar-exporting and tourism hub.

Data from South Africa’s mines department reviewed by Reuters show lithium prospecting licences laying claim to some 73,000 hectares (282 square miles), an area slightly larger than the city of Pretoria. Most of it is farmland spanning 117 farms, but also beaches. The existing lithium mine, which also plans to expand, covers 150 hectares of pits and 180 hectares of waste dumps.

“Should all these prospecting licences be granted mining licences, the impact would be catastrophic,” SCGA General Manager Heather McLoed said. “It affects the small-scale farmers directly, their communities, their shops, and … the sugar mill” handling their harvests, she said at the mill, which crushes 2 million metric tons of cane a year from 2,000 small-scale and 600 commercial growers. As the climate crisis and disrupted oil shipments from the U.S.-Iran war propel investment in clean energy, South Africa has made critical minerals key to its economic revival plans.

[paywall]

President Cyril Ramaphosa in February told parliament South Africa had 40 trillion rand ($2.39 trillion) worth of critical minerals, describing them as a “sunrise industry” with potential to create jobs and strengthen the industrial base. On an afternoon in June, Albert Mthembu, 62, was examining the fissures in his brick bungalow in the hillside village of Magog, in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, the largest of the country’s three lithium hotspots.

[/paywall]