South Africans ushered 2021 out the door with a momentous victory when the Makhanda High Court in Grahamstown ordered Shell to cease their seismic blasting along the Wild Coast. But the challenge to Shell’s activities made Gwede Mantashe see red. Lashing out at civil society for exercising their right to campaign against Shell\u2019s project of ecological havoc is an assault of the human right to a healthy environment<\/a> and a disgrace to his personal legacy. It deserves denunciations from the highest echelons of government.<\/p>\n\n Can civil society using science to prove the harms of seismic blasting and subsequent drilling for fossil fuels be conflated with \u201capartheid and colonialism of a special type?\u201d<\/a> Since Minister Mantashe switched sides and pledged allegiance to big business over precarious communities \u2013 everything became possible.<\/p>\n\n Yet Minister Mantashe\u2019s assault was not only erroneous. It puts the lives of civil society organisations and individual environment defenders in danger.<\/p>\n\n We saw as recently as 2020 how nefarious characters took the life of Fikile Ntshangase<\/a> at Ophondweni, in KwaZulu Natal. Inflammatory statements add fuel to the fire when a leading politician like Gwede Mantashe takes to the media and accuses campaigners of being stumbling blocks to development.<\/p>\n\n And let us never forget that the company\u2019s interests he defended – Shell – has literally armed the Nigerian military dictatorship, enabling the occupation of Ogoniland and the execution of indigenous protesters, including their leader<\/a>, author Ken Saro-Wiwa.<\/p>\n\n Still, Mantashe continues to favour the interests of fossil fuel companies at every opportunity, as recently as Tuesday at the debate on the State of the Nation Address.<\/a> In claiming that it\u2019s a crime to stand for the protection of communities\u2019 livelihoods, especially along the Wild Coast, Minister Matashe seems to have forgotten it\u2019s 2021 rather than 1984. If all of civil society and the general public does not stand up to Gwede Mantashe\u2019s pandering, we stand to lose our fundamental rights to protest and public participation as enshrined in the constitution.<\/p>\n\n Once-communist leader Minister Mantashe is now committing the sin of taking the name of apartheid and racism in vain, with the sole purpose of protecting business profits over human rights, community livelihoods and environmental protection. <\/p>\n\n Gwede Mantashe has become famous from his struggle for the rights of workers he represented under the the apartheid system. Almost three decades later, he seems to have picked up the cyncial tactics of the oppressor, using manipulative media statements to refer to civil society as racists<\/a>, including groups and individuals that have led civil disobedience to the then-apartheid state at the time. <\/p>\n\n
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