We are upset. Communities throughout South Africa are upset. We are highly upset by the audacity of big gas and oil firms. These big gas and oil firms keep on bulldozing their way. They bulldoze through our country, they bulldoze on shorelines, they bulldoze off-shore, they bulldozed their agenda during recent community meetings and now they want to bulldoze their way through parliament on Thursday. They think we will sell off our heritage to their greed. We have said NO and when we say NO again, they will probably get bribed legal governmental support to force their way onto our land.
We are tired of being forced by others. We have a legacy of being pushed around by others. History shows us that around the globe these big oil firms take what they want, when they want, and will then leave behind a scorched and incurable environment for our children, and our children’s children. They are criminals! They take what they want. They smile all the way to the bank. They leave us to attempt to clean up the mess of an unrecoverable environment after they have left. It is just like the aggression of the Apartheid system.
Soon, their trucks will be roaring through our villages and pristine environment. Our country will be changed forever. The land will be stripped. Then the drilling will start. They will drill holes wherever they choose. They will set off explosives deep underground and disturb the rock structures. We don’t know what it will do to the foundations of our houses or to our springs and water aquifers. None seem to care. We have no say. Then they will take 8 million litres of water (our water) per drill hole (65 000 people’s daily water consumption). They will mix it with 200 000 litres of 700 different chemicals per drill hole, which include radioactive and carcinogenic chemicals and will then force it into these pits on our land. These drill holes are quickly exhausted, therefore they will drill new ones on a regular basis. They will declare all these pits safe and then claim the contamination is not their fault, and therefore they cannot be sued. They don’t have any long term studies on the subject.
Then they extract their gas or oil and walk out… leaving us with the mess of polluted water and unstable ground under our homes. Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry at Duke University, told Bloomberg News that at the pace and intensity of drilling now, combined with the huge amount of wastewater, we are actually building up a legacy of radioactivity in hundreds of points where people are exposed to leaks and spills around the country. How will we be able to do our washing and also walk many kilometres every morning to fetch water from an unpolluted stream?
The nerve of these big firms like Rhino Oil who just bulldoze their own way through the land of our ancestors, with neither respect to the Nkosi’s or the King! Now they want to poison our water and our wells. We have attended their so-called ‘community meetings’ and they nearly always end in a fiasco. The communities throughout South Africa have said a great NO! Some even said they will stone the trucks and put up road blocks! But, typical of big firms, they just carry on bulldozing! And now they want to bulldoze their way through parliament on Thursday as well! They are on their way to take our water resources and colonise us again. To add to this great atrocity,rumours are spreading that some individuals in parliament have accepted bribes. Let those in parliament who give licences for fracking activities have the first fracking well in their own backyard! Let them cope with the water shortages and all those big trucks going up and down over their grass! Let them show us how to sort out the methane polluted water first!
We unanimously cry, “Get off our land!” Go back to Texas where you have been kicked out!
