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Who benefits from dune deal?

If reports that the government has quietly issued a licence to an Australian company to mine titanium in the coastal dunes of Xolobeni are true, it's clearly a case of the more things change the more they remain the same.

If reports that the government has quietly issued a licence to an Australian company to mine titanium in the coastal dunes of Xolobeni are true, it's clearly a case of the more things change the more they remain the same.

The last time I checked there were environmental concerns connected to this region but this business deal now has the hallmarks of the infamous arms deal.

Someone has benefited somehow and I fear the biggest losers are going to be the Xolobeni community and Bizana as a whole.

I had hoped that doing things the unilateral way had gone with the Matanzima brothers but apparently I was wrong.

The new development raises the fear that, as in the past, residents will be removed from their ancestral lands to fenced-in areas.

This new episode has surely raised fears that the villagers in that part of the Eastern Cape are not out of government's reach after all.

I also don't see why an Australian company will have any interest in providing amenities for the local people.

Surely South Africa has enough mining expertise?

If the area had to be mined, choosing a local company would certainly have been preferable.

Richardson Mzaidume, Pimville

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