**ENVIRONMENT: ** The writer argues that the struggle for dignity continues, and true progress can only be achieved when the rights of the people remain paramount.
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To the leadership of South Africa, many of whom grew up in the same red-soil villages, drank from the same rivers, and shared the same rural struggles as the rest of us, I write this not as an enemy of progress, but as a brother carrying a heavy heart.
When our nation defeated Apartheid, we swore a collective oath: Never again would a powerful minority treat the black majority as mere obstacles on the land of their birth. Never again would state power strip rural people of their dignity, their livelihoods, and their customary territory to enrich a privileged few.
Yet, as I watch our government push to hand over our oceans to foreign oil majors and our hillsides to mining conglomerates, I am forced to ask: how does your behaviour differ from the regime we fought so hard to dismantle?
Under Apartheid, land was taken by force, while the people who lived on it were relegated to cheap labour or pushed aside entirely. Today, under the banner of a democratic government, we see the same trend. As Bhalasheleni Mthwa, a resident of Ntela, a small village at Xholobeni, says: "The government is treating us like birds during a veld fire. People who start fires do not check if birds are nesting with eggs or babies, they just burn grasslands. They do not bother to consult them."
Once again, rural communities are being told that our ancestral lands and sacred seas are sacrificial zones for corporate gain, although the tactics have become more sophisticated. Decisions are made in urban boardrooms and government offices, completely detached from the people who must live with the consequences of these activities.
Public consultation is treated as an annoying administrative hurdle, a box to tick after the deals are already signed, rather than a constitutional requirement to seek genuine, informed consent. Indigenous knowledge and spiritual ties to the land and sea are dismissed as backward, while multinational balance sheets are treated as sacred. It is like we do not exist or we mean nothing to our leaders. Who would have known that within 30 years of democracy our voices as coastal communities would be considered meaningless?
When foreign entities attempt to blast our waters with seismic airguns or extract offshore gas, they are not coming to develop the Wild Coast. They are coming to extract wealth and export it overseas, leaving our coastal fishers with destroyed marine ecosystems, compromised health, and broken livelihoods. There is a clear legacy of what drilling for oil brings to local people, one that cannot be ignored.
The people of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta continue to suffer under the legacy of what Shell has done to their land and ocean. Those who are so in love with the promises of emancipation by the oil economy do not want us to remember this.
We all need healthy ecosystems to thrive. No one wants to live next to a polluted ocean. But our leaders treat the livelihoods and spirituality of coastal communities as if they are inferior to multinational corporations' profits. That is exactly how our lives were perceived under colonialism. When we raise objections to these plans, we are labelled as anti-development, despite the laws of this country being clear on the need to hear the views of the people.
Our recent legal victory at the Constitutional Court proved that the highest law of our land was written to protect all South Africans, not to facilitate a modern-day land grab for corporate elites. The courts have reminded this government that procedural justice, community dignity, and environmental rights cannot be trampled for quick corporate profits.
It is deeply painful to see leaders who once fought against dispossession now acting as its midwives. You cannot celebrate the heroes of our liberation struggle while adopting the economic cruelty of our former oppressors. You cannot wear the mantle of freedom while selling the soil of your ancestors to the highest foreign bidder.
True development does not dispossess, it empowers. It does not silence communities, it centres them. There is a path forward for South Africa built on sustainable eco-tourism, community-owned renewable energy, and agro-ecology. Development that keeps wealth in the hands of our people and honours the earth.
I urge you, our leaders, to look in the mirror and remember where you came from. Stop prioritising short-term profits and foreign multinationals over the very people who put you in power. We have fought hard for a society in which the rights of people are not subjugated to monetary profit which benefits a select few and destroys the living ecosystems upon which we all depend.
SINEGUGU ZUKULU .
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Sinegugu Zukulu is a member of the Amadiba community, a coastal community in Mpondoland. He is also a lead applicant in the interdict to order Shell to stop seismic exploration off South Africa's Wild Coast.
