An analysis of the land rehabilitation programme of the Tronox mine: Environmental justice and the community of Gobandlovu

A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Science in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering, at the University of Zululand, 2020.

The aim of the study is to analyse the land rehabilitation programme of the Tronox mine at Gobandlovu. In pursuit of this aim, the objectives of this research are to (a) track the process of rehabilitation in Gobandlovu using Remote Sensing, (b) establish if the Tronox rehabilitation programme is in line with MPRDA guidelines and (c) explore the perceptions of the community of Gobandlovu towards the Tronox rehabilitation programme. To achieve these, the research utilised a mixed methods approach, in the form of the explanatory sequential design. Data was collected using remote sensing techniques to download satellite images of the study area and then later analysed using GIS software. Remote sensing techniques were used to track and detect change through the land rehabilitation process, in which yearly mean averages were downloaded and analysed on ArcMap to visualise the normalised vegetation index of the period from 2002 to 2018.The spatiotemporal yearly mean averages were then classified in ArcMap to track the change in the two classes of bare soil and vegetation over the 17 years’ period (2002-2018). The second part involved the use of qualitative techniques. This was done through field observations as well as the administration of qualitative questionnaires on the residents of Gobandlovu and the officials of Tronox mine. While the results have shown that Tronox was able to rehabilitate the land it had mined on, it did not successfully fulfil the dictates of the principles of environmental justice in relation to the community of Gobandlovu. This is because most of the respondents interviewed stated that, not only were they not integrated in the whole process of mine rehabilitation, they have also not fully benefitted from the mining. This suggests that, Tronox attempted to achieve restorative justice but the same cannot be said about distributive justice.