Ecological Conflicts, Resistance, Leadership and Collective Action for Just Resilience: What Can We Learn from a Community Struggle Against a Proposed Coal Mine in Fuleni, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa?

Abstract

ABSTRACT South Africa’s adopted neoliberalism framework, since democracy, has spearheaded industrial development such as mining and has contributed to eroding civil society formations for environmental justice. Although civil society has acted against mining developments, such actions can be uncoordinated due to neoliberal development influences. Neoliberalism can work to reconfigure the geographies of environmental justice struggles contributing to a fragmented ‘micro-politics’. This paper presents viewpoints from key stakeholders to examine civil society opposition to a mining proposal in rural Fuleni, KwaZulu-Natal, and the challenges that local communities may face in contesting exploitative mining practices in the context of neoliberal policy environments to secure just resilient outcomes. The paper highlights that for environmental justice struggles against mining to be successful and effective against domination and local leadership corruption, requires communities engaging in networking and social capital by linking up struggles and beyond isolated campaigns, sharing experiences and designing common narratives for strategies to combat mining and the broader neoliberal ideology producing unjust resilient outcomes. This also requires that campaigners include the local youth in discussions on and alternatives to mining, or run the risk of destabilising mining struggles for just resilient outcomes.