IT WAS an ill wind that blew through Maria Mtsweni`s home late last year and took half her humble abode with it. The cracks that had begun to appear in the mud walls of the Ndebele house could no longer take the pressure and finally succumbed to the winds as they stole through that stretch of Mpumulanga last November.

Though the house had survived many a strong wind before then, as most sturdy mud-brick structures generally do, it had been weakening ever since Xstrata began to mine nearby in October 2006. Each time the coal mining company blasted the local rock, Mtsweni`s house would vibrate less than a kilometre away
Soon after that the cracks began to appear. First there was one. Then two. Then three. They started out as hair-like fissures running up and down the colourful walls. Then they began to widen, and that`s when Mtsweni, now 60, began to worry

Within a year the walls were beginning to pull apart from one another and it would only be a matter of time before they would give way altogether. Eventually they did in the dark of that November night when the dining room of the U-shaped structure collapsed. Nobody was in the room when it came down. Today a crack the width of a that part of the house to cave in too.

In the kitchen, a wedge is widening between the wall that separates the room from the sitting room, right where it meets the external wall that meets the rear of the house. It`s similar to the kind of gaping apertures that can be found in most of the rooms of Mtsweni`s house.

Over the years she has had to replace broken windows that have been blown out of their frames, unable to withstand the vibrations. That can be costly on her meagre income, which is why she has decided to leave the two panes that have cracks in them for the time being.

When she moved to Kaalplaas in 1982, it was to a peaceful part of the escarpment. There was no talk of mines in that area back then. No mention of coal. This was Mpumalanga, after all, "the land of the rising sun", a province of wide open plains across which grew sugar cane, sunflower seeds, sorghum, potatoes, onions, cotton and maize, altogether accounting for nearly 20 percent of the country`s agricultural output.
Maria`s husband had died a few years earlier, as had Banana Mtsweni`s wife, and so it was that the couple decided to marry and rear their children together.

Banana Mtsweni built them a three-room structure on top of a small hill, about 5km off the N4 at Wonderfontein. A crop of trees sheltered the house to the back while the front of the house gave on to a sea of yellow maize fields. A knee-high wall painted in a bright Ndebele design separated the house from the small garden patch and completed the home in which they began their married life.

Over the years Mtsweni built on three more rooms to the house, creating an L-shaped structure. His last extension was the dining room which he completed in the mid-1990s and which finished off the U-shaped design of the house. When Banana died in 1999, Maria continued to rear their children there alone. Today three of their seven children live with her, along with four of her grandchildren.

Though she didn`t have much, save a Rl 000 disability grant, Mtsweni managed to get by. She kept a few hens, some sheep, a couple of cows and a goat. But her life took a turn for the worse when Xstrata arrived.

Not only were the wails shaking, and later falling in, but the drinking water soon began to turn muddy.
Xstrata put a halt to its mining operations in November 2006, as it didn`t have the required water licence. Even without it, it resumed operations again in March 2007 and by July that year the water in the borehole had turned the ugliest shade of gold.

So Mtsweni was forced to take her donkey and cart 2km away to extract water from a cleaner source.
According to Xstrata`s communications manager, Songezo Zibi, tests were carried out on the water and it was deemed safe for drinking. However, the mining company erected a water tank for Mtsweni last year.

Given the level of mud and pollutants that were running straight into the borehole because of its proximity to the mine, it was clear that a hand pump would no longer be sufficient.

A water tank raised about 3m off the ground was erected, complete with a filter and a pump that is run off a generator. All of that was at Xstrata`s expense, but Mtsweni will always have to pay for the petrol to run the generator.

And she still has to give the water about three weeks to settle after extracting it from the ground before she can consider consuming it, though Zibi insists the filter was supposed to prevent this.

The bottle of yellow water Mtsweni held up to the afternoon sun on Monday afternoon looked far from clean.
Her neighbour and community leader, Kleinbooi Mhlangu, likens it to a "Fanta orange" colour, though the taste is not near as sweet.

But try telling that to Xstrata.

I asked Mtsweni if the water was damaging her health or that of her family She said they got a lot of headaches. She does not know if it`s the water or not.

Her two-year-old grandson struggled to shake off a chest cough last year and when she took him to the clinic in Belfast, they told her ``his chest is full of dust".

Mtsweni`s only consolation is that she`s not alone. Other homes in the Belfast vicinity have suffered a similar fate at the hands of six or seven mining groups. Xstrata was not and is not the only culprit.
Not only a community leader, Mhlangu is also a member of the Escarpment Environment Protection Group, headed by Dr Koos Pretorius, which has supported a number of people in their legal battles against the mining giants. Though it knows it cannot turn back the clock, the group is keen to curb the environmental destruction being unleashed.

It`s a tough task, but this hasn`t stopped the group in its challenge and, with the assistance of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), it has decided to take on the giants. The case is being handled by attorney Naseema Fakir. For now, the LRC is dealing only with the mine water pollution. The other grievances that have been raised by the Belfast folk, such as the damage to Mtsweni`s house, will be dealt with step by step.

The Escarpment Environment Protection Group`s success in the courts is critical for the future of the country`s environment and no one wants to move in haste. Fakir is now pursuing mining houses which don`t have the required water licences or environmental plans in place. Xstrata is one of six or seven offenders on the Belfast file. The protection group is also chasing the government, asking why it has allowed such circum stances to develop. The cases are currently being compiled.

Xstrata has declined to comment on the pending action, "as we have not received any papers yet", Zibi says.

According to Fakir, "We`ve been trying to get the government to provide answers, but that`s also been a bit of a slow process. Local government doesn`t usually respond to letters. It`s becoming difficult to communicate with them. Neither the government nor the mines are listening."

Just as Xstrata did not listen to Mtsweni last November when part of her house caved in.

A manager from the mine dropped by and took a long, hard look at the damage. He promised he would do something about it. That was eight months ago and Mtsweni is still waiting. Xstrata ceased operations on that mine a few months back.

Again Zibi absolves the mine from any blame, saying tests carried out on the structure showed that it could withstand the vibrations. However, Pretorius suggests that the destruction at Mtsweni`s home could have been prevented if Xstrata had played by the book.

When Xstrata moved into the vicinity, it erected a seismograph outside her front door to measure the vibrations from the mining activities, a machine that would issue a warning when the shock rates escalated too high.

"The problem is they used US building regulations to interpret the readings," Pretorius explains. While US houses can withstand shock rates of up to 131 decibels, "Maria s house begins to fall apart at 120 decibels. We`ve had days there when we`ve recorded 148 decibels." So it`s little wonder it all came crashing down.

Mtsweni tells her tale with a certain amount of anger and frustration, but also with the sense that however heavy her load might be right now, it can only get heavier in the future if the group fails in its bid to have the appropriate checks and balances put in place.

The elderly woman points to the pockets of land that are zoned for mining or under application for mining rights, all as near if not nearer than the Xstrata mine was to her home. Her forefinger barely rests as she maps out the horizon. The fear of the community is that their land claims, all of which are still under review or awaiting final sanction, will be forced to take a back seat to the activities of the lucrative mines.

If they are forced to wait until the last of the mines shuts down years in the future, the local residents will have to settle with degraded parcels of land that will be of little or no value to a subsistence farmer like Mtsweni.

Experience has shown her that this will be an uphill battle. To her mind, the mining houses "are like apartheid, At least we can talk to the black government. We can ask questions. They don`t listen, but we can speak out now. But we can`t talk to these mining companies. They are much worse."

Sadly, she doesn`t see the often seamless relationship between the mines and the government. She appears unaware of the fact that the same mines that turn lives like hers upside down have the full backing of the authorities, or oper¬ate because of their strong links to
them.

FIONA FORDE