Roughly 150 homesteads in the village of Magog have been earmarked for relocation by the SA Lithium group due to their proximity to its new Highbury lithium mine near Port Shepstone.
According to a basic environmental impact assessment (EIA) report compiled by Joan Consultants on behalf of SA Lithium, the mine plans to increase the size of its mining pit by at least five times, as well as expanding its waste rock dumping area at least fourfold.
This would necessitate the physical removal of “about 142 to 153 households situated within the mine’s buffer zone”.
The consultants say this equates to about 800 people, based on their estimate that Magog household sizes vary between single-person homes and those with as many as 18 family members.
When the mine was established about two-and-half years ago, several residents on the immediate fenceline were regularly temporarily “evacuated” to shelter in a local crèche during dynamite blasting operations, rather than being relocated.
It remains unclear why residents were not relocated – or mining plans not amended – before the onset of mining operations, as hundreds of residents in Magog and the nearby Fairview Mission areas have since been exposed repeatedly to high levels of noise, along with dense clouds of dust from exploding rocks and daily convoys of heavy trucks hauling lithium mining ore through residential areas for export via the port of Durban.
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