With the world’s attention turned to fighting COVID-19, Australian company Resource Generation (Resgen) was hoping to quietly push ahead with their destructive Boikarabelo coal mine in South Africa.
In April 2020, Resgen held the most important vote in the company’s history to get shareholders to approve additional funding to proceed with their massive mine.
ActionAid Australia delivered the names of 2,556 supporters straight to Resgen’s company secretary, calling on the company to not proceed with the mine until it consults with women and community members like Francina (pictured below) living in nearby towns like Lephalale.
Thanks to the ongoing backing of ActionAid supporters, Francina was able to attend the online investor meeting. She asked when Resgen and its contractors would finally deliver on broken promises such as providing essential services like clean water, sanitation, and electricity to local communities. And called out Resgen for denying community members the right to visit relatives’ graves in the local cemetery.
Francina also pushed Resgen to detail when and how local communities would be consulted.
To hear the question that Francina asked, check out this video Francina recorded 👇
The company secretary wrote back saying Resgen would engage with community members and address their concerns––and restated the commitment during the investor meeting.
For now, the destructive Boikarabelo coal mine will go ahead as investors overwhelmingly approved the funding package.
We’ll keep campaigning to ensure Resgen addresses the concerns of women and community members and conducts a proper and meaningful consultation process. We’ll work with Francina, organise our activists in Australia to stand in solidarity, and use online tactics to keep up the pressure.
Your support makes all this work possible. It’s only with the backing of supporters like you that we could produce hard-hitting online ads and videos to get the word out, pay for Francina’s internet so she could attend the online meeting, and gather thousands of signatures to keep up the pressure.
So, if you can, consider chipping in whatever you can afford to support women like Francina.