Listening to the Northern Cape: Pamoja’s Critical Minerals Field Mission

The testimony was remarkably consistent. Communities living closest to world-class mineral and solar assets described exclusion from employment, benefit-sharing trusts that hold enormous funds while delivering little that is visible on the ground, consultation processes that exist on paper but not in lived experience, and health concerns — including manganese-linked neurological illness — with no system to hold anyone accountable. In one of the mission’s starkest images, households beside one of the world’s largest solar-and-battery facilities reported living without reliable electricity.

But we also found reasons for hope: a district beneficiation vision that could anchor real industrialisation, a doctor’s shovel-ready rural telemedicine design, communities ready to pursue their own mining licences, and — in the words of IFNASA’s guiding principle — people determined to liberate themselves. Our role is to bring the evidence, tools and connections.

The full findings are being compiled as a research report, planned as a living document for public launch, with mining companies, government departments and civil society invited to respond. Watch this space.