May 27^th sees the launch of the South African Research Chair: Mineral Law in Africa with an interdisciplinary day-long seminar titled Mining and Waste: The Law’s Responses to Solutions for Theory and Practice.

Prof Hanri Mostert, the first SARChI Chair for Minderal Law in Africa.

Last year Professor Hanri Mostert, a professor in the Department of Private Law, was one of five UCT researchers to be awarded a prestigious South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair. As the first holder of the SARChI Chair for Mineral Law in Africa, she is charged with giving the Chair direction and overseeing its launch.

Mostert’s aim is to facilitate the evaluation and reconceptualisation of laws governing mining and mineral resource extraction throughout the African continent. “One of many themes to be addressed is the crucial question of how legal regulation can assist in adequately addressing one of the biggest by-products of the mining industry: waste. Mining waste has a serious impact on both the environment and communities who depend on it. This is a question that neither lawyers nor engineers can answer when working by themselves,” she adds.

While the seminar serves to launch the Minerals Law Chair, it is also a celebration of the existing work being done on minerals and mining at UCT. For the purposes of the seminar, the Mineral Law Chair teams up with UCT’s Minerals to Metals Signature Theme, an initiative hosted by the Department of Chemical of Engineering. Dee Bradshaw, the incumbent director, assumed the position as the SARChI Chair: Mineral Beneficiation at the beginning of 2016.

In seeking to grapple with these questions, the launch will involve speakers from several disciplines: law, engineering, health and both natural and social sciences more broadly. The morning’s academic presentations will be followed by a roundtable discussion in the afternoon, involving industry stakeholders and legal practitioners, as participants seek practical and legal solutions to the problem.

A photo by art student Tebogo Moche that will be on exhibition at launch of the SARChI Chair for Mineral Law in Africa.

As the programme for the seminar is taking shape, it clearly promises to be an interesting day for anyone involved in mining and beyond. Waste is an issue that concerns all, not only those in the industry or in practice. Proposed topics from participants will cover a wide array of issues in the context of mining waste. Topics range from the ownership of waste, the regulatory framework for managing mine waste, water and waste, waste and sustainable development, the abandonment of property and the impact of waste on health and humanity.

Mining activity, moreover, has a distinctly visual impact on the South African landscape and its people. The Centre for Curating the Archive at the Michaelis School of Fine Art will be participating in the seminar too, by facilitating reflection on this reality. Thus the launch coincides with a photography exhibition and competition on the theme of mining and waste. The photography on display will highlight the impact that mining has on the environment and the inevitable waste it creates in South Africa, including its impact on those human lives that are intertwined with the mining industry.