The Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Limpopo has indicated that the infrastructure development is expected to commence this financial year.

Heavy industry projects in the Musina Makhado SEZ threaten to syphon water from a dry region and push South Africa’s carbon budget into the red.

NGOs, academics and concerned citizens have teamed up to publish an open letter to the South African government voicing their misgivings about a proposed special economic zone (SEZ) in the northeast of their country near the border with Zimbabwe.

The signatories say the Musina Makhado SEZ (MMSEZ) carries grave environmental and social risks, and has lacked public participation and transparency.

Proposals for a coal-powered industry hub in lush Limpopo promise jobs, but opponents say it will destroy pristine habitats, hike emissions and harm residents' health.

The draft environmental impact assessment (EIA) report on the controversial proposed Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone was released on 1 September, and public participation meetings started in Limpopo and Tshwane in the week of 14 September 2020. Input from community members and other interested parties saw powerful questions and concerns being added to the sensible and potentially prohibitive ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ raised by the report’s expert authors.

In 2017, because of its need to appease the SA government, a local company agreed to ‘conditionally withdraw’ its objections to the Chinese-funded Special Economic Zone in northern Limpopo. But on the day that Daily Maverick’s first article in this series was published, the company learnt that its association with the SEZ had rendered it toxic. Given its insistence that it played by the book on its R10.7bn proposal for an eco-industrial park in the province, the company has now decided to come clean with what it knows.

The development of a coal-burning, water-guzzling industrial zone is a potential threat to the roughly 18-million people in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique who depend on the Limpopo river watershed.

Conflicted Limpopo agencies charged with policing a proposed Chinese-run industrial zone are not up to the task. Exhibit A: the wildly skewed operator agreement.

How a Chinese company hijacked the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone.

When Vasco da Gama anchored off the mouth of the Limpopo River in 1498, he named it Espiritu Santo. Around 520 years later, a Chinese businessman wanted by Interpol would do a deal with the South African government to build an 8,000ha Special Economic Zone on the river’s southern bank. The dealmakers would keep many secrets from the ancestral claimants to the land, including their unholy plans for a coal-fired power station.