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06.01.2022 On the shores of Malawi’s lake of stars, activists raise uranium fears When dead fish were washed ashore in northern Malawi, activists and residents looked to ...a nearby uranium mine for answers the latest battle in a protracted conflict with Paladin, the mine’s Australian owners. The sun rises over Lake Malawi. As fishermen bring their overnight catch to shore, the purring motors of their dugout canoes spread ripples across waters once dubbed the lake of stars by David Livingstone. On the beach, a group of young men mend fishing nets. Women smoke fish to sell, including chambo, utaka and matemba. For many of the tens of thousands of people living in Karonga, a lakeside district in northern Malawi, life revolves around fishing. So when dead fish began to wash ashore last December, they were worried. Some blamed pollution from the nearby Kayelekera uranium mine, the country’s biggest foreign investment. People are fearful because there are a lot of fish dying in the lake, so people are suggesting that they are dying because of the discharge from the Kayelekera mine, said Harry Hudson Mwanyembe, the chairman for health and environment on Karonga’s district council. The Australian company that owns the mine, Paladin Energy Ltd, says it has complied with all its environmental obligations and routinely monitors aquatic life in the Sere River and elsewhere. It denies any responsibility for the dead fish. In a statement dated 10 January, Malawi’s government said it was investigating the causes of the fish kill in Karonga district the first case of localised fish kills in recent times. It noted that fish kills had been observed four times on a large scale in Lake Malawi since 1999. Others had occurred 40-50 years ago. Previous fish kills had been caused by changes in the oxygen composition in the waters after heavy winds. It also stated that Kayelekera mine had never released effluent into the environment from its storage facilities. Paladin’s operation in Kayelekera has been beset by controversy since it was opened by the late president Bingu wa Mutharika in 2009. The disputes, legal battles and public concern over the mine go to the heart of what many call Africa’s resource curse. As one of the continent’s poorest countries ranking 174 of 187 countries in the UN human development index Malawi desperately needs foreign exchange, as well as employment and infrastructure. But its pursuit of extractive wealth has been stymied by a lack of adequate regulation and transparency as well as by corruption, activists say. In Kayelekera, the pitfalls associated with launching a multi-million dollar enterprise, with government backing, in an area where people lack access to both information and power, are evident in the many rumours, claims and counter-claims surrounding the mine’s operations. Harris Mweso, the village headman, says the mine initially created jobs in a deprived area, with several thousand people hired when it opened although the number has since dropped. There was money to be made here, he said. The village has benefited from the mine. But another resident of Kayelekera, Philip Simbowe, said the government had sold the lives of Malawians for cash. Foreign companies like Paladin see that here in Malawi, we are naive and take advantage of us, he said. Knowing what we know now, we would advise other communities against allowing foreign mining companies in their areas because the benefits are not worth the risks. Reinford Mwangonde, who has challenged the mine’s operating procedures since before the licence was granted in 2007, says the multifaceted Paladin case highlights the importance of a strong regulatory environment. The government gave the mining licence for extracting uranium first and the laws came second. What sense does that make? You have to first introduce policies and instruments, beef them up, make sure stringent regulations are in place, then allow the industry to operate, said Mwangonde, executive director of Citizens for Justice, who chairs the Natural Resources Justice Network (NRJN), a coalition of 33 civil society groups. The NRJN took Paladin and the government to court in 2007, arguing that Malawi did not have the appropriate laws in place for uranium mining. The case was settled: Paladin agreed to a number of concessions, including the payment of $10m (6.5m) for social development projects. The government agreed to enact new legislation for uranium mining, to review the 1981 Mines and Minerals Act, and to invest earnings from the mine in the local community. During the case, NRJN activists claim they received threats and were intimidated by the police, government officials and traditional chiefs. There was a lot of divide and rule, which multinational corporations are good at. At times the police, instead of defending us, harassed us, said Kossam Munthali, NRJN’s board chairperson and executive director of Focus, a Karonga-based NGO. Paladin has since faced criticism over a spill caused by heavy rainfall in January, and its recent decision to treat and release run-off water into the Sere river, which eventually flows into Lake Malawi, a Unesco world heritage site. The discharge, which began in April, was approved by the government, but NRJN has tried to block it. Paladin says the run-off water has been treated in line with international standards and needs to be discharged because the mine suspended production in May 2014 due to low uranium prices. When the plant was operating, rainfall run-off water was used in production, but because of the closure which the company says will last until uranium prices pick up again the water needs to be discharged, the company says. We’ll be discharging this year and next year and until such a time when the mine re-enters commercial production, until the end of the mine life, said Greg Walker, Paladin’s general manager for international affairs, in Lilongwe. Ben Botolo, Malawi’s secretary for natural resources, energy and mining, said the government would independently test the discharge waters. He also said the government had learned a lot from the Kayelekera process. The Kayelekera project has assisted Malawi’s government to understand some of the dynamics in a project of this nature and has assisted in the improvement of our legislation, inspection procedures etc, he said. But criticism has also come from an external source. Conscious of their relative lack of expertise, NRJN activists enlisted the help of Bruno Chareyron, a French nuclear engineer who came to Kayelekera in February to monitor the mine and present the findings of a 2012 survey to the people. Chareyron, who is head of laboratory at the Commission for Independent Research and Information about Radiation, or Criirad, told a packed hall in Karonga town that he was worried about Paladin’s decision to discharge treated water. Paladin says the discharged water will have a uranium residue below the World Health Organisation’s 30 micrograms per litre for drinking water. It’s been well known for decades that, in the case of a chronic discharge, for some living species depending on the chemical conditions in the river a safe limit may be 0.3 micrograms per litre. So there is a scientific dispute, he said. Chareyron also raised concerns about worker safety, saying that although radioactive doses were below international limits for workers, they were still high. Following our visit to the mine [in February], we have serious doubts regarding the radiation protection practices and the accuracy of the evaluation of doses performed by Paladin, he added. Walker said that all workers in exposed areas were equipped with dosimeters to measure exposure and results were regularly sent to an international laboratory. Workers at the mine are in fact exposed to very low levels of radiation of the order of between 2 to 4 millisieverts per year. Now, the international standard for exposure in any year is 50 millisieverts. So the question of there being a long-term radiation exposure, health issues and so on is simply fallacious and is recognised by anybody who is truly an expert in the area, said Walker. The biggest problem, according to Chareyron, is the stability of the mine’s tailings dam. Tailings a sludge-like waste product contain hazardous chemicals, including acid used in the processing of uranium concentrate, known as yellow cake. It’s shocking that Paladin has disposed of millions of tons of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste on a plateau with very negative geological and hydrogeological characteristics, he said. When we asked its staff if there was an emergency plan they said no There should at least be an emergency response plan in case of dam failure. Walker said the dam had been designed to high standards and had survived an earthquake in December 2009. Before the arrival of the mine, the people of Kayelekera were mainly subsistence farmers. Many hoped the mine would bring prosperity, but the area still lacks paved roads and has neither a hospital nor a water treatment plant. Ironically, it is also without electricity. Tiyowayechi Msiska, a pregnant mother of three children, said she was concerned about pollution in the Sere river and the impacts of dust from rock-blasting at the mine. We’ve heard that uranium can cause deformities in babies. We’ll have lots of problems if uranium poisons the Sere river. We eat fish, wash our clothes and irrigate our crops, including maize, from the river, she said. Many residents also complained that Paladin failed to build a promised hospital, although they said the company had dug boreholes, refurbished the under-fives clinic and primary school, and built a community hall. Walker countered that Paladin had never promised a hospital. What we did say was that we’d build a health clinic in Kayelekera village and that’s something we’re undertaking. We’ve spent in the order of a quarter of a million dollars upgrading the hospital in Karonga township. We spent over $10m building a water-supply scheme, he said. As the saga rumbles on, NRJN campaigners fear the government may make the same mistakes with other large-scale projects. It’s giving away licences to explore for oil and gas on Lake Malawi in the absence of a stringent petroleum exploration act With an old and weak regulatory framework, there’s potential for mining operators to abuse it in their interest to maximise profits, NRJN’s Mwangonde said. NRJN campaigners say their activism has, at least, given them a voice. The ministry of natural resources, energy and environment is reviewing the draft mines and minerals bill, and is consulting the campaigners on changes. The battle has been long, but Mwangonde says it is necessary. Someone has to keep the government and industry in check because if we don’t, who’s going to raise critical questions on behalf of the people of Malawi? It’s a risky environment to operate in. But if you stick to the facts and do your job right and don’t say things which are not true, who would challenge the facts? This article was amended on 3 June 2015, Kossam Munthali is NRJN’s board chairperson, not vice-president. It was further amended on 5 June to clarify that the fish kill was in December 2014 and that the Malawi government had issued a statement to say it was investigating