E C A A R -- SA

ECONOMISTS ALLIED FOR ARMS REDUCTION

 

                                                                               

Patrons                                                                                                  ECAAR -- South Africa

Rhoda Kadalie                                                           3B Alpine Mews, Box 60542

   Human Rights Activist                                                                     High Cape, Cape Town 8001

Njongonkulu Ndungane                                             Tel:  +27-21-465-7423                                

    Archbishop of Cape Town                                                                e-mail:  ecaar@icon.co.za

                                                                                                                website:  ecaar.org/za

Chair                                                                                                    

Terry Crawford-Browne                                                                                                                                          

                                                               

                                                                               

                                                                               

                                                                               

Trustees ECAAR--USA                                                     

*Oscar Arias                                           

*Kenneth J. Arrow                                                   DENEL: SWARTKLIP   -----  an ammunition

William J. Baumol                                                    factory in a residential area of one million people

Barbara Bergmann                                                   

John Kenneth Galbraith    

Robert Heilbroner

Walter Isard                                            

*Lawrence R. Klein                                 

Robert S. McNamara                                               

*Franco Modigliani                                                                

*Douglass C. North                                                  Terry Crawford-Browne

Robert Reich                                                            November 19, 2002

Robert J. Schwartz                                                                   

*Amartya Sen                                                                                                         

*Robert M. Solow                                   

*Joseph Stiglitz                                                                                                                       

*James Tobin                          

 

* Denotes Nobel Laureate                      

                                                                                       

                                                                                                               

Affiliate Chairs                                                                  

 

Yoginder Alagh,  India

J. Paul Dunne,  United Kingdom

Jaques Fontanel,  France

James K. Galbraith,  United States

Akira Hattori,  Japan

Kanta Marwah,  Canada                         

Stanislav Menshikov,   Russia                 

Alex Mintz,  Israel

Aedil Suarex,  Chile

Piet Terhal,  Belgium/Netherlands

David Throsby,  Australia

 

 

 

 

Lack of adequate waste management is a problem throughout South Africa. The legacies of the apartheid era include environmental degradation, with some areas of the country vying for the dubious distinction of being the most polluted in the world.[1]  There is no reason to believe that the South African armaments industry is an exception to the general pattern that armaments and military operations combine to create an environmental catastrophe.  The consequences are likely to be far more extensive, and far more expensive, than asbestosis.

 

Swartklip Products was established in 1948 as Rondons Manufacturing, and acquired by the state in 1971.[2] It was then sited far from population centres, but the apartheid government subsequently removed the “coloured” population of Cape Town to Mitchell’s Plain on one side and the “black” population to Khayelitsha on the other side. 

 

Accordingly, about one million people now live in close proximity to Swartklip.  Given the apartheid-era disregard of health or environmental issues, it is likely that Swartklip is massively contaminated with industrial and chemical pollutants associated with ammunition factories.

 

Swartklip is a division of Denel which, as a state-owned enterprise, is controlled by the Department of Public Enterprises.  It employs about 800 of Denel’s 10 500 employees. Swartklip considers itself a world leader in the research, design and production of pyrotechnics and explosive devices, mainly for export to destinations in Africa, the Middle East, South America, the Far East and Europe.   Its products include:

 

                        Pyrotechnics

                        Rifle and hand grenades

                        Anti-riot products

                        Rimfire and shotgun cartridges

                        Industrial cartridges

                        Marine distress signals

                        Phosporus ammunition

                        155mm ERFB carrier shells

                        40mm low velocity rounds

                        40mm high velocity rounds

                        Bullet trap rifle grenades.[3]

 

Some of the research and experiments for the apartheid-era chemical and biological warfare programme conducted by Dr Wouter Basson, including CR tear gas and probably beryllium, were conducted at Swartklip.[4]

Swartklip boasts of its exceptional safety record, of having achieved a National Occupational Safety Association five star rating for six consecutive years since 1995, and that only five employees have suffered fatal accidents since 1948.[5]  

 

Trade unionists declare however: “Swartklip workers don’t live very long.  Many have lost their hands, their legs, their eyesight, their hearing, their mental faculties, and many develop heart disease, arthritis and cancers.  They are discharged with compensation of R1 000 (US$100), and told to take responsibility for their own medical expenses.”  When asked “how many people are affected like this, 20 or 30,” the response was “900, and there are more at Somchem.”

 

Mr Apollis Fischer is a former truck driver at Swartklip.  He is now blind and severely mentally handicapped, and also suffers kidney problems.  His wife Anne attests that he used to deliver teargas, hand grenades, birdshot, 22 long rifles, 6.85 bullets, gunpowder, thunder flashes, tracer bullets, red and white phosphorous made at Swartklip to places such as Paarden Eiland and Firgrove Station.

 

My husband got a cough from January to January from the dust of the lorries. When he got home at night from work, he would be sneezing and coughing.  His eyes would be itching, so that I had to put eyegene in his eyes.  And during the day, when he was on the lorries where there was no water nearby to wash his hands when his eyes itched, he just rubbed his eyes with his hands that were full of gunpowder dust.  That is why he lost the sight of his left eye, and has got 20 percent sight in his right eye.  The Swartklip bosses never worry about the workers.

 

Mrs Petra Daniels was employed to weigh the chemical components for ammunition produced at Swartklip.  She was 24 years of age when the chemicals exploded and she lost both of her hands.  She was just so grateful to have survived that she never pressed for adequate financial compensation to ameliorate her disability, and was never assisted to do so by Swartklip management.  Mrs R Robinson died in March 2001 in a similar explosion at the same work station.

 

Wastes at Swartklip are still disposed of on the open “burning grounds” and at Swartklip beach.  Few, if any, tests are likely to have been conducted on the health and environmental consequences.  The armaments industry, as a matter of “national security,” has until now considered itself beyond the planning and environmental jurisdictions of local councils.  Non-governmental organizations as recently as June 2002 objected to a proposal to build an incinerator at Swartklip, which would be within 500 metres of shacks in Khayelitsha.[6] Denel has now referred the matter to the Department of Environmental Affairs in an effort to override environmental objections to the incinerator.

 

The people of the Cape Flats suffer perhaps the world’s worst incidences of tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases. Research in the United States finds that communities adjacent to military and armaments facilities are disproportionately affected by cancers and other diseases resulting from exposure to toxic materials. Degradation of human health and the environment by military pollution is not always visible, immediate or direct, and often presents itself only years later.[7]

 

ECAAR-SA brought sixteen former Swartklip and Somchem employees to Parliament on October 22, 2002 when five, including Mrs Fischer and Mrs Daniels, told their stories to shocked parliamentarians.[8]   The ex Swartklip Workers Committee has approximately 600 members. A parliamentary inspection of Swartklip was scheduled for October 31, 2002 but was then cancelled by parliamentary officials. 

 

The disastrous sulphur fire at AECI’s plant at Macassar near Somerset West in December 1995 alerted South Africans to the health and environmental dangers associated with explosives and ammunition. That plant apparently had also been awarded NOSA five star safety rankings. 

 

An explosion on Wednesday, November 13, 2002 in a storeroom at the ammunition plant at Swartklip, which severely damaged the building, has again alerted South Africans to these dangers.  The explosion occurred during the morning tea break thus, miraculously, only one person was injured albeit seriously.[9] 

 

Production has ceased, and about 400 workers who work in three shifts have been booked-off for at least three weeks pending reconstruction.  Meanwhile, the cause of the explosion is being internally investigated by Denel, the Department of Labour and South African Police Services.

 

Parliament has now gone into recess until January 2003, hence the need for NGOs and other voices of civil society to make urgent representations to local government for thorough and independent on-site testing for soil, water and air contamination at Swartklip, and for medical audits of workers.  A meeting of the executive committee of the ex Swartklip Workers Committee on November 16, 2002 mandated ECAAR-SA to pursue the matter.

 

Cape Town city councillors are presently investigating what jurisdiction the city council has over Swartklip in such matters.  Environmentalists and medical academics are also being consulted. The Mitchell’s Plain Development Forum and Khayelitsha Development Forum will meet jointly on Thursday, November 21, 2002 at which their proximity to Swartklip will be discussed, and following which a public meeting will be scheduled before the end of November.

 

A phenomenon apparently common to armaments industry workers is a refusal whilst still employed to discuss working conditions, but an eagerness to do so once the employment ends.  Workers were intimidated into silence by the apartheid-era National Key Points Act that equated disclosure of information about the armaments industry with treason.[10]  Given the unemployment crisis, workers who now complain about infractions of safety procedures are apparently threatened with:  “there’s the gate, there are thousands out there waiting for your job.”

 

Former employees report an abnormal occurrence of heart disease amongst ex Swartklip workers.  A possible explanation is the use of nitroglycerine in the manufacture of ammunition.  Nitroglycerine is also used in the treatment of angina.  The body apparently adjusts rapidly to its presence, but soon becomes dependent.  The onset of heart diseases is said to be frequent about one year after workers are no longer exposed to nitroglycerine. The incidences of asthma and arthritis also appear to be abnormally high. 

 

There is reason to be concerned about the exposure of Swartklip workers and Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha residents to beryllium both because of its use in manufacture and their proximity to hazardous wastes, including the open burning. An acute condition can result from exposure to beryllium air levels greater than 1000g/m3.

 

Beryllium is a silver-grey metal which is lighter than aluminium, but 40% more rigid than steel and, in an alloy, six times stronger than copper.  Beryllium-copper alloys withstand high temperatures, are extraordinarily hard, resistant to corrosion, do not spark and are nonmagnetic.  Beryllium is an excellent electrical and thermal conductor.[11]

 

The brittleness of beryllium has limited its industrial uses, and increases the hazards associated with its toxicity.  Given poor ventilation, small particles and chips of insoluble beryllium break-off during machining and spread through the air in the work area.  Inhalation of these tiny particles can lead to chronic beryllium disease.[12]

 

Beryllium disease is apparently similar to tuberculosis, and can occur both quickly or many years after exposure to beryllium.  Although primarily a lung disease, it can also affect other organs, particularly the lymph nodes, skin, spleen, liver, kidney and heart. Unlike chest x-rays and spirometry testing, blood and urine screening can however detect beryllium sensitivity before it has progressed to beryllium disease.

 

The mandate from the ex Swartklip Workers Committee is to obtain thorough and independent air, water and soil contamination tests at Swartklip, and that present workers should undergo medical audits. These should be undertaken at Denel expense by the Departments of Environmental Affairs, Health, Labour and Water, in conjunction with Cape Town City Council and academics at the universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Western Cape, and Pentech.

 

It was agreed that an interim interdict should be sought to prevent rebuilding of the ammunition plant until these tests have been conducted and fully evaluated.  The Committee is acutely aware that employment at Swartklip, including many of their own family members, is a matter of “bread and butter” in an area of high unemployment.

 

Environmentalists have already been told that Swartklip may have to close down, with the consequent loss of jobs, should they continue to oppose construction of an incinerator. Such threats cannot be taken lightly.  International experience finds however that conversion of the armaments industry – if properly managed – can create both more and better-paying jobs. The armaments industry is a capital rather than labour intensive industry and, in fact, is an exceptionally poor creator of jobs given the financial investments involved.

 

It is also relevant that despite massive government support, Denel continues to lose money.  It posted a loss during 2001/2002 of R363 million on public assets of R4 billion.

Of overriding importance is the location of Swartklip in a residential area of one million people.  Is it a disaster-just-waiting-to-happen per AECI in Macassar, Bhopal in India or ammunition plants in China?  The Bill of Rights of the South African Constitution is unambiguous regarding the environment and overrides militarist claims of “national security.”  Section 24 declares:

 

            Everyone has the right –

(a)                to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being; and

(b)               to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that –

(i)                  prevent pollution and ecological degradation

(ii)                promote conservation; and

(iii)               secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development.[13]

 

After a two year court battle, the National Environmental Law Center in the United States in May 2002 successfully reached a settlement requiring the US Army to cease open burning and open detonation of munitions and other wastes at the Sierra Army Depot in California.  The depot had been the greatest single source of toxic air emissions in the State of California – its air pollutants including lead being two and a half times greater than that of an oil refinery.  The open burning at Sierra Army Depot, as still occurs at Swartklip, released hazardous and carcinogenic substances including mercury, lead, beryllium, copper, dioxin and PCBs.[14]

 

Elsewhere, soil and water tests at ammunition plants such as Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant in Minnesota and Badger Army Ammunition Plant in Wisconsin have found severe soil and water contamination even many years after closure of the plants. Soils and water contaminated by antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, chromium, lead and thalium as a consequence of open burning at the Twin Cities Plant are now being cleansed at costs to American taxpayers of several hundred million dollars.[15]

 

The extent of contamination at Swartklip will have to be determined by independent tests.  Reconstruction of the damaged ammunition plant building should be halted until such tests are evaluated and appropriate decisions are taken.  Swartklip is a vast area which, if sensitively redeveloped, could transform the present socio-economic impoverishment of both Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha.

 

                                                                                                     

Terry Crawford-Browne