Discursive power and Environmental Justice in the new South Africa: The Steel Valley struggle against pollution (1996 – 2006) Albert Victor Munnik A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, December 2012 Demonstration against pollution in Steel Valley, Toxic Tour during the World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2002. Picture: Stefan Cramer. DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own, unaided work. It is being submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other University. _______________________________________ (Signature of candidate) 7th day of December 2012. Material from this thesis has appeared in the following publications: Hallowes, D and Munnik, V, (2006): Poisoned Spaces. Manufacturing Wealth, Producing Poverty. groundWork Report 2006. groundWork, Pietermaritzburg. Cock, J. and Munnik, V., (2006): Throwing stones at a Giant. An account of the struggle of the Steel Valley community against pollution from the Vanderbijlpark Steel Works. Centre for Civil Society, UKZN Report. Munnik, V., (2007): Solidarity for Environmental Justice in Southern Africa, GroundWork Special Report. I gratefully acknowledge the above opportunities to pursue research and exchange ideas with my co-authors during the production of these reports. A paper and presentation based on the thesis at the Sociology Conference of 11-13 July 2011 at the University of Pretoria: “Mrs Joey Cock and the Minerals Energy Complex: from personal meaning making to discursive power in a pollution battle”. 2 Abstract The study explores the thesis that discursive power played a major role in the pollution and subsequent destruction of Steel Valley to explain why, despite strenuous efforts by local citizens, the right to live in a healthy environment, guaranteed in the new South African constitution, was not upheld. It analyses the struggle in Steel Valley around the definition of pollution, and decision making about its consequences, in terms of discursive resources and their deployment in discursive arenas, focusing on discursive strategies of the polluted, the polluter and the regulator. This exploration is set within the politics of hegemony in a new South Africa after 1994, as well as the 120 year old Minerals Energy Complex at the centre of the South African political economy. It explains the legitimation of pollution in Steel Valley within the global discourses of environmental management, ecological modernisation and sustainable development prominent since the 1990s. Discursive power played a major role in the Steel Valley case. Discursive power led to the material outcomes in Steel Valley: the removal of the community, the physical destruction of their buildings and the transformation of the area into a “conservation” buffer zone, along with decisions not to pay residents compensation and not to establish a medical trust. Discursive power was used by the polluter to escape liability, by maintaining scientific and legal uncertainty about the nature, extent and consequences of the pollution. Discursive power enabled the polluter to frame the problem as one of ecological modernisation from which social justice concerns, like compensation, could be excluded. ISCOR’s discursive power also overwhelmed the regulator, as the regulator remained too cautious to use to the full the instruments available to it in law, and allowed numerous exemptions. The state and the polluter both pushed issues of Environmental Justice – compensation and rehabilitation – outside the dominant frame of decision making. The study shows how a superiority of discursive resources on the side of the polluter, derived from a financial and political superiority, translated into decisive defeats for the 3 Steel Valley community. This superiority derived from a constellation of discursive conditions in scientific, legal and administrative arenas. To describe these conditions, the study constructs a description of a pollution dispositive at work in Steel Valley, which legitimises past and future pollution. It explains the choices of the new government as pollution regulator, by understanding the tax-dependent state as responsive to both legitimacy and accumulation pressures within a hegemonic growth discourse. A grounded theory approach is followed to study discursive power, synthesizing elements of the social and narrative construction of reality, Critical Discourse Analysis, dispositive analysis and the Environmental Justice approach. It develops a variant of Critical Discourse Analysis that can work across a big case study, by treating discursive power plays as part of a pollution dispositive, which is an assembly of heterogeneous elements (practices and knowledges) that can be understood together as a strategic response to an emerging situation. The pollution dispositive was composed of pre-existing resources available in its environment: local discourses producing disposable others, through racism or a view of dispensable fenceline communities; the legitimations and limitations of the politics of hegemony, and the discourses of growth, limited corporate liability, as well as of environmental management, sustainable development and ecological modernisation. The study explores the implications of this analysis for Environmental Justice tactics in the areas of environmental management, citizen science, the politics of ecological modernisation, and the politics of hegemony in the new South Africa. It shows that the conditions of fenceline communities and the nature of discursive struggles around them create a tactical terrain which can be used to advance the cause of Environmental Justice. In the tradition of critical theory, it contributes to the understanding of anti-pollution struggles within the Environmental Justice movement, engaging with a triad of concepts that explain the imposition of environmental injustice: externalisation of the costs of pollution, exclusion from decision making and enclosure of resources. This approach can be applied to the environmental struggles of other communities on the fencelines of the Minerals Energy Complex in South Africa. 4 Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my wife Peta-Anne and my children Lucas and Thandeka, to the people of Steel Valley and to those who work for Environmental Justice across the world. This academic work describes the consequences of the pollution of Steel Valley, and its consequent destruction. This is bound to arouse strong feelings. The thesis is not intended to lay blame for these events on specific individuals, because individuals are often constrained not only by the institutional structures within which we work, but also the systems of thought within which we operate. I wish to thank all who were prepared to speak to me, and express the hope that this work will contribute to a review not only of pollution regulation, but also to a global movement towards Environmental Justice and social justice: putting use values above exchange values in South Africa and elsewhere. Declaration of involvement During the time that I prepared this thesis, I worked in and contributed to the broader Environmental Justice movement in South Africa. In the Steel Valley case I was not only a participant observer, but also served as steering committee member of the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance in its formative first four years (2005 to 2008). I do not claim to be without bias in this research. As a result, the definition of “objectivity” that I work with, in the tradition of critical enquiry, is objectivity in the sense that I aim at providing an accurate description of the tactical terrain of discursive struggles around pollution in the Steel Valley case. 5 List of Acronyms ANC African National Congress BATNEEC Best Available Technology Not Entailing Excessive Cost BF Blast Furnace BOF Basic Oxygen Furnace CBA Cost Benefit Analysis CDA Critical Discourse Analysis CBOs Community Based Organisations CETP Central Effluent Treatment Plant CONNEPP Consultative National Environmental Policy Process CRMF Consolidated Residue Management Facility CSIR Council for Scientific and Industrial Research DG Director General DRI Direct Reduced Iron DNAPL Dense Non Aqueous Phase Liquid DWA Department of Water Affairs DWAF Department of Water Affairs and Forestry DEAT Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism EAF Electric Arc furnaces EIA Environmental Impact Assessment EJ Environmental Justice EJNF Environmental Justice Network Forum FOSV Friends of Steel Valley GDACE Gauteng Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Environment GEAR Growth Equity And Redistribution NGOs Non-Governmental Organisations IDC Industrial Development Corporation IEM Integrated Environmental Management IVS ISCOR Vanderbijl Steel LNAPL Light Non Aqueous Phase Liquid MAWU Metal and Allied Workers Union 6 MEC Minerals Energy Complex MERG Macro-Economic Research Group MSF Medicins Sans Frontieres NEMA National Environmental Management Act NUMSA National Union of Mineworkers of South Africa OPEC Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries PAHs Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons PCDD/F Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans RDP Reconstruction and Development Programme SA South Africa SAQMC Sasolburg Air Quality Monitoring Committee SDCEA South Durban Community Environmental Alliance