Nonhle Mbuthuma

During the apartheid era, the five villages of Amadiba were united in their opposition to South Africa’s discriminatory political system. Two decades on, they are divided by a deadly conflict over an Australian company’s plan to open a titanium mine.

Nonhle Mbuthuma leads the Amadiba Crisis Committee, which opposes the excavation of dunes and plains along the Wild Coast by an Australian mining company. She fears the project would force villagers off their farms and damage the region’s ecology.

    “We have told the company many times that we don’t want their mine. How many times do we have to say no?” 

— Nonhle Mbuthuma

The Amadiba chieftain, who is from a less-affected village further inland, supports the mining plan, which claims to have a low impact and bring in revenues of £140m each year.

The conflict has led to beatings, threats, and suspicious deaths of members of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, including the 2017 murder of the group’s previous leader Sikhosiphi “Bazooka” Rhadebe.

Mbuthuma has been warned she is next on the hit list. But she is pushing ahead with a legal challenge that aims to assert the right of consent for indigenous groups.