Defending the Ancestors Against Big Oil

On South Africa's coast, Indigenous people fight to protect their sacred waters.

Wild Coast, South Africa — The coast alongside the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve, in the former Transkei region of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, is calm and serene. Clouds huddle on the horizon, while gentle waves lap the shore, transforming the sand into a mirror that reflects the deep blue sky above.

The beach would appear deserted this morning if not for the sets of footprints leading from the coastal forest, across the sand, and stopping at a large intertidal zone.

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At the edge, 65-year-old Malibongwe David Gongqose expertly navigates the rocky crevices exposed by the low tide, poking a homemade tool around as he looks for octopus to use as bait.

Standing on a crop of rocks, his feet in gumboots and a thick brown jacket tied to his waist, the fisherman holds up an octopus he’s just caught and killed, before setting off for the fishing grounds of his forefathers, about 2km down the beach.

There, he plants his rods and waits for fish to bite.

Gongqose and his community have a special bond with the ocean. They rely on it for sustenance and livelihoods — and their spirituality depends on it.

Yet, not far from the coast, for years a battle between nature and corporate interests has been brewing — threatening to put much of what is dear to Gongqose’s community at risk.

In October 2021, oil giant Shell announced that it would commence a 3D seismic survey 25km off the coast of the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve.

The British multinational had acquired a 50 percent stake in the areas for which Impact Africa Ltd (Impact), a privately owned oil and gas company, was granted an exploration right by the South African government in 2014.

What resulted was an ongoing legal battle that has reached South Africa’s Constitutional Court, and whose outcome has implications for the cultures, livelihoods and spiritualities of the communities of the Wild Coast, the roughly 300km stretch of coastline that runs until the border with neighbouring Kwazulu-Natal province.

Noise about seismic surveys

3D seismic surveys have caused controversy among coastal communities around South Africa.

Used to determine the geological makeup below the surface of the earth, they are conducted by large ships called seismic vessels, which fire high-intensity low-frequency airguns at the ocean floor at regular intervals.

The vessels tow rows of streamers — between 4km and 6km long — that are fitted with receivers called hydrophones, which float at the surface of the water and record the reverberations that “bounce back” from the ocean floor after each seismic blast. The recorded data allows geophysicists to understand the physical characteristics of the ground beneath the ocean floor.

Oil and gas companies like Shell use them as the step before exploratory drilling — to help them pinpoint potential reserves. Once identified, the ultimate goal is to extract the fossil fuels from below the ocean floor.

Conducting a seismic survey can cost up to $500,000 per day, but it’s not as expensive as exploratory drilling, which would cost oil companies tens of millions of US dollars per well.

Seismic surveys are the least invasive technique for pinpointing oil and gas reserves.

However, scientists say there is evidence that they are harmful to marine life.

When, in 2021, Shell announced its plans to commence the seismic survey, Gongqose and other members of the communities on the Wild Coast, along with environmental groups, filed a case at the regional high court in Makhanda, to stop it.

The communities argued that because Impact had failed to consult with them, as affected parties, when initially applying for the exploration right in 2013, that right was improperly granted and therefore invalid.

On September 1, 2022, the High Court ruled in their favour.

One of the reasons cited in that judgement was the deep connection between the Dwesa-Cwebe communities and the ocean, which is illustrated by Gongqose’s own story and relationship with the sea.

The spirit of the sea

Gongqose hails from the village of Hobeni, whose inhabitants can trace their ancestry in the area back hundreds of years. In fact, the forebears of Hobeni’s current residents lived on land that later became the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve.

The first clan known to have lived in the area between the Mbashe and Mbanyane rivers is the one Gongqose belongs to — the amaDingata.

Their connection to the sea at Dwesa-Cwebe, which dates back 300 years, has persisted despite suffering multiple displacements and forced removals — first under British rule and then under apartheid rule — throughout the last century.

Gongqose was born inside the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve in 1959, just before the last round of forced removals, which happened under apartheid’s Group Areas Act, a law that segregated residential areas based on race.

When Gongqose’s mother was not at work in the kitchen at the Haven Hotel — a whites-only establishment whose construction resulted in one of the rounds of forced removal decades earlier — she would harvest mussels and shellfish in the intertidal zone.

At times, young Gongqose would accompany her on harvesting trips. The intertidal zone was known to be dangerous to young children, so he had to watch from afar.

Those trips make up his earliest memories of the sea.

In the community, harvesting mussels and shellfish is still practised today, and still mostly by women.

“Our grandmothers and mothers taught us that when we see the full moon it is the right time to harvest,” says community member Nowinasi Ndawo, 40, who harvests mussels.

Each month, when the tide is at its lowest because of the full moon, Ndawo and her friends make their way to a rocky outcrop referred to as “Shark Island” — named for its shape — where they find mussels, red bait, limpets and other shellfish on rocks that would otherwise be inaccessible. The harvested shellfish serve as a vital source of protein and also income, as she sells to her neighbours.

In addition to being abundant with shellfish, it is a sacred spot for the amaDingata. Gongqose explains why: “Long, long ago, [one day] women were collecting mussels at ‘Shark Island’ when a wave came and took them away. Now lots of people have ancestors there.”

In Gongqose’s culture, as well as many other Indigenous African cultures, ancestors are not merely deceased relatives, but are considered forever alive beings who have influence over affairs of the living, and can be called on for guidance. The ancestral world and the natural world exist alongside each other for the residents of Hobeni who read the shoreline as though it were a map that holds the locations of the ancestors of the various clans that inhabit the area. “Our ancestors are living spirits that we turn to in terms of physical, emotional and spiritual difficulties,” he says.

Kuzile Juza, a trainee traditional healer, explains that while many women were harvesting mussels on the day the big wave came, all who were lost came from the same family. Hence, their disappearance was considered auspicious. “They were called by their ancestors,” Juza says. “Now every year you will see people from that clan going to perform rituals at the rocks where the daughters were taken.”

Juza says that the community members know the place as Esibehbehzulwini — a name that combines the words for "a deep place" and "heaven." “There is the belief that in that area there are a lot of ancestors from different clans in the communities,” he says.

Places where the ancestors reside can be thought of as graves in some ways, and they are visited to acknowledge and commemorate them. But these are also places where people go in order to communicate with their ancestors, bringing along gifts and offerings such as Umqombothi, a traditional beer brewed from maize and sorghum. Juza says some people also consult traditional healers to communicate with the ancestors on their behalf.

Gongqose remembers seeing traditional healers at certain coastal sites when he was young. “I could see them at the rocks and I could hear them speaking but I couldn’t see who they were speaking to. I thought maybe there were people hiding in the water,” he recalls. Only later in life did he come to understand what they were doing there.

Protected areas vs customary rights

When Gongqose was 11 years old, his father, Godfrey Ncisana Gongqose, taught him to fish in the nearby Mbashe River, where he says boys are still taught to this day.

“I would go fishing with my father on weekends and during school holidays,” he says. “The river bottom doesn’t have rocks that hooks and lines can get caught on, and there are no dangerous waves.”

Gongqose followed in the footsteps of his father, and forefathers, and began fishing full-time at the age of 14, both at the ocean and the river — surrounded by the beautiful coastline and the rolling grassy hills of his home.

However, like many of the rural villages that adorn the region, the natural beauty goes hand in hand with a lack of development and jobs. Like many newly adult men, this led Gongqose to leave Hobeni at age 20 to find work in other provinces. He returned five years later to look after Godfrey, who had fallen ill.

In the years that followed, apartheid rule ended and South Africa entered democracy in 1994. Two years later, Hobeni, along with six other communities — which together make up the Dwesa-Cwebe communities — filed a claim for the restitution of their land, the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve, which they had been dispossessed of. The Dwesa-Cwebe Settlement Agreement was finalised in 2001, and stated that “the communities should have access to sea and forest resources, based upon the principle of sustainable utilisation as permitted by law.”

However, one year prior in 2000, the Dwesa-Cwebe Marine Protected Area (MPA) had been declared by the government, which led to a prohibition of fishing and harvesting of marine resources by the Dwesa-Cwebe communities, including Hobeni. Representatives of the communities met with the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism multiple times in the hope of sustainably utilising the marine resources. All their attempts were unsuccessful.

In 2010, Gongqose’s father, Godfrey, the man who taught him to fish, died at the age of 70 after a prolonged illness and a stroke. Soon after, things came to a head. Gongqose and two other fishers were arrested for fishing in the MPA and had criminal charges brought against them. What resulted was a lengthy court battle that ultimately led to a 2018 landmark ruling that recognised that the fishers of Hobeni had customary rights to fish along their coastline.

Unemployment is still widespread in Hobeni today. Other than working in the Nature Reserve or for expanded public works projects, jobs are hard to come by. For many residents, fishing and harvesting mussels is the only way for them to make ends meet.

While Impact and Shell have said that a large-scale oil and gas project would stimulate the country’s economy and fuel job creation, the communities argue that the companies have failed to adequately explain how those jobs would be created, and how the economy would be stimulated.

Gongqose is also concerned about the risks associated with oil and gas extraction itself. “If Shell continues, our ancestors will run away,” he says. “How are we going to call them when they run away from us?”

In 2022, when the High Court ruled in favour of the Dwesa-Cwebe communities, its judgement made specific mention of the relationship between them and the sea, stating: “In its answering affidavit Shell elected not to deal with the aspect relating to the threat of harm to the applicant communities’ cultural and spiritual beliefs. The applicants’ allegations in that regard are accordingly undisputed.”

Following that judgement, Impact, Shell and South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) filed an appeal at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA). The appeal was dismissed, but Impact and Shell were thrown a lifeline.

Shell’s final lifeline

Once an exploration permit is granted, the holder of the permit is able to apply for up to three renewals, after which they must start the costly and time-consuming process from scratch.

Shell and Impact made their final application to renew the exploration right in 2023. While the SCA and the High Court both agreed that the exploration right had been granted unlawfully, Wilmien Wicomb, a lawyer at the Legal Resources Centre, a human rights organisation representing the Wild Coast communities, explained that the SCA found it too harsh to force Shell to start its application process from scratch. Thus, the court allowed the minister of mineral resources and energy to grant Shell’s renewal application at his discretion.

In response, the communities approached the Constitutional Court to appeal the SCA decision. In her founding affidavit to the court on behalf of the applicants, Wicomb argued the SCA order “had the potential to undermine the right to meaningful consultation” and could allow a seismic survey to take place despite the fact that the initial exploration right was granted after a “fatally flawed consultation process.”

The applicants also asked the Constitutional Court to clarify whether the SCA was able to suspend the High Court’s order or not. “When they applied in 2014 you only needed an environmental management programme … then the law changed,” Wicomb explained. “You now need an environmental authorisation. But what the law also says is you cannot commence any activity, like seismic activity, without an environmental authorisation.”

At the same time, Shell and Impact also approached the Constitutional Court with their own appeal against the SCA findings that their exploration permit was granted unlawfully.

While the Constitutional Court dismissed Shell and Impact’s appeal, the appeal brought forward by the Wild Coast communities and their supporters was granted, with a court date likely to be set for early next year.

If the Constitutional Court upholds the appeal brought by the communities, Shell will have to start the entire application process from scratch if it still wishes to extract oil and gas in the waters offshore from the Wild Coast and Dwesa-Cwebe.

For its part, Shell sees the potential exploration as a good thing. “South Africa is currently reliant on energy imports for many of its energy needs. Should viable resources be found offshore, this could significantly contribute to South Africa’s energy security and the government’s economic development programmes,” Shell's spokesperson, Pam Ntaka, told Al Jazeera when asked about the court processes.

Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s minister of mineral resources and energy, is unhappy about the obstacles to exploring for oil and gas. In his speech at the Africa Oil Week: Investing in African Energy Conference this month, he said a “main hindrance or risk to these projects being realised” was “the unabated and frivolous litigation against the exploration and production of oil and gas.”

He dismissed the legitimacy of the concerns of the communities, instead attributing them to “foreign-funded lobby groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).”

Remaining hopeful

Back on the shore, one of Gongqose’s fishing lines tightens and the rod begins to bend. The fisherman jumps up and grabs the rod, letting the line out and toying with the fish, tiring it out, until he can reel it in.

Between the original application for the exploration right and the application for permission to appeal at the Constitutional Court, the customary rights of the Hobeni fishers have been recognised by the courts.

This makes Gongqose hopeful.

“If the Constitutional Court can follow the Supreme Court of Appeal and say that our customary law and our customary rights were not considered by Shell and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, then we can win,” he says.

He lays the mid-sized fish on the ground a distance away from the shoreline. As the floor of the river bank becomes submerged by the rising tide, the wind picks up, blowing from the other side of the Mbashe River. Clouds that first seemed unthreatening are now pregnant with rain and approaching fast, darkening the sky.

No rain was forecast, but Gongqose says the weather has become unpredictable. Putting on the thick brown jacket that was around his waist, he casts his line once more, just as he has done countless times during his five decades of fishing.

“I want to transfer my knowledge about fishing and our traditions to my children and I want them to transfer the knowledge to their children,” Gongqose reflects. “I don’t know any other way of living. This is the way we were taught by our ancestors.”

Still, he worries about what future oil exploration may mean for his home, his community and the ways of his people.

“The seawater will be contaminated with oil and gas, and the fish that we eat will die. If the fish die, our way of life will also die,” he laments.

“Our children, and the children of our children, will not know about our way of life.”