It’s a hard life for farmers who have lived for generations in the Karoo, South Africa’s vast expanse of nothing. Every day, they fight cutting winds and soaring temperatures in bone-dry valleys to nurture their stock. To the visitor, the Karoo is a barren place between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Here the communities are small, Twitter is scarce and there are more goats than people. Soon there could be more rumbling trucks than goats.
This is all because of a mining method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. It’s been hailed a savior of the United States (US) economy, during the 2008 recession, making it one of the largest producers of natural gas in the world. It is now on its way to South Africa, because the government and oil and gas companies believe, beneath the Karoo, lies an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas; enough to fuel the country’s economy for up to 20-30 years. It could also bring $100 billion and thousands of jobs.
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For some, like Harry Memese, who grew up in the small town of Graaff Reinet, in the heart of the Karoo, the sound of thousands of trucks full of gas grinding along the highways could be music to his ears.
“I have worked as a petrol cashier for eight years, there is no job other than that in Graaff Reinet. The people are suffering. There are 30 youths here where I live, and only two of them are working in my street. Fracking is going to help the people get jobs. If you look around our townships, like here in Graaff Reinet, and the rest of the Eastern Cape, people are not working. Fracking is supposed to bring in 300,000 more jobs. At least there is something that people can earn earn,” says the 33-year-old.
Grey hair, from a life harder than the land he grew up in, makes Memese look older than he is. His life is a struggle and the $420-a-month he earns is barely enough to feed his wife, children and younger brother. The promise of fracking could mean a new lease of life for his family. He dreams of seeing his 19-year-old brother Ayanda one day qualifying as an electrical engineer on a fracking well.
No one really knows how much shale gas is in the Karoo. When estimates emerged in 2010, Econometrix, South Africa’s largest independent macro-economic consulting firm, believed there was 485 tcf, enough to make South Africa the fifth largest producer in the world.
But these days the figure has been downsized. Another task team set by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), in September 2012, spearheaded by the Petroleum Oil and Gas Corporation of South Africa (PetroSA), believes there is a mere 30 tcf.
No matter the figure, companies want to explore. Shell, the largest bidder in the Karoo, wants to frack 90,000 square kilometers &#8211; the size of Sierra Leone.
“It’s a potential resource. It certainly can be a big player. Scientists initially thought it was 485 tcf but the latest from the same people is 370 tcf. If you listen to petroleum companies, it could be fractions of that. To put things into scale, PetroSA has been running on 1 tcf for their gas to liquid plant in Mossel Bay. The challenging thing for South Africa is the environmental impact and the regulations,” says Chris Bredenhann, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ oil and gas advisory leader in Africa.
Bredenhann thinks natural gas may have captured investor interest, but Africa has its challenges. In his company’s 2014 Africa oil and gas review, companies operating in Africa face fraud, corruption, theft, poor infrastructure and a lack of skills. Investors are also concerned about regulatory uncertainty.
“Some key players have delayed or canceled projects until further clarity can be sought in their respective jurisdictions as they cannot move forward with doubts given the long-term nature of the needed investments,” says Bredenhann.
According to the report, Africa has proven natural gas reserves of 502 tcf, with 90% of the continent’s annual production of 6.5 tcf coming from Nigeria, Libya, Algeria and Egypt. China has an estimated 1,115 tcf, the largest supply of shale gas. With African countries like Mozambique looking to exploit reserves, the competition for sales and investment is tough.
“There is also the fact there is tight international competition. Asia, who is the main consumer of gas, is being fed by the United States and the likes of Australia who managed to set up their operations far faster than expected. It means companies operating out of Tanzania and Mozambique, who have met various delays in operations, will lose out as the price decreases in a competitive market,” says Bredenhann.
Falling prices could spell disaster for the up-and-coming countries looking to sell their surplus gas.
“The sentiment of Africa being open is applicable to South Africa. Total, Chevron and Shell have made investments offshore. If you had this conversation five years ago this would have been a different conversation,” says Bredenhann.
The only certainty for those who want to frack, is that they have a fight on their hands.
<h3>Rallying The Cheques</h3>
In a year, the fighting fund for farmers in the Karoo has swollen. 
A sure sign that the gloves are off.
Like his fellow 3,000 farmers, Dickie Ogilvie won’t let fracking vie without a fight. Ogilvie gave up teaching to help his wife, Colleen, take over her brother’s farm, Doorndraai, 100 kilometers south west of Graaff Reinet. His fears have led him to pledge R3 for every hectare on his 14,000 hectare farm to fight fracking in court. Most farmers across the Karoo are as trenchant as him.
“Some guys have given a lump sum payment. Most of the other moneys are per hectare basis, the pledge varies from R1 a hectare to R10 ($1), depending how strongly a farmer feels.  There is a lot of money to fight this if it goes to litigation process. Farmers have realized now how serious this can be,” says Ogilvie.
“Our resolution from the Aberdeen district is dire. I don’t believe they understand that if something goes wrong the Karoo is finished. You cannot rectify the water contamination, once it’s been contaminated it’s over, we will have to move off. It’s not only farms; the towns rely on underground water. My small little family can make a plan, but we are talking about whole communities in towns. It’s a huge problem, no answers are given, there is so much uncertainty.”
The fierce litigation between big business and the Karoo’s landowners has been brewing since 2009, when fracking explorations were stopped to allow for regulations. Landowners locked horns with government over the lack of consultation and what they call flawed laws and uninformed environmental assessments.
Their lobbying has seen some results, says Derek Light, the small-town lawyer from Graaff Reinet. The small offices he works in have been consumed by fracking for three years. Light even took a cell phone when he went for hip surgery so he wouldn’t miss anything. He represents hundreds of landowners, including millionaire Johann Rupert, the second richest man in Africa, who lives around the corner.
In September, four years after the first applications were submitted, baseline water testing began. The study, researched by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and financed by the Eastern Cape provincial government, looks at the Karoo’s underground water system.
“Baseline testing is not done overnight, it’s a long process that takes two to three years. The timing of it has been poor, and it is something the oil companies should have done in their environmental management plan process, which they failed to do. It’s now being done by the taxpayer. The government should have had this information at their disposal when they first made their decisions on the whole process,” says Light.
He adds that the government jumped the gun. Drafts, issued in 2013, were flawed and focused on regulating fracking while forgetting about the mining operations around it, says Light.
“Drilling in South Africa is not regulated at all. Shell and other companies feed off the fact that there are few documented cases of contamination from the actual fracking process. Because the wealth of contamination comes from the other process, you can’t divorce the one from the other.”
Another loud and stringent voice against fracking is that of Jonathan Deal, CEO of Treasure Karoo Action Group (TKAG). Strangely enough, he didn’t know about fracking until he read a news article in 2011 when Rupert was speaking out against it.
“I began to investigate and attended the Shell public meetings. It was very clear to me that Shell was trying to control the meetings. There was a very specific aim in those meetings and it wasn’t to tell the truth as far as I was concerned,” says Deal.
From his 40,000-hectare Eco-farm near Montagu, in the Karoo, Deal has been calling on the Presidency, the Public Protector and gas companies to revise their actions before fracking takes place. He’s not alone; Julius Kleynhans, the Head of Environmental Affairs at the NGO AfriForum, has declared it will back TKAG financially should it go
to court.
“It is the balance of convenience. If companies and the state have invested enormous amounts of money and the public sits and watches what happens and wait for everything to be built and then goes and complains. It’s very difficult for a court to literally throw its investments away.”
“If something goes wrong with a fracking well ten years later and those chemicals migrate 30 kilometers away, even if a farmer ends up with polluted water, what chance has he got of proving that it was from that well&#8230; if people get sick from air and water pollution, like what is being happening in the United States, who is going to pay for it? The state is; the people who pay tax. Not the companies that have shut down their operations when they have moved on somewhere else,” says Deal.
It’s not just a Karoo problem, says Deal.
“If fracking starts in this country and the gas reserves are there. We will see the technology of fracking march across this country just like it did in the United States. Geologically speaking the Karoo basin is where the gas bearing shale is thought to reside, and that extends into Gauteng and parts of Mpumalanga. In fact it extends out of the northern borders of South Africa.”
Despite plans to halt explorations until proper research is completed, the government remains adamant it will go ahead and be a game changer.
“New regulations should be released in September, but we don’t yet know what they contain. All of this has happened without consultation. It seems what will happen are inadequate regulations will be passed, with inadequate consultation. We are then faced with serious decisions where we go from there. If the regulations are unlawful, that may have to be challenged in the Constitutional Court. It seems, from the ministers announcements, hot off the heels of the new regulations will be the issuing of licenses which seems to indicate government has already taken a decision on those, which should not be granted because they don’t comply with the new laws,” says Light.
The impact of exploration could be catastrophic, says Deal, especially since companies refuse to disclose the chemical composition of the additives. Chemical additives make up 1% of the 20 million liters used for a well. On one pad there can be 32 wells.
“With exploration, the same risks are there, they have to frack to see if it’s there. Don’t come to this country and look for secrecy privileges. Don’t come and try hide behind commercial interests to hide the mix of chemicals, this is not America,” says Deal.
“The minute these licenses are issued, these corporates are going to carry on with what they want to do anyway. It’s going to be challenged. People are well aware of it. The minute those licenses are issued, they will be challenged,” says Ogilvie.
Landowners seem to be putting their money where their mouth is. One wonders what people across Africa, who don’t have money will do.
<h3>What’s The Problem?</h3>
Independent geologist, Wlady Altermann, believes fracking fears are full of hot air.
Imagine a rock with thousands of pockets. Then imagine you have to drill, thousands of times, to release the gas from these pockets. This is what the Karoo looks like underground and the amount of drilling needed could make fracking costly, says Wlady Altermann, a geologist at the University of Pretoria.
“All the knowledge of these compartments and the distribution of pockets are very poor. [The Karoo] would require a very good geophysical investigation. After that, the drill hole positions need to be drilled to investigate the properties of the rock, the stability of the composition and the wealth of the gas. Only after that, can a decision be made as to the wealth of the shale gas,” says Altermann.
The German- born professor knows a thing or two about rocks. Apart from studying them since he was a child, Altermann spent years studying rocks from Mars. Space travel was out of the question so Altermann flew across the globe and has been studying mineral deposits in South Africa since the 1980s.
Altermann, now the Kumba-Exxaro Chair in Geodynamics of Ore Deposits at the university, believes that fracking is harmless if it’s done properly.
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“The misconceptions are basically based on poor information. It comes from the direct comparison with the United States, which I think is not comparable. Secondly, it comes from the perceptions that the surface and the shallow subsurface have something to do with shale gas deposits. Shale gas deposits are much deeper.”
“The fracking itself is such a tiny part of the entire process. It’s not the dangerous part of the process. The dangerous part of the process is the later methods of production. Fracking itself, I think, it’s the wrong discussion,” says Altermann.
Water contamination by drilling through the Karoo’s aquifers, 300 meters below the surface, is also unlikely says Altermann, because the distance between the underground water and the shale gas is far.
“The shale in the United States is at much shallower levels. Between 1,000-1,500 meters. The deeper you go, the less the risk of contamination. The pressure in the ceiling holds the gas better. The chance to contaminate groundwater through that type of production is so low; you really must act like an idiot to do this. It’s not impossible but if it’s done properly, there’s no problem,” he says.
The fracking process has made significant technological steps since it began 70 years ago, says Altermann. Wells can be spaced further apart because drilling horizontally can stretch for 5 kilometers. Ten years ago, that same reach was a kilometer.
The risk lies with the waste after fracking. Companies in the US have been guilty of reusing this water to save costs, instead of disposing of it.
“This is what causes most of the problems. In other countries, it is forbidden, there are environmental laws. That should be avoided in South Africa as well, controlled in a way that you can be sure nothing happens,”
says Altermann.
Natural gas is a greener fossil fuel than coal, says Altermann.
“South Africa’s energy demand is expected to increase by 60% up to 2050. Coal cannot supply it; if coal supplied it we would sit in darkness and not see our beautiful sunsets under the African sun. At today’s state of technology, the best way to mitigate climate change and CO2 emissions, the cheapest thing technically is to switch from coal to gas combustion. It reduces CO2 emissions by 50%. It’s a much more effective way of producing energy,”
says Altermann.
“People talk about fracking and groundwater; no one realizes that actually in many areas where groundwater is scarce, where there is not enough water to supply the population, fracking is used to extract groundwater. They frack the rocks, the aquifer, without chemicals with just water and sand and crack the rocks, so that water can flow out the cracks easier. It is used by many countries especially in sub-Saharan Africa.”
According to the professor, fracking could change the face of South Africa and not cause too much worry.
<h3>Last Gasp For Eden</h3>
It’s a small corner of the Karoo: a corridor of private land that stretches 300,000 hectares from the Camdeboo National Park, in Graaff Reinet, east to the Mountain Zebra National Park. It took 66 farmers over three years to buy into this project that promises a Garden of Eden teeming with wildlife. It could become known as the last piece of untouched land in the Karoo if fracking begins.
“The first meeting in Graaff Reinet was a little tense. I think a lot of the landowners thought we were going to attempt a big land purchase and buy out hundreds of thousands of hectares. Also, I think they were a bit worried that we were going to tell them what they had to do on their own land. Once this was clarified, there was little problem,” says Matthew Norval, the Director of the Conservation Programme at the Wilderness Foundation.
The corridor project is the brainchild of Norval, in collaboration with South Africa National Parks (SANParks). He wants to create a reserve for future generations.
“The farmers in this area have looked after the land for many generations, some of them are third and fourth generation. The reason you can build a natural corridor in that region is because the land has been so well looked after and is still in good condition and there is a strong affinity from the farmers who own that land,” says Norval.
The application is with the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa.
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“Fracking raised its head at almost the same time we started working in that area. There is no doubt that it influenced the way we worked and the way some of the landowners decided how to collaborate with us. I think fracking hit a lot of the landowners, sort of right between the eyes. They suddenly realized that properties that had been in their families for generations were now under threat. It was possible their land would get damaged and their children or their children’s children wouldn’t be able to make a livelihood from farming. You have to bear in mind its prime natural rangeland grazing for sheep and cattle,” says Norval.
“I think it would be near impossible to rehabilitate the Karoo after fracking. In some areas, to a layman it may look like gravel plain. Somebody that doesn’t understand the intricacies of that ecosystem might just assume you can level it and there you go. But it’s not like that.”
“This is our last gasp. Never mind rhino, we’re losing lion; we’re losing pangolin by the ton. When it comes to land, the opportunity to build corridors and create landscapes that are going to have some relevance in the future, this is our last chance. ”
Over to the minister.

I Want A  Fracking Future

When you walk off the main street in Graaff-Reinet and into Derek Light’s office he has to talk to you over a mountain of files. The small-town lawyer, who is taking on a number of the world’s largest energy companies, apologizes for the mess and very carefully moves his pile of lever-arch folders onto the floor. Scribbled on the spines with blue marker pens are the names Falcon Oil and Gas, Bundu Oil and Gas, and Shell.
“I have another eight cabinets full, all to do with fracking,” says Light.
It could have been a quieter twilight of his professional life in the Karoo, when he moved back to his hometown to raise his two children. It could have been measured days of drawing farm-owners’ contracts and settling disputes over wandering sheep. Now he has to tackle big businesses and its threat to turn his backyard into one giant fracking well pad.
“The problem is that the process of explorative fracking is not normal. It’s invasive and has the potential to destroy the environment,” says Light.
“Things like land, air and water are emotional subjects. In Britain, we’ve seen people super-gluing themselves to fences and being incarcerated for wanting to prevent the development going ahead. Those are extreme conditions. People act in that way because they don’t have any other way of resisting. They don’t have the means of accessing the courts and employing the scientists and economists,” he says.
According to Light, fracking will change the face of the Karoo.
“If the reserves are there and you go into well fields, you won’t recognize the country. You will have well pads every 5 kilometers in every direction. You will have flaring, false lighting, masses of vehicles on the road. The air quality will deteriorate. The effect is massive.”
He disagrees with the suggestion by Shell and others that it won’t.
“They will be using multi-well pads, with 30 wells on one site. The point is that rock formation needs to be targeted as broadly as possible; if you can only drill horizontally you would have exhausted the rock within 2.5km. You would have to establish another well 5km away.”
The legal costs to fight fracking have been daunting.  Until November 2011, Light was by himself with hardly a budget at all. It was light at the beginning of the tunnel for the lawyer.
“Now there is a big team of councillors, scientists and environmentalists. It would not have been possible without the help of  Africa’s third richest man, Johann Rupert. He made it possible to get the expertise of people to take on the biggest companies in the world like Shell,” he says.
The lawyer has no problem taking on the big guns of the fossil fuel industry. He believes that if you are standing on the right side of the law you can take on anyone, no matter how deep their pockets are.
Light also put his own money on the line.
“I know as a professional you have to be objective, but in this case it is my whole community that is being threatened. I want to keep what we have here, it’s a great environment to bring your family up in and it should never be destroyed,” he says.
“I try not to get caught in that sort of emotional debate because it clouds your own judgment. But I can only achieve what I have set out to achieve with the support of individuals. We have just been very lucky that we have sufficient access so far.”
One of his biggest worries is not enough people know about fracking to make an informed decision. According to Light, most people in the cities do not understand the impact this will have on the countryside.
“I remember about two years ago, of all people interviewed in the urban areas, only 50% knew about fracking and of them 15% knew what fracking really was. So I think it’s a question of if it doesn’t affect you nobody cares.”
“It’s moving as quickly as the oil and gas companies are allowed to move. And we’ve said no. We didn’t make the same mistake that the United States made. They allowed it to happen and then tried to regulate it,” he says.
At a time when most people are looking to retire, he looks set to become a household name.
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<h4>The world refuses to frack down</h4>
From London to Perth people have been fighting police, clashing with truck drivers and super gluing themselves to fences all for the same reason—fracking. In South Africa the debate is still in its infancy. Fracking in Australia, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland and the United States has provoked violence. In France it was banned completely, Tunisia soon followed.
One of the most violent protests came in a small town in West Sussex, Balcombe in Britain. British oil and gas exploration firm Cuadrilla, built a test well to take samples of rock.
Protestors super glued themselves to fences. The 1,000 protestors also set up camp by the road to the site. In August, police moved in to evict them and it was reported to have cost tax payers £3.7 million ($5.8 million).
In September, Cuadrilla announced it would suspend operations until a new planning application had been approved. Its drilling rig was moved to look for oil elsewhere.
“The drilling rig and associated equipment will be removed from site in September and testing equipment will not be mobilized to site until planning consent has been granted,” says Francis Egan, CEO of Cuadrilla in a statement.
On the other side of the coin, in North Dakota, United States, oil-fracking is seen as a boon. From 2005 to 2011, it helped the state’s economy grow from $4.4 billion to $30.5 billion. Eight thousand wells, producing more than 820,000 barrels a day was just the start. These wells are expected to increase to 50,000.
Among the landowners of North Dakota, 2,000 new millionaires are made every year, according to Bruce Gjovig, founder of the Center for Innovation at the University of North Dakota. Oil royalties range from $50,000 to $100,000 a month.
The quest for oil has drawn in thousands from across America to towns such as Watford City, which has grown from 1,700 to 10,000, according estimates in March.
The fracking revolution has been bitter sweet for some. Many long-term, low income residents have been priced out of their homes through property price rises. The population boom has led to overused roads, polluted streams and created the worst aspects of urbanization.
In South Africa, residents of the Karoo are the latest to join the battle. According to Julius Kleynhans, head of environmental affairs at AfriForum, the biggest problem is only one in five South Africans have heard about fracking.
“At the moment the government is doing nothing. It’s refusing to address the public outcry. They are just power drilling their wants through,” he says.
“Why would they care if the Karoo was contaminated? What they were told was the value of getting this energy game-breaker gas was far more important than the value of the Karoo. The fact that the Eastern Cape has a third of the country’s livestock population; I cannot tell you how important this part of the country plays in production. We also produce more wool, mohair and ostriches than any other part of the country and 25% of the citrus in the country,” says local farmer Doug Stern.
You can be sure this time next year many more Africans will know what fracking is and how it could change their lives.
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Light At The Beginning  Of The Tunnel

A cold gusty wind whistles through the branches of hundreds of thousands of dust-weary bone-dry four-inch high scrub. This is the Karoo, southern South Africa’s desert, which has changed little in 250 million years. The valley creaks to its own song, carried on the wind through rusted windmills and crags of prehistoric rock.
These days, a new tune is in the air—fracking. Thousands of miles away big business rubs its hands at the prospect of drawing $100 billion (R1 trillion) revenue, within three decades, out of this land. Standing against this, are 3,000 landowners pledging millions for their fight.
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An estimated 485 trillion cubic feet of shale gas could be buried 4,5km below the Karoo, according to Econometrix, South Africa’s largest independent macro-economic consulting firm. The only way to get at it is through the so-called invasive mining underground, which has been used for no more than 15 years.
Farmers in the Karoo say this will destroy their livelihood. Johann Rupert, Africa’s second richest entrepreneur, who now lives in retirement on a farm in the area, is one of them.  Rupert made billions selling luxury consumer goods for Richemont and under his South African-based company Remgro. He has been shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars, says Derek Light, a small-town lawyer from Graaff-Reinet defending his birthplace, in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.
“The bulk of the cost we have incurred so far has gone into research, to equip ourselves and to be informed. We have hired some of the best scientists to understand each step of the exploration, so that we can understand every aspect of the process. We won’t go to court unless absolutely necessary. It’s not first prize to us,” he says.
Thousands of farmers across the Karoo are following the billionaire’s example. Fifty five-year-old Dickie Ogilvie, who farms mohair near Aberdeen, has pledged R3 [R1=$0.10] for every hectare on his 14,000 hectare farm.
“Some guys have given a lump sum payment. Most of the other money is per hectare basis, from 20c to 50c up to R2-R3 depending on how strongly they feel about fracking. It might sound like a lot of money, but it’s actually nothing. If I lose my property, at the end of the day it’s not money at all, we’ve lost everything,” says Ogilvie.
“But how effective at the end of the day is it going to be? Are we going to be able to stop the workings of a huge company like Shell? Have we got the finances to do it? Or are we just delaying the inevitable? We might as well just close our doors and move on. Lord alone, help us if it does happen. My big concern, particularly in the Aberdeen district, is the apathy of a lot of the farmers. There are many who have pledged, there are many who haven’t and they are actually not even interested,” he says.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves drilling underground and pumping a high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals to crack shale rock to release the gas.
Among the companies targeting this resource is Shell. They want to frack an area that is larger than Sierra Leone, an area of 90,000km squared. Jan Willem Eggink, the man charged by Shell to find viable oil and gas in Africa, believes if fracking is done correctly, it won’t harm the environment.
“I understand that people are concerned about it. If I was living in the Karoo, I would be concerned if Shell came to my farm and started drilling on it. I feel if I could talk to farmers in the Karoo and tell them what we planned to do, in most cases they would say ‘okay I now understand it and I am significantly less concerned’… What is true, I must admit, is there have been cases of gas leaking where wells have not been sealed off properly. You need to seal and test them properly.”
Eggink thinks fracking could be a game changer for the country. The South African government thinks so too. They estimate that fracking will create 700,000 jobs and make the country self-sufficient. Right now 70% of its gas is imported.
“The most logical one [use for gas] for South Africa, would be to convert it to power… I’m not saying gas is the only answer. Our view is that South Africa needs more energy than it can lay its hands on… The point is, if you operate at high standards, which Shell intends to do, then there is no reason why your water would be contaminated. You need good companies in place to operate this,” says Eggink.
Many farmers disagree.
Doug Stern farms sheep near Graaff-Reinet and has seen the damage first hand. He went to Pennsylvania, United States, as a guest of anti-fracking groups.
“The sealant material the industry will use can only consist of steel and cement. They are their only options. There are between two and 32 holes on each well pad. Assume that every well is drilled perfectly. However, with the Karoo being on an artesian formation, there is huge upward pressure from the subsurface. All of this over time is guaranteed to corrode the seals under the exerted pressure. The cement is going to crumble and the steal is going to rust, releasing impurities into our water and into the air. This will destroy our environment. You can do without gas, you can do without electricity but you cannot do without water. It’s the stuff of life,” says Stern.
“The amount of energy and effort that has to go into this particular resource, given the estimated lifespan, is disproportionate…we’ve already used up the gold reserves in this country. One of the aspects in mineral exploration that I was glad to leave behind was the sense that, while one is involved, you are party to the pillaging of the planet. My sense of reality, says it [fracking] ultimately will happen. It would be a sad day and the people in authority of this country to should be indicted if they enable it to happen before there are cast iron guarantees,” says Jeremy Harper, who worked for six years as an exploration geophysicist and whose farm, SandKraal, is in the fracking zone.
By spending his days buried in files, Light, the lawyer, has stalled fracking for five years. In 2008, one farmer objected to proposals by Sunset Energy, now Light represents thousands of farmers.
“If they had not objected, the government would have gone ahead with fracking in 2009, in a totally unregulated fashion. We wouldn’t even be here. The real issue is whether fracking can go ahead and if the country has the capacity and the infrastructure for it? Right now I don’t see it. So we will keep opposing them until it is safe,” says Light.
In September 2012, South Africa lifted its 18-month moratorium on fracking. The licenses have not been issued a year later, but look set to before South Africa’s elections next year, according to Rob Davies, the trade and industry minister of South Africa.
Matt Ash, director of Norton Rose Fulbright Sub-Saharan Africa energy, says the South African government wants gas to play a big part in its National Development Plan (NDP) for 2030, which estimates that the country will need 41,346MW of new power. The country currently has half that capacity with 33,000MW.
The controversy over fracking, according to Ash, stems from the country not having any fracking regulations.
“Under the present framework, a landowner is obliged to give mineral rights holder’s free and unfretted access to the land without compensation for the unhindered exploration of mineral resources. However, only a land owner can apply for rezoning of property appropriate for the mining activity concerned. The land owner can refuse to rezone on environmental grounds.”
According to Light, government decided to forego a strategic environmental impact assessment (EIA), a standard global practice. Light is worried that if gas is found, then the company has the right to drill, without proper regulations in place.
“Currently in South Africa there is no drilling legislation. The mining industry in the country has a shocking track record. There is a lack of observance of the laws as they are,” says Light.
Also in question is whether gas companies will pay for any damage to the environment.
“When these companies move on in forty or fifty years’ time there needs to be something to recover the environment. You have a fund to restore the land. There is inadequate financial provision made for rehabilitation. Inevitably for this country, the taxpayer has cleaned up the mess. The mining companies will spend money on what earns them money. They are not inclined to spend money on something that doesn’t generate income,” says Light.
Eggink says Shell will put money aside to repair the land.
This is unlikely to placate protestors. According to Light, there are still many more questions: Who will regulate fracking? How can gas be shipped out without an existing pipeline? Will the environment be able to cope with thousands of trucks grinding through the dust of the Karoo? Where will the millions of liters of water come from?
There are signs that the government is starting to listen to the worries of the farmers, says Light.
In September, Edna Molewa, the minister of water and environmental affairs, released a notice to declare fracking a controlled water activity.
“It means companies wanting to explore shale gas deposits under the Karoo will first have to get a water-use licence. Their water usage can be regulated,” says Light.
According to Eggink, it’s going to take 10 years to explore the area.  Shell will take two years to complete an EIA, once they have been given their licence. Most of the tests can be done above ground, he says.
“We would like to start drilling and demonstrating to the people of South Africa that these wells can be done in an environmentally acceptable way,” says Eggink.
Light says the farmers will push for fracking to be regulated more tightly, before a drill touches the ground.
“Our position is that until the gaps have been filled, we shouldn’t go ahead with operations… our plan is to challenge until it is guaranteed to be safe,” says Light.
In the Karoo it is said that farmers need to farm 25 years ahead. It is a place so delicate that tyre tracks can linger untouched for three years. It could soon be filled with the choking dust from thousands of trucks laden with shale gas, in a country where energy is needed. Until then, a small-town lawyer, some 3,000 farmers and a billionaire intend put up a roadblock.

No Fracking Way

Montego Foods is cradled in the fourth oldest South African town, where the Sundays River meanders through the Great Karoo—a semi-desert region in the Eastern Cape Province. Many youngsters leave this quiet idyll for the noise and money of Johannesburg. It is the largest privately-owned employer in the Graaff-Reinet area. These days many more decide to stay and work for Montego Foods.
When Hannes Van Jaarsveld, aged 60, bought the business in 2000 it employed 11 staff, today it employs around 250—220 of which are in Graaff-Reinet. The increase in employment goes hand-in-hand with production. In its first month in 2000, Montego Foods produced 65 tons. It took time to break into the market and after three years the profit began to roll in. Now the company produces up to 200 tons per day and more than 3,000 tons per month.
The company expanded faster than Van Jaarsveld expected. It is worth R100 million ($12,2 million) and is family-owned: Johan (30) is the international marketing manager; Marco (33) is the production manager and Morné (36) is in charge of administration in Graaff-Reinet.
<div id="attachment_1280" style="width: 229px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1280" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-1280" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Hannes-van-Jaarsveld-219x300.jpg" alt="" width="219" height="300" />Hannes van Jaarsveld</div>
This solidarity is the company’s greatest asset.
“There are no shareholders, it’s just the four of us,” says Hannes Van Jaarsveld.
“Our biggest advantage in the market place is that we’re a family-owned business, we can make crucial decisions on-the-fly. Each of us always knows what is going on in each department of the business. All four of us are very hands-on all the time. If there is a customer complaint it comes directly to Marco, who is one of the owners of the business, it’s not just a clerk who is a clerk or somebody. It goes directly to management,” he says.
“If we know a customer doesn’t have food on the floor, we will bend over backwards and get the food there because we know that every bag they don’t sell, is a bag we don’t sell. At the end of the day, that bag comes off your bottom line profit. We feel if you’re too big, you can’t do that. We would like to grow our business but we don’t want to lose that personal input and affection of the business,” says Hannes Van Jaarsveld.
At this stage, they are not looking at listing on the South African stock exchange.
The company, which holds more than 20% of the country’s pet food industry, supplies 1,000 South African stores and has 15 depots nationwide. It is looking to expand and exports to Botswana, Angola, Ghana and Zimbabwe. Their biggest competitors are Nola, Nestlé Purina and Royal Canine.
“If you don’t keep expanding your market, you might land up losing your market,” says Hannes Van Jaarsveld.
Montego Foods sells at veterinarians, pet stores and dog parlors. Supermarkets are not part of its strategy.
“Marketing-wise it would have been easier with regards to brand awareness, but logistically and sales-wise it’s easier to compete in the independent market than in the shark-infested waters of the grocery world,” says Johan Van Jaarsveld.
“The main reason being, mainstream retailers, when they start getting bigger, put so much pressure on you, as far as pricing is concerned at the end it’s not worth your while,” agrees Hannes Van Jaarsveld.
Five years after the Van Jaarsveld family purchased the company, they invested between R8 and 10 million (more than $1 million) in the extrusion and production side of the company. In 2010, they invested a further R18 million ($2,2 million) to increase production by 400 percent.
“Every time we increase capacity we go under pressure to meet the local demand. Now is the first time that we are starting to breathe a bit but we are still a bit restricted because the production side can handle a lot more than the milling side,” he says.
Earlier in the year, they approved further expansion, worth R25 million ($3 million), in the milling, grain storage and handling department. While still in the planning process, the project will take a year to complete.
“We could spend R2 million ($245,000) to cut around 30 to 40 jobs but that’s not what we want to do. We want to keep people employed,” says Hannes Van Jaarsveld.
A noble sentiment in these difficult economic times, from a company whose bite is bigger than its bark.

Tag: Graaff-Reinet

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