New York City - The Nuclear-Free Future Award

The deserts of North Africa are touted across Europe as the
green solution to all energy worries. The magic word: DeserTec.
What Europeans forget is that the plundering of natural resources
in the Sahara and Nambib has been going on for decades
– often with dire consequences. Both desert regions are the
traditional homelands of indigenous peoples: to the north, in
the desert of Niger, live the nomadic Tuareg; to the South, in
Namibia, lies the home of the San. Both areas – among the most
arid on earth – host water-intensive mining operations: AREVA
mines uranium in Niger, and in Namibia, Rio Tinto. The cozy
relations these corporations enjoy with government authorities
allow them to take
land from indigenous
peoples without
compensation,
and to continue unchecked their appalling environmental
records. Desert aquifers have already been drained of billions
of liters of water – a vital resource that will take millions of
years to replenish.
Finally, anti-nuclear activists from across Africa have
linked up to take a stand against this brand of old-school colonialism.
The African Uranium Alliance (AUA) is led by, from
south to north: Mike Kantey and Mariette Liefferink of
South Africa, Bertchen Kohrs and Hilma Shindondola-Mote
from Namibia, Matthias Boniface and Anthony Lyamunda
from Tanzania, Reinford Mwagond from Malawi, Diderot
Nguepjouo from Cameroon, and Almoustapha Alhacen of
Niger. An elder from Malawi summed up the AUA message in
three words: “Uranium is death.”
The mission of the AUA is not only to protest plans to open
up new uranium mines, but also to educate those employed at
working mines about the imminent health risks. The Alliance
found that black employees, laboring for wages far less than
the white workforce, often had no idea that repeated radiation
exposures placed them at a much higher risk than the general
population to contract respiratory ailments, leukemia, cancers.
Few miners had ever set eyes on a dosimeter, and many were
not issued facial masks or shielding work clothes.
Almoustapha Alhacen tells us: “Radioactivity increases
poverty because it creates more victims. With each passing
day we are exposed to radiation and continue to be surrounded
by poisoned air, polluted water and earth – while AREVA
Resistance
6
makes hundreds of
millions from our natural
resources.” AREVA
claims that in over
forty years of uranium
min-ing, not one case
of work-related illness
has come to light. How
do they do it? According
to NGOs CRIIRAD
and SHERPA, doctors
at the AREVA-owned
hospital in the north
of Niger diagnose
mineworker cancers
as HIV/Aids. Stigma
sweeps everything
under the carpet.
Niger’s government
intends to give out 140
mining ex-ploration
titles to multi-national
uranium concerns – for
the Tuareg a sentence
of death.
*
On the 27th of July,
African Uranium Alliance. From top left to
2010, we received an bottom right: Anthony Lyamunda (Tanzania),
email from African Hilma Mote (Namibia), Mike Kantey (South
Uranium Alliance activist
Reinford Mwangonde of Malawi: “Could you get back to
us please? Something terrible has happened. A truck loaded
with yellowcake from the Kayelekera mine overturned and two
people were killed. No reaction from Paladin mining or the
government. We are evacuating people from the area, but have
no place to put them.”
The Nuclear Age as lived daily in Africa. With a portion
of the Award money, tents could be purchased for those pushed
from their homes.