Hundreds of people who are employed by Coal of Africa’s Vele mine might be going back to work soon.

Fear was looming amongst workers, following the suspension of all operations at the mine on August 6, after the issuing of the compliance notice to the mine near the Mapungubwe World Heritage Site, by the Department of Environmental Affairs.

The department issued a compliance notice to this Australian mining company, following a complaint by the Mapungubwe Action Group, the Endangered Wildlife Trust, the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists, the Peace Parks Foundation, the World Wide Fund for Nature South Africa, BirdLife South Africa and the Wilderness Foundation of South Africa that the mine was damaging Mapungubwe.

In an attempt to allay fear, worker representatives from the National Union of Mine Workers (NUM) met with the chief executive officer of Coal of Africa, Mr John Wallington, at one of the hotels in Polokwane on the weekend, where he assured them that they will go back to work, as negotiations with the department are at an advanced stage. “We are negotiating in good faith with the Department of Environmental Affairs to resolve the issue. We are now starting to make good progress. We are committed as a company to satisfy their concerns and put into place whatever factor is deemed necessary,” said Wallington.

Wallington added that the situation was urgent "as we have been stopped from operating for two weeks now and the urgency of the situation is increasing every day if we are to avoid job losses.”

Meanwhile, Frans Maluleke from Ga-Sekgopo, treasury for NUM, who was part of the delegation that met Wallington, said: “We are concerned that the mine was stopped three months after its operation. We believe our minister is a mature and educated person who cannot issue a licence without consulting other stakeholders. We want government to tell us if the mine is going to continue or not. If the mine is not continuing, we will take all the workers to the businesses owned by the Action Group, so that they can be employed there,” said Maluleke.

Maluleke said there must be a referendum about the issue, so that the will of the people can be seen.

Another member, Eric Mudau, said the community of Limpopo people had been waiting for years for a job opportunity like this, but that the closure was getting them worried. “Mapungubwe had been there for close to 10 years, but they never created jobs for our local community as they are employing cheap labour from foreign nationals. Mapungubwe had never donated anything to our community, but Venetia Mine has made available several community development like school bursaries to our kids, which they do every year and we are expecting the same from Vele,” said Mudau.