(Bloomberg)-South African National Parks has been bidding by a company controlled by billionaire Patrice Motsepe to utilize South Africa’s second largest phosphate deposition in one of the most important wetlands of the country. Kropz PLC, which is 90% which by Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital Investments Ltd. of Motsepe, last month applied to extract the raw material used to make fertilizer from a portion of the West Coast National Park. Kropz “approached us to investigate the possibility of investigating part of the country that is part of the West Coast National Park,” said JP Louw, spokesman for the organization better known as SANParsks, according to SMS message. “Sanparks cannot allow mining activities within a declared national park as they are prohibited,” he added, saying Kropz was notified of the decision. The application reinforced a dispute between the company and conservation activists who opposed the development of the Elandsfontein mine along the park for more than a decade. Earlier this week, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, which is already in a legal dispute with Kropz over the mine, said it objected to the application. Kropz and African Rainbow did not respond to inquiries immediately. In a April 23 statement, Kropz said he offered San Parks a piece of land next to the park with ‘equal or larger conservation value than the current section that is being considered’ as compensation for the land he wants to mine. Environmentalists have a problem with the mine that they believe the Langebaan lagoon, which lies 98 kilometers north of Cape Town, and jeopardizes the associated aquifer. These disputes and technical problems have delayed the beginning of the operations since the company obtained the deposit in 2010. The West Coast National Park is home to 250 bird species, more than a quarter of the total found in South Africa, including flamingos and sand pipers. It is also the site of an annual flowering of wildflower fields and fossil human footprints dating from 117,000 years. Sign up here for the twice weekly Next Africa Newsletter (updates with Kropz statement in the third last paragraph) More stories like these are available on Bloomberg.com © 2025 Bloomberg LP first published: 27 Apr 2025, 11:23 PS
The billionaire-backed Kropz’s national park mining plan has been blocked
