2431 December 2007 that it would relocate the town, it publicly committed to compliance with international best practice, including IFC PS5 guidelines. In practice, the resettlement fell substantially short of those commitments. Families were moved to temporary camps in 2014 and container accommodations for years without justification under the IFC PS5, which discourages prolonged temporary displacement, requiring minimized duration, adequate living conditions and transitional support when people are temporarily resettled. The company declared the resettlement complete at its 2021 Annual General Meeting while at least 50 households remained un-resettled in temporary locations. At that time, court cases, mediation and potential arbitration processes were still ongoing. And the Resettlement Close-Out Audit was completed only in 2025, even though there are at least 50 households still waiting to move to permanent housing at time of writing in February 2026. The legal representation arrangement at Dingleton crystallises the central problem this paper addresses. The initial community legal representation (paid for by Kumba Iron Ore) was primarily to assist with conveyancing of property rights and focused primarily on the approximately 30% of the affected households who were property owners. Later, as people started to resist the resettlement and refused to move, more lawyers moved in to assist the affected households. Unfortunately, the households could not afford to pay legal fees, and most lawyers chose to withdraw. Sometime in late 2017, early 2018, an arrangement between a legal firm and Kumba Iron Ore resulted in the company agreeing to pay for the community’s legal costs. At the same time a facilitator of the process, who later morphed into the mediator, was also appointed, and was also paid by the company. All legal actors in the process: Kumba Iron Ore’s multiple legal firms, the company’s in-house legal team, the appointed facilitator/mediator, and the firm representing the affected households, were paid by Kumba Iron Ore. Households, who formed part of the resettlement, but who were excluded from this legal arrangement, and who were living in Kumba-owned accommodation provided as part of the resettlement, and who were subsequently sued by the company for rental arrears, could not afford their own lawyers and were forced to respond unrepresented against the company’s legal teams. For those households who had legal representation, the mediation process continued for nearly three years, and when the process proved unsuccessful, as it often does in complex, multi-party resettlement disputes were the power imbalance is so extreme, some households exercised their right under the dispute resolution framework to opt for arbitration. This is precisely what international best practice contemplates: when mediation fails, parties may refer the dispute to arbitration. It is a logical next step. Except that Kumba Iron Ore refused to pay for the arbitration. It stopped paying the legal firm representing the affected households and although the legal firm is yet to officially withdraw its services from the affected households, it has done very little to assist the households since mid-2024. Not because the community’s claims lack merit but because the company is refusing to pay for the arbitration process. Unfortunately the process has now become stuck for everyone. No legal aid organisation and no non-profit in South Africa have the financial resources to take on Anglo American in arbitration proceedings. Similarly the resettlement process has now also come to a halt with many households remaining in limbo in temporary accommodation. The mine, which replaced the town, is in full operation and hoping to expand. The Dingleton Resettlement case further raises a question with sector-wide implications: why did Kumba Iron Ore publicly claim PS5 compliance when it was not an IFC-funded project and when the resettlement outcomes appear inconsistent with key PS5 standards? No mechanism within the IFC existed to verify, challenge or sanction that claim. The IFC’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, the principal accountability mechanism for PS5, had no jurisdiction. Communities, investors, shareholders and regulators relied on voluntary representations that went unverified.
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