Criticism
In 1977, the company demanded the paper it owned, Rand Daily Mail, tone down its equal-rights support after exposing the murder of South African activist Steve Biko amid the subsequent government backlash.
In August 2007, the British charity, War on Want, published a report accusing Anglo American of profiting from the abuse of people in the developing countries in which the company operates. According to the charity, "in the Philippines and South Africa, local communities threatened with Anglo American mines have faced severe repression in their fight to stay on their land, while in Ghana and Mali, local communities see little of the huge profits being made by AngloGold Ashanti but suffer from fear and intimidation and from the damaging impact of its mines on their environment, health and livelihoods". Anglo American subsequently published a report responding to War on Want and separately disclosed its safety performance in its most recent annual earnings report, along with immediate measures to address safety concerns
Anglo American was also accused in 2007 of damaging environmental practices: in order to complete its planned Alaskan Pebble Mine in collaboration with Northern Dynasty Minerals, the global mining giant may build a massive dam at the headwaters of the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery, which it would risk obliterating. Opponents are also pointing to the use of cyanide, heavy metals, and acid mine drainage which can all have potentially devastating effects on the pristine environment of the Bristol Bay area. Opponents of the Pebble Mine created Ballot Measure 4 to impose additional water quality standards on new large-scale mines in the state. However, in August 2007, Alaskans voted against the initiative. The Pebble Limited Partnership has not yet put forward a project proposal and is working to prepare a Prefeasibility Study for the project in the second half of 2009. The mine proposal must still undergo environmental studies and the permitting process, including being subject to state and federal water protections
Nunamta Aulukestai (Caretakers of Our Land) and the Renewable Resources Coalition commissioned a report regarding Anglo American and their current and past subsidiaries. The report is written by Philip Mattera, a corporate reporter. The report, released in July 2008, criticizes Anglo American for community, worker safety, public health, and environmental problems at their mining operations in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mali, Ireland, and the United States (Nevada) and notes the difference between Anglo's stated corporate goals and their actual corporate performance.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)