In a short, sharp smack-down, the South African Constitutional Court has rejected an attempt by would-be coal mining company Atha-Africa Ventures to draw it into a controversial plan to mine coal in a highly sensitive protected grassland and water catchment area in Mpumalanga. The company wanted the Constitutional Court to grant it leave to appeal against a Supreme Court of Appeal decision not to hear its challenge to a lower court judgment that blocked the mining proposal. This judgment related to a decision taken in 2016 by then Environmental Affairs minister the late Edna Molewa and then Mineral Resources minister Mosebenzi Zwane to quietly grant Atha-Africa permission to develop its proposed 15-year Yzermyn underground coal mine within the Mabola Protected Environment in Mpumalanga. This 8,772-hectare protected area was formally proclaimed in January 2014 under the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act because of its ecological sensitivity as a high-yielding, highly strategic water catchment area within a high-altitude, threatened grassland ecosystem. But the two ministers' controversial decision was reversed when a coalition of eight non-government environmental and social justice groups opposing the mining brought a successful review-and-rescind application in the North Gauteng High Court.