admin“Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa must apologise to the families of the injured and the dead for agitating and inciting the South African police against them,” the ANC Youth League said in a statement.
On Tuesday, advocate Dali Mpofu, representing the miners injured and arrested after the shooting on 16 August, said there was an e-mail in which Ramaphosa strongly condemned the protests, described them as criminal acts and suggested “concomitant action”.
Mpofu told the Farlam Commission into the shootings, which is holding hearings at the Rustenburg Civic Centre, that the e-mail was sent 24 hours before 34 miners were killed.
“He advanced that what was taking place were criminal acts and must be characterised as such. In line with this characterisation (Ramaphosa said) there needs to be concomitant action to address the situation,” said Mpofu.
He said e-mails were exchanged between Ramaphosa, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, Lonmin management and Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu.
Ramaphosa sits on the Lonmin board. The striking miners killed in the shooting were from Lonmin’s platinum mine in Marikana.
He is also executive chairperson of Shanduka Resources, which owns half of Incwala Resources, Lonmin’s black economic empowerment partner.
Ramaphosa chaired the ANC’s national disciplinary committee of appeals which upheld the expulsion from the party of former ANCYL president Julius Malema, and at which Malema was represented by Mpofu.
The Hawks are investigating charges, brought by the trade union Solidarity, that Malema incited violence during the strike at Lonmin’s Marikana mine.
The ANCYL said Ramaphosa had “lost any credibility as a genuine leader of the people, and as a revolutionary committed to the cause of the working class”.
“With his e-mail to Police Minister, Comrade Nathi Mthethwa, Comrade Ramaphosa delivered the more than 40 people to their death(s) at Marikana,” the ANCYL said.
It said that Ramaphosa’s preoccupation with the preservation of his monetary interests in Lonmin led him to call for concomitant action to deal with the criminal acts.
“As a seasoned unionist, the ANC Youth League expected more from Comrade Ramaphosa. The criminal acts he spoke of were the legitimate calls of workers demanding a decent wage.”
The league said Mthethwa had yet to explain from where the police got their orders.
The ANCYL called for a moratorium on all dismissals of workers and a return to order in the mining industry.
“The call for nationalisation of mines has never been more urgent and we call on ANC leaders with vested interests in the mining industry to subordinate their interests in favour of the collective good of all in South Africa, as demanded by the Freedom Charter.”
Meanwhile, AngloGold Ashanti said it will sack 12 000 South African wildcat strikers who ignored a deadline to return to work yesterday, the latest company to resort to mass firings after weeks of crippling labour unrest.
Several mining firms have told strikers to return to work or lose their jobs in a last-ditch move to resolve the widening strikes that have poisoned labour relations and marred the image of Africa’s top economy.
AngloGold, the world’s third-largest bullion producer, had given strikers until noon yesterday to return.
About 12 000 employees at its West Wits operation failed to return, spokesman Alan Fine said.
About 24 000 AngloGold employees at the West Wits and Vaal River complexes — the majority of its workforce — had gone on strike. Fine said that workers at the Vaal River complex were back at work.
A total of about 100 000 workers have downed tools for better pay in South Africa since August, a wave of strikes that has sparked two credit downgrades for the country as a whole.
Coal miner South African Coal Mining Holdings said earlier yesterday that some of its operations had been interrupted due to a new union-led strike over wages.
AngloGold rival Harmony Gold has also given wildcat strikers an ultimatum to return to work today. — Sapa.
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