SA miners dead men walking

children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on August 12. It is better to die than go back with empty hands. We on the mines are dead men already.”
The strike was to last a week with the apartheid machinery savagely suppressing the striking, hungry, angry and defiant workers. About 1 248 workers were reportedly wounded and nine were killed.
“Lawless police and army violence smashed the strike. The resources of the racist state were mobilised, almost on a war footing, against the unarmed workmen. But the miners’ strike had profound repercussions which are felt until this day,” anti-apartheid activist and medical doctor Monty Naicker was to write in 1976, in an article titled “The African Miners’ Strike of 1946”.
And after decades of international investors lording it over the country’s immense mineral resources, in August 2012 South Africa mine workers again decided enough was enough. The strike started by rock drillers at Lon­min’s Marikana platinum mine has resulted in 44 deaths under the glare of the international media. As was the August strike of 1946, the strike started by Marikana mine rock drillers is proving to be a tipping point in South Africa’s economic and political arena as it spreads to other mining operators.
A history of cheap labour has always been and is still the bedrock of South Africa’s multi-billion dollar mining industry. The industry has flourished for more than two centuries due to low costs of production attributable to cheap labour from Southern Africa and as far afield as China and India. Research shows that by 1929, more than 115 000 Mozambicans had been forcibly recruited to work in South African mines. In 1961, anti-apartheid activist and scholar, Ruth First was to publish “The Gold of Migrant Labour” which highlighted, among other issues, how migrant workers were being shipped from as far as the then Tanganyika (Tanzania). Of the labour force of 432 234 recruited by the Chamber of Mines, 58 percent came from Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Tanzania, Swazi­land, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
“In the South African mining industry in the early 1970s the foreign migrant worker was not one in seven but three out of every four. In the recent period the num­ber of foreign migrants has been reduced, but the mining industry continues to use a labour force that is not per­manently proletarianised, that is forced by law to oscillate between home and work-place, and that come from peasant societies which have been under continuing pressure to send men of working age out to labour. Migrant labour has never been a temporary expedient in Southern Africa, always a permanent necessity; migrant labour, drawn from within South Africa’s industrialised economy but also during this century from as many as a dozen countries beyond its geographical frontiers, has been indispensable to the accumulation of South Africa capital,” First wrote.
In 1941, black mine workers were being paid R70 per year on average, while their white counterparts earned R848. Poignantly, while South Africans interred 44 dead people after the Marikana strike for a pay rise from R4 000 to R12 500, the country’s platinum mining industry in 2011 reported revenues of US$13,3 billion.
Lonmin, the world’s third largest platinum producer, swung a staggering US$1,9 billion in revenues in 2011, a 25 percent surge on 2010 figures. South Africa’s platinum industry, being the largest in the world’s, projects revenue to rise by 15,8 percent over the coming five years.
“Behind the squalid settlements that surround the mineshafts there are immense profits to be made. In recent years the platinum mining industry has prospered like no other thanks to the increased popularity of plat­inum jewellery and the use of the metal in vehicle exhaust systems in the US and European countries,” Chris Webb, a labour researcher, wrote for Global Research.
At Lonmin, tensions have been simmering since the mass dismissal of 9 000 workers in May last year. A South African non-governmental organisation, Bench Marks Foundation, which monitors the activities of multina­tional corporations, blames mining companies for the current labour unrest. In a report in August, Bench Marks Foundation said Lonmin’s operations include a high level of fatalities, very poor living conditions for workers and that its operations have impacted on farm­ing. The Foundation also pointed out that Lonmin and other mining majors in South Africa were yet to fully comply with the 26 percent Black Economic Empower­ment (BEE) requirement.
“A proliferation of shacks and informal settlements, the rapid deterioration of formal infrastructure and housing in Marikana itself, and the fact that a section of the town­ship constructed by Lonmin did not have electricity for more than a month during the time of our last visit. At the RDP Township we found broken down drainage sys­tems spilling directly into the river at three different points,” the Foundation said.
The NGO says that corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes are top down, “designed by experts and imposed on communities. Mining companies are obsessed with cutting costs and of reporting low costs operations to shareholders. The Bench Marks Founda­tion is not convinced that low cost operations are sustain­able, safe, and healthy for workers or communities. Cost-cutting is usually at the expense of the environment, labour and communities. Cost cutting leads to workers strikes to protest low wages to protest unsafe working conditions. Cost cutting leads to externalising of costs to society,” the Foundation said.
The report slams mining companies for failing to reflect the demographic reality of present day South Africa in management positions. “If companies in Zim­babwe and Botswana can run successful operations with almost entirely black management and labour forces, there is no reason that the same cannot be achieved in South Africa. Mining companies are quick to lament the poor state of education in South Africa. However, they are slow to answer the question of why there is no mining college or technical school in Rustenburg sponsored by the mines with the aim of skilling local communities. This is despite that platinum mining started as long ago as 1931 in the case of Rustenburg Platinum, and in 1968 in case of Impala Platinum,” the Foundation said.
In the heat of the Marikana strike, a South African weekly quoted a defiant mine worker saying: “It’s better to die than to work for that s**t  . . . I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want. They have said nothing to us. The police can try and kill us but we won’t move. And this is a spreading sentiment. This past week, 15 000 workers at Gold Fields’ Kloof Driefontein Complex Mine downed tools demanding better salaries. The Marikana contagion effect has also spread to the gold sector. Workers are dig­ging in, snubbing a peace accord signed between Lonmin management and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Workers at the world’s second-biggest platinum producer, Impala Platinum Mines (Implats), last Tuesday tabled demands for a doubling of wages. In February this year, workers at Implats’ Rustenburg Mine embarked on a six-week industrial action that resulted in losses of R2,4b.
A South African mining analyst dubbed the current unrest as the “Miner Spring”.
“This may be the beginning of a ‘Miner Spring’. Per­haps we have reached a point now where the inequity in the pay scale would lead to broader civil disobedience and protest action,” South Africa labour analyst Tony Healy said. The end of apartheid has not ushered in the much-anticipated societal transformation and has left the economic hierarchy largely intact.
NUM, a key pillar in the anti-apartheid struggle, stands accused of going “to bed with employers” after 1994. In the context of the nationwide discontent, the role of the NUM is better explained by looking at Cyril Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa, whose personal fortune is around US$230m, led NUM in the 1980s and rose to become ANC Secretary-General. Ramaphosa sits on the board of Lonmin, whose oppressive labour practices culminated in 44 deaths.
“South Africa is a social, political and economic disas­ter waiting to happen. The anger is there. All you need is a spark, and then you will have social and political and economic veld fires burning out of control,” South Africa political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi said recently.
A radical Association of Mine Workers and Construc­tion Union (AMCU) has upstaged NUM, stepping in to fill the void by pushing for better working conditions. A Regional Trend Disgruntlement is not limited to South Africa.
“After carefully following and monitoring the educa­tion and employment situation, the Bench Marks Foun­dation is not surprised that communities have erupted and predict that more such conflicts can be expected,” the Foundation said.
“Recent Zambian elections have shown that a time will come when the electorate will express its dissatisfaction with the close relationship between powerful politicians and powerful corporations, by voting the ruling party out of power.
“One of the factors behind recent civil disturbances in Botswana is also the public perception that the govern­ment and ruling party is in an unhealthy relationship with the dominant mining corporation in the country,” the Foundation observed.
As the regional economic powerhouse continues to boil, expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema has stepped in to stoke the fires and capitalise on an apparent leadership vacuum.
“This is a serious revolution. Don’t give up,” Malema on Tuesday told striking workers.
African Socialist International added: “We need a rev­olutionary conclusion to the 500 years of parasitic capital­ism that has made white oppressor nations richer and more technologically developed at our expense.“Every single struggle we are in, whether it is short term or long term, we must win the people to understand the funda­mental interests of African workers,” said the African Socialist International. — The Southern Times.