Anger over mine massacre in South Africa.
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(1) Amandla Editorial Comment : A Brutal Tragedy That Should Never Have Happened -- Amandla - South Africa's new progressive magazine standing for social justice - August 17, 2012
(2) Behind the South Africa Mineworkers Massacre by Jean Damu POV - Point of View -- Published by Portside - August 19, 2012
(3) SACP: Central Committee Statement SACP Press Statement - 19 August 2012
(4) AMCU The Common Factor In Mine Violence by Phindile Kunene, Shopsteward Magazine Editor, COSATU - August 14 2012
(5) Implats Strike Escalates by Christy Filen -- Mineweb - 02 February 2012
(6) AMCU Threatens Strike At Impal Says it has displaced NUM as the main union at Rustenburg mine. by Carli Cooke -- Moneyweb -06 June 2012
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(1) Amandla Editorial Comment : A Brutal Tragedy That Should Never Have Happened Amandla
Amandla - South Africa's new progressive magazine standing for social justice
August 17, 2012 http://amandlapublishers.co.za/home-page/1522-amandla-editorial-comment-...
No event since the end of Apartheid sums up the shallowness of the transformation in this country like the Marikana massacre. What occurred will be debated for years. It is already clear the mineworkers will be blamed for being violent. The mineworkers will be painted as savages. Yet, the fact is that heavily armed police with live ammunition brutally shot and killed over 35 mineworkers. Many more are injured. Some will die of their wounds. Another 10 workers had been killed just prior to this massacre.
This was not the action of rogue cops. This massacre was a result of decisions taken at the top of the police structures. The police had promised to respond with force and came armed with live ammunition. They behaved no better than the Apartheid police when facing the Sharpeville, 1976 Soweto uprisings and 1980s protests where many of our people were killed.
The aggressive and violent response to community service delivery protests by the police have their echo and reverberation in this massacre.
This represents a blood-stain on the new South Africa.
This represents a failure of leadership. It is a failure of leadership from government: its ministers of Labour and Minerals Resources who have been absent during this entire episode; its Minister of Police that maintains this is not political but a mere labour dispute and defends the action of the police; a failure of the President who can only issue platitudes in the face of this crisis and not mobilise the government and its tremendous resources to immediately address the concerns of the mineworkers and now their bereaved family members.
It has been a failure and betrayal of the Lonmin mine management that refused to follow through on undertakings to union leaders to meet the workers and address their grievances. The management summersaults between agreeing to negotiate with workers and then reneges saying they have an existing two-year agreement with National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
It is unfortunately also a failure of the union leadership: In the first instance the NUM which regards any opposition to their leadership as criminal and asserts that such opposition must necessarily be a creation of the Chamber of Mines. This is obviously not true. It is also a failure of the leadership of Association of Mining and Construction Union (AMCU), which acts opportunistically in an effort to recruit disgruntled NUM members, mobilises workers on unrealistic demands and fails to condemn the violence of its members.
The level of violence on our mines demonstrates the deep divisions within and polarisation of South African society. Mineworkers are employed in extreme conditions of poverty, often living in squalor in squatter camps without basic services. The mineworkers are often employed through labour brokers and informalised without decent work conditions.
The "wildcat strike" (like other similar strikes on the mines) that set off the events leading to the slaughter is a response to the structural violence of South Africa's system of mining. However, it is also a response to something else, which we dare not ignore.
Enriched mineowners with the experience of BEE co-option see an opportunity of driving a wedge between "reasonable" union leaders and the workers. They entice the unions into sweetheart relations dividing them from the worker ranks-and- files. The anger on the mines is a deep-seated anger at mine management that is progressively being directed at the compliance and failure of their union leadership to defend and represent worker interests.
The alienation between union members and the unions' leadership is a factor behind what has happened at Lonmin and what is happening on other Platinum mines.
Nevertheless, the slaughter of more than 35 mineworkers is as a result of the violence of the state, specifically the police. At the very least Minister Mthethwa must take responsibility and resign.
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(2) Behind the South Africa Mineworkers Massacre
by Jean Damu
POV - Point of View
Published by Portside
August 19, 2012
The recent South African mineworkers massacre in which scores were shot and killed had its origins in long disgraced trade union organizing tactics but that in no way absolves the police and mine owners from being held in accountable.
There is blood and blame enough to cover both sides of the barricades, enough in fact that the regional leadership of the immensely influential South African Communist Party has called for the arrest of the leaders of the breakaway mine workers union which they assert foment violence wherever they appear.
Before addressing the issues confronting the unions it should be made clear that the police are going to have a very difficult time convincing anyone they shot in self- defense. There are numerous videos showing police forces standing in front of their vehicles, not behind them for protection, as they fired into crowds of protesting miners. That simple fact alone belies police protests of innocence.
Furthermore a leading South African political personality informs us that a dangerous trend within South Africa has been the militarizing of private security firms, many of them hired by the mining establishments. These security guards, he says, are brought within the framework of the national police, given armor and automatic weapons but very little training. This creates a situation in which there is great distance between the local police and the authorities to whom they should be responsible. If this is the case one can safely assume despite claims by regional and national police authorities their troops were acting in self-defense, likely authorities don't really know what happened and won't know until an investigation is completed.
Further, SACP provincial secretary Mododa Sambatha, was quick to point an accusatory finger toward the breakaway mine workers union, the Association of Mine Workers and Construction Unions (AMCU).
Sambatha called for the establishment of a presidential commission to investigate the "violent nature and anarchy associated with AMCU wherever it establishes itself."
These charges relate to several other incidents in earlier organizing campaigns where workers and police had been killed. In fact just days before the Aug. 16 massacre two policemen were hacked to death my machete wielding AMCU members.
"Workers must desist any temptation to mobilize them against NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) or to mobilize them to attack each other," Sambatha said.
What are the origins of such horrible organizing conditions where workers are attacking each and in turn attacking police?
Currently there are two unions organizing and representing mineworkers in South Africa-the long established NUM that played a leading role in the movement for national liberation and the more recently formed AMCU, that many uninformed consider to be the more radical, but in fact are anything but radical.
Significantly (and this is significant) when leaders of AMCU made application for official government recognition and were asked "What is the main difference between yourselves and NUM?" AMCU leaders declared themselves to be "apolitical and anti-communist."
This is an amazing admission because it is a physical impossibility to be apolitical and anti-communist. It's like saying you love to walk but don't believe in motion. It's a nonsensical physical and emotional contradiction, but is a first step on the short road to disaster.
With the creation of AMCU the long, long discredited tactic of "dual unionism" appeared.
Essentially dual unionism is parallel organizing tactics of one union against another within the same industry and workplace.
With the possible exception of the breakup of the AFL- CIO in recent years dual unionism was last seen in the US more than 70 years ago and today is outlawed in many countries. It creates division within the ranks of labor, is the scourge of workers everywhere but is the sweet music of milk and honey to the bosses.
At the Marikana mines in Rustenburg, approximately 60 miles north of Johannesburg, NUM had recently concluded contract negotiations but AMCU members were dissatisfied, they wanted more; in fact AMCU leaders encouraged them to demand a nearly 110% increase in their wages.
Did the workers deserve such an outrageous increase? Of course they did, but that's never the issue, especially under capitalism. Within a trade union situation the question always is, what can we reasonably expect to gain without actually going to war? A strike is the closest thing that exists to warfare without actually being warfare and even then loss of life is not unusual.
In the case of the mine workers massacre the great crime on the part of AMCU leaders was calling a wildcat strike, an unauthorized strike, in which they represented less than a quarter of the 28,000 Marikana workers.
Furthermore many AMCU members were armed with spears and machetes, not to attack the police necessarily but rather NUM members according to president Frans Baleni. "Our members have been attacked, and that can- not be said to be rivalry or clashes, it is pure criminality," he said.
In his now infamous declaration AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa demagogically declared to the assembled masses, "We will die here if necessary."
Really? People should die over a disputed pay increase? He didn't die. American workers who haven't had a real pay increase In nearly 40 years would find that a curious concept.
Exasperatingly and dangerously, following the shootings, expelled ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema travelled to scene of the bloodbath and called on mine workers to continue to volunteer to be killed-all in the name of the justifiable pay increase.
Here it is necessary to focus some light on the AMCU leaders and the political baggage of NUM.
Mathunjwa and AMCU leader Steve Kholekilethe are former NUM members who were expelled from NUM for "anarchism" and who then moved on the form AMCU.
AMCU leaders can rightly be considered the ideological brothers of the anarchists within the US Occupy movement who wear masks over their faces, throw trash cans through store windows and set buildings on fire. The only difference between those who set buildings on fire and those who encourage workers to arm themselves and make unreasonable wage demands is the scale of collateral damage.
But here is the real danger for the workers movement. If the mine owners were to actually grant the wage increases it would further encourage violent tactics on the part of AMCU members and set conditions for an even greater crackdown in the future.
There is no way out for a labor movement that resorts to violence unless revolutionary conditions are at hand.
But this is not say rank and file members do not have grievances with NUM. Many are frustrated and disillusioned when rank and file union members are not allowed to run for office, for example, or when NUM officials are seen to abandon workers struggles and join South Africa's emerging black bourgeoisie.
Former NUM leader Cyril Ramaphosa is the key case in point. Ramaphosa built NUM into a major fighting force against apartheid, but once apartheid ended Ramaphosa left politics and became one of South Africa's leading investment movers. He heads the Shanduka investments group, sits on the board of Coca-Cola and gives a whole new dimension to the disparaging term "entrepreneurial trade unionism," or the practice of creating trade unions in order to make money, commonly observed in Nigeria years ago. Today Ramaphosa is one of South Africa's wealthiest citizens but still claims to be a socialist.
More recently NUM president Baleni has been under fire for increasing his monthly pay package northward of R100,000 per month. That's more than $8,000 per month, a seemingly outrageous amount of money for the leader of a union whose members were killed demanding an increase of pay from $649/ month to $1250.
But none of the NUM's political baggage can justify the creation of a dual union.
Consider a case closer to home.
In the 1980's the hotel workers union in the US was one of the nation's most corrupt labor organizations and Secretary- Treasurer John F. Gibson was sent to prison.. At the very next international convention delegates voted to pay "poor old Gibby" $100,000 for the rest of his life.
Radicals and progressives within the union never dreamed of organizing a new union. They went about the strenuous work of organizing from within. Today the new hotel workers union is among the most militant defenders of workers' rights and wages within private sector industry.
That is the correct road for union organizing and reform.
We will have to wait to see what all the commission findings report and who will held accountable for the massacre. But one thing is for sure. As long as dual unionism is allowed to exist within the mining industry, or anywhere else in South Africa for that matter, more violence is sure to follow.
[Jean Damu organized the Bay Area Trade Union Conference in Solidarity with South African Trade Unions. It was the only instance in the US when trade unions met to discuss South Africa. The conference was keynoted by John Gaetsewe, secretary general of SACTU (South African Conference of Trade Unions) the forerunner to the current umbrella labor group COSATU (Conference of South African Trade Unions.)]
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(3) SACP: Central Committee Statement
SACP Press Statement
Issued by the SACP Central Committee
19 August 2012
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/Communist-University/...
[moderator: this excerpt from the full statement available at the link above includes only the portion relevant to the Marikana massacre]
Following the South African Communist Party's highly successful July national congress, the newly elected SACP Central Committee met for the first time in Johannesburg over the weekend of August 17th to 19th.
The CC began its meeting by observing a moment of silence and expressing condolences to all those who have lost family members and colleagues in the tragic events at Marikana this past week, and our well wishes to those who have been injured, workers and police. The CC welcomes President Zuma's announcement of a commission of inquiry. It is important that the mandate of the inquiry should be broad in scope. It is impossible to understand the tragedy without understanding the underlying factors.
The inquiry should, amongst other things, build on the 167- page report from the church-sponsored Bench Marks Foundation, "Communities in the Platinum Minefields", which was coincidentally released last week. The report paints a grim picture of how all the major platinum mining corporations have made billions of rands out of the world's richest platinum deposits in the Bojanala District of the North West province, while leaving a trail of misery, death, poverty, illness, and environmental pollution in the surrounding communities. The report finds that Lonmin's operations at Marikana, for instance, "include high levels of fatalities" and that the "residential conditions under which Lonmin... employees live are appalling." The report further attributes the high level of fatalities at Lonmin and other platinum company mines in the district to the extensive use of sub-contracted labour (nearly one-third of the work-force in the case of Lonmin's Marikana operations). "Sub-cont
racted labour is usually poorly paid, poorly trained and educated, and poorly accommodated", the report notes, and adds: "Therefore sub-contracted workers compromise the health and safety of other workers."
Our own SACP members from the district, most of them mine- workers, have of course been telling the Party about these realities for many years and we have been raising them publicly, but we refer to the Bench Marks Foundation to avoid the allegation of partisanship. Importantly, the report points out that the practice of sub-contracting by the mining houses dates back to the immediate post-1994 period as a cost-cutting measure and an attempt to "break the power of NUM" (p.36), to undercut the collective bargaining rights that the organized working class had finally achieved after decades of struggle. Furthermore, the report notes that the expanded use of sub- contracted labourers from other localities, including from the Eastern Cape, has created community tensions between "insiders" and "outsiders". Last year, for instance, there were violent protests from local community, unemployed youth in Marikana, angry that jobs on the mines were being provided to "outsiders".
The Presidential Commission of Inquiry must also consider the pattern of violence associated with the pseudo-trade union AMCU wherever it seeks to implant itself. Launched in Witbank by two former NUM members, expelled for anarchic behaviour, AMCU was funded by BHP Billiton in a deliberate attempt to undermine NUM. The Commission should, in particular, investigate its leader Joseph Mathunjwa.
The violence associated with AMCU spread to the Rustenburg platinum mines last year when the management of Impala Platinum deliberately undercut collective bargaining agreements reached with NUM by opportunistically seeking to attract, with higher wages, mineworkers with blasting certificates from other companies - this naturally created a grievance among the less-skilled rock-drillers. It was a grievance demagogically exploited by AMCU which ultimately led to the dismissal of thousands of workers.
At Marikana, last week, AMCU leadership was once more exploiting the credulity and desperation of the most marginalized sectors of the Lonmin work-force, "outsiders", contracted-workers many from Eastern Pondoland. SACP members from the area confirm newspaper reports today that the armed workers who gathered on the hill were misled into believing they would be invulnerable to police bullets because they had used `intelezi', and provided they isolated themselves from women, and provided that did not turn their backs on the police.
In short, it is impossible to understand the tragedy of last week without an appreciation of how the major platinum mining corporations, sitting on top of over 80% of the world's platinum resources, have created desperate community poverty, divisive tensions, and a fatalistic attitude towards danger and death. It is also not possible to understand the tragedy without understanding how profit-maximising corporate greed has deliberately sought to undercut an established trade union and collective bargaining by conniving with demagogic forces. This strategy has now back-fired on the platinum companies' profits themselves.
For all of these reasons the SACP firmly rejects the attempt to portray the events of last week as being essentially rooted in trade union rivalry. This narrative is no different to that developed during the final years of apartheid, when armed vigilantes, fomented, trained and escorted by the apartheid regime, were unleashed on our UDF, COSATU and ANC-supporting communities and this was portrayed as "black on black violence".
There are many lessons to be learnt from this tragedy. A proper understanding of its underlying causes should shame all of those who seek to undermine our current collective bargaining dispensation by calling for a "more flexible labour market", by defending labour- brokering and the extensive use of other forms of "a- typical" labour, and by seeking to portray COSATU and its affiliates as the source of all evil.
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(4) AMCU The Common Factor In Mine Violence
by Phindile Kunene,
Shopsteward Magazine Editor, COSATU, August 14 2012
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?o...
Federation says splinter union using force to further its political aims
COSATU condemns the ongoing violence at Lonmin
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) condemns the ongoing violence at Lonmin mine, which has claimed the lives of at least nine people since its outbreak. The federation extends its condolences to the families and friends of the mine workers, security personnel and police officers who have lost their lives in the violence.
The federation believes that violence is in this case used as a political strategy to intimidate workers into making political choices about their association. It is no coincidence that similar incidents of violence engulfed Implats in Rustenburg and that the common factor in both cases is a splinter union which is hell- bent to utilise violence to further its political aims.
COSATU calls on Lonmin to initiate a full investigation into the violence. We also call on law enforcement agencies to leave no stone unturned and bring the culprits to justice.
The federation appeals to workers to observe maximum discipline and unity in the face of a political strategy geared towards dividing them and weakening their position in relation to mine bosses and capitalists.
COSATU will continue to support the National Union of Mineworkers' efforts to resolve this situation.
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[moderator: these articles from February 2012 and June 2012 are posted as part of a search to provide context for ongoing conflict at Lonmin]
(5) Implats Strike Escalates
by Christy Filen
Mineweb
02 February 2012
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page35?oid=144684&sn=Deta...
Impala Platinum's share price took a pounding in trade on Thursday as industrial action took a turn for the worse at its Rustenburg operations.
JOHANNESBURG -
Amidst labour unrest at Implats today, a further 13 000 employees were fired for participating in illegal strikes at its Rustenburg operations.
This brings the total number of employees dismissed to approximately 17 200.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) confirmed today that some of its members have been assaulted by an opposition union in the fracas.
NUM Regional Secretary for the Rustenburg area, Sidwell Dokolwana, said rival union, Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), had organised rock drill operators (RDO) at Implats to intimidate workers trying to return to work.
Dokolwana described the atmosphere as "very tense - we have a number of casualties from assaults by AMCU members including cars being stoned and smashed."
AMCU's national organiser did not answer repeated attempts to contact him.
NUM said it had requested COSATU to engage with the minister of safety and security and were beginning to see a small number of police in the area.
Dokolwana alleges that AMCU has found its strength by convincing the RDO that NUM was "conniving" with Implats management.
Implats have also said the failure of the workforce to report for work was due to AMCU attempting to gain recognition at the Rustenburg operation.
The strike that began two weeks ago was sparked by a selective adjustment of salaries that we do not agree with said Dokolwana: "Implats never discussed the salary adjustment with NUM. It was just an announcement."
Bob Gilmour, group executive for corporate relations at Implats, said it was not aware of any casualties or damage to cars and that the decision to implement salary adjustments in order to prevent a high turnover of staff was done in collaboration with NUM and was not unilateral.
With reference to AMCU, Gilmour confirmed that the union was using the opportunity to recruit members on the mine and that NUM's members were defecting.
"We are caught in the middle here" Gilmour said as the miner is not able to talk to staff not represented by NUM as that is the only recognised union at its operations. Over 70% of its workforce are NUM members said Gilmour.
Dokolwana said a shop steward council had been arranged for tomorrow and that NUM is encouraging all employees to reapply for their jobs and for Implats to engage with workers on their grievances.
Implats said "A process of rehiring for those employees who wish to reapply for their positions will be undertaken in due course."
Profits are shrinking in the platinum industry where rising cost pressures, safety stoppages and lower metal prices have made conditions difficult for miners and this situation is only likely to exacerbate an already beleaguered sector.
Whilst the local bourse was reaching record highs, Implat's share price has fallen 5% since January 26.
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(6) AMCU Threatens Strike At Impal Says it has displaced NUM as the main union at Rustenburg mine.
by Carli Cooke
Moneyweb
06 June 2012 http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/content/en/moneyweb-mining?oid=573629&sn=20...
June 6 (Bloomberg) -- The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union said it has displaced South Africa's biggest labor body as the main union at Impala Platinum (JSE:IMP) Holdings Ltd.'s Rustenburg mine and will call a strike there if it isn't granted organizational rights.
"Things have changed dramatically," AMCU President Joseph Mathunjwa said in a speech in Johannesburg today. "AMCU is currently standing at plus-minus 15,000 members at Impala Platinum and our membership is increasing by the day."
The union has filed a so-called section 21 dispute with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration after Impala missed a May 25 deadline to verify membership numbers at the platinum operation, the world's largest.
Impala, the world's second-biggest platinum miner, only recognizes the National Union of Mineworkers, the biggest affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, at the Rustenburg operation. Union rivalry that led to a worker being shot stopped the mine for two days in May, while labor tensions and a pay dispute prompted an illegal strike that cost 120,000 ounces of lost output earlier this year.
Verification Process
Impala "has contracted an independent third party to verify membership, which should be completed in the next week or so," Johan Theron, Impala's group executive for personnel, said by phone. "The process needs to be credible. We respect the right of employees to join the union of their choice."
The NUM historically has about 20,000 members out of Rustenburg's workforce of about 30,000 workers, and a 50 percent-plus-one majority, and is legally recognized as such. Should the process show that membership has fallen below this threshold, the union has three months to regain this position before a one-month legal notice to de-recognize it as the majority, opening the door to recognize other unions, he said.
"The timeline can be cut if the parties choose to work together," Theron said.
The NUM, which has about 300,000 members, re-elected Frans Baleni as general-secretary on May 26, bolstering President Jacob Zuma's campaign to win a second term. Cosatu helped Zuma oust his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, as leader of the ruling African National Congress in 2007, with Zuma becoming president of Africa's biggest economy two years later.
"The membership in Rustenburg is not verified so they can't talk about the 15,000," Lesiba Seshoka, a spokesman for the NUM, said by phone today. "They may have recruited a significant portion of our members, but it can't be 15,000."
AMCU now has more than 5,000 members at Lonmin plc (JSE:LON), the world's third-biggest platinum producer, and is recruiting members "strongly" at Anglo American (JSE:AGL) Platinum Ltd., the largest producer, Mathunjwa said.
Impala climbed the most in almost a month, rising 3.2 percent to 138.12 rand by 2:55 p.m. in Johannesburg. Lonmin surged 4.3 percent to 98 rand while Anglo American Platinum added 3 percent to 504.50 rand.
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