As police raided the hostels of Lonmin miners it looked like the ANC had once again chosen force over discussion. It’s nothing new, but this specific raid will be what we remember as the beginning of the party’s decline. By GREG NICOLSON.
This weekend’s crackdown on the settlement of Nkaneng should come as no surprise. In the last few years, as service delivery protests have engulfed townships and informal settlements across the country, the ANC government has stood behind the state-sponsored violence and intervened only when absolutely necessary.
The tale feels like a cliché. Something triggers a store of long-held grievances and the community fortifies its thoroughfares with burning tyres. After the police arrive they eventually decide the protest cannot continue and attack the toyi-toying group. In their nyalas, the cops first teargas the community in a drive-by and then conduct a series of arbitrary arrests that follow a hail of rubber bullets.
The smell of teargas, stab of rubber bullets and the humiliation of violent raids further enrages the angry mob. The stakes are raised and the more violent and disaffected members of the community remain, seeking ever more destruction.
Between police and protestors lies a dark silence. The cops don’t care why people are on the streets, burning the little they have access to while government officials are too scared or don’t care enough to mediate promptly. When they finally arrive and offer the slightest semblance that they give a damn about the community’s concerns, the protest often subsides.
It seems obvious that a leader should immediately attempt to listen. But in the silence of a community on fire, before government officials are forced to react, lies a deafening reality of the disconnect between our most marginalised and their elected leaders, usually from the ANC.
These protests, similar in root cause to the ongoing Lonmin strike, regularly occur because of poverty, corruption and unmet expectations. People are tired of living without adequate shelter. They know it’s unfair they can’t access decent health services. They want electricity and water plumbed into their homes and they want an effective and transparent billing system. They are tired of the forced humiliation that latches onto poverty. Worst of all, they’re disheartened seeing their children grow up to live in exactly the same desperate conditions.
Law and order needs to prevail in Marikana and no more deaths can be added to the toll. But this weekend’s move by the police and army into Nkaneng is all too reminiscent of the response to service delivery protests over the years. All too often the ANC has let police shoot first before even asking why protests are occurring, let alone engaging in meaningful discussion (however long, risky or arduous it need be).
It’s symbolic of a larger problem. The ANC aims to “end Apartheid in all its forms” and “fight for social justice and eliminate the vast inequalities created by Apartheid”, but too many examples show that it’s no longer the party of the people. A litany of betrayals and failures stain the party’s successes (which primarily include a massive service delivery rollout and making a dent into transforming the system of racial exclusion) while its internal power plays and the venality of members erode the foundations established by some of the most inspiring leaders of the 20th century.
The ANC’s June policy conference proved the party knows what’s hurting South Africans – poverty, inequality, unemployment and the ills flowing from the combination. We’re sure its members also care deeply – who wouldn’t when the stories of many South Africans are tragedies?
But the party is too distant from those we expect it to represent. President Jacob Zuma’s insulting and incredulous comments about visiting a township and realising there are poor people struggling to survive is testament to the disconnect. ANC MP Rose Sonto confirmed this last week when he disagreed with opposition parties in the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources, saying, “We can’t go and talk to a crowd with suicidal tendencies.”
Dangerous, yes, but strikes and protests are messages sent when other avenues of communication fail. Instead of provoking miners with further police antagonism, the ANC needed to work with union leaders and mine management to increase engagement until leaders trusted them. Zuma has sent an inter-ministerial force, made a visit and established a judicial inquiry, but it’s not enough. ANC leaders aren’t giving Marikana the attention it deserves. Simply, they have failed to lead when the country was wailing, desperate and distraught, for leaders.
The problem the party faces, however, is that even if it had the resolve to provide leadership it’s so removed from disaffected communities it would have struggled to get a platform. The miners have been too hostile, and like many others across the country seem to believe the party has broken too many promises, its members too corrupt to trust.
Instead of proving them wrong, the party has distanced itself from the workers and failed to show it understands their concerns (at the same time it has lambasted the capitalist miners it has been so happy to accommodate all these years).
So in an attempt to control the situation the ANC offered the same response it has to service delivery protests: it sent in the police. That response is nothing new, but while the party hides, the Marikana massacre will go down in history as the moment everybody knew the ANC was no longer a party of the poor, no longer a party of the working class and no longer a party that could claim to represent the majority of South Africans.
The National Executive Committee has discussed Marikana at length, said Secretary General Gwede Mantashe. It’s looking at ways to address the causes of the disaster and may come up with creative solutions involving partnering with mining companies to improve the living conditions of workers.
One can only hope the party can, but one has to fear it has once again stoked unrest and it might be too late. The ANC may still be in power. It may still have the votes, but things change. They always do. And it’s moments like these the historians will remember.
Source: Daily Maverick
Showing posts with label Lonmin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lonmin. Show all posts
Monday, September 17, 2012
Thursday, September 6, 2012
South Africa: NPA still wrong in Lonmin matter
Despite the withdrawal of the charges on Sunday by South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to charge 270 arrested mine workers for the killings of their colleagues, the initial decision to charge them in respect of the doctrine of common purpose is a perverse application of the law and that may have had the consequence of exacerbating tensions at Lonmin Mine in Marikana, North Western Province.
The tragic scenes of August 16, 2012, when police opened fire and killed 34 miners who were part of a group protesting against low wages, sent shockwaves throughout the world. Many reacted with horror at a display of police force that was reminiscent of apartheid South Africa.
Irrespective of what the Judicial Commission of Inquiry - established by President Zuma to investigate the killings and those responsible - may find once it conducts its investigation, there can be no doubt that the actions of the police can at best be described as extremely heavy handed.
While police may have overreacted, what happened in Marikana was a result of a Molotov cocktail of extremely angry miners (many of whom were armed with machetes and spears), a recalcitrant employer that seemed reluctant to negotiate to resolve the labour dispute, and an absent political and union leadership.
As a result of the killings and cognizant of the broader context in which the killings occurred, Human Rights Watch called on the South African government to ensure that the Commission is established speedily and for its terms of reference to include a fact-finding mission on the background and underlying events leading to the violence in Marikana.
It is a perversion of the doctrine to suggest that whatever common crime it is alleged the miners were pursuing, that the killing of their colleagues by the police was a foreseeable outcome on their part of achieving that goal.
The creation of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry and the appointment of retired Judge Farlam to head it, is therefore a welcome step. Farlam is a highly respected judge who served many years on the Supreme Court of Appeal. The Commission will have four months in which to conduct its investigation and to submit its final report a month thereafter.
However, the actions by the NPA to add the doctrine of common purpose to the initial charge of public violence could have undone all the good efforts to address the situation. According to the doctrine, where two or more people agree to commit a crime or actively associate in a joint unlawful enterprise, each will be responsible for specific criminal conduct committed by one of their number which falls within their common design.
In other words, there was a common purpose to commit a crime. It is a perversion of the doctrine to suggest that whatever common crime it is alleged the miners were pursuing, that the killing of their colleagues by the police was a foreseeable outcome on their part of achieving that goal.
This nonsensical decision by the NPA to charge the miners in this manner may have led many to conclude that these charges were politically motivated and an attempt to prevent further protests.
The terms of reference of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry include an investigation of all the parties involved and mandate the Commission to refer any matter regarding the conduct of any person or group for prosecution. In addition, the South Africa’s Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) has also initiated an investigation into the conduct of the police that led to the tragedy.
It is therefore very worrisome that there is very little complementarity between these investigations. As the Judicial Commission of Inquiry has been specifically established to conduct an independent and impartial investigation, it is more prudent for entities to work collaboratively with the Commission.
The decision by the NPA to charge the miners in terms of the doctrine of common purpose seems shortsighted for at least three reasons: Firstly, in the context of the establishment of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry, it should await the results and recommendations of the investigation before deciding the appropriate course of action.
Secondly, the requirement of active association upon which it seems to rely is a misapplication of the doctrine which could lead to the unintended consequence of limiting human rights in other contexts. Lastly, its decision could have exacerbated the already tense situation and set off another Molotov cocktail.
Cameron Jacobs is the South Africa Director at Human Rights Watch
Source: Human Rights Watch
The tragic scenes of August 16, 2012, when police opened fire and killed 34 miners who were part of a group protesting against low wages, sent shockwaves throughout the world. Many reacted with horror at a display of police force that was reminiscent of apartheid South Africa.
Irrespective of what the Judicial Commission of Inquiry - established by President Zuma to investigate the killings and those responsible - may find once it conducts its investigation, there can be no doubt that the actions of the police can at best be described as extremely heavy handed.
While police may have overreacted, what happened in Marikana was a result of a Molotov cocktail of extremely angry miners (many of whom were armed with machetes and spears), a recalcitrant employer that seemed reluctant to negotiate to resolve the labour dispute, and an absent political and union leadership.
As a result of the killings and cognizant of the broader context in which the killings occurred, Human Rights Watch called on the South African government to ensure that the Commission is established speedily and for its terms of reference to include a fact-finding mission on the background and underlying events leading to the violence in Marikana.
It is a perversion of the doctrine to suggest that whatever common crime it is alleged the miners were pursuing, that the killing of their colleagues by the police was a foreseeable outcome on their part of achieving that goal.
The creation of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry and the appointment of retired Judge Farlam to head it, is therefore a welcome step. Farlam is a highly respected judge who served many years on the Supreme Court of Appeal. The Commission will have four months in which to conduct its investigation and to submit its final report a month thereafter.
However, the actions by the NPA to add the doctrine of common purpose to the initial charge of public violence could have undone all the good efforts to address the situation. According to the doctrine, where two or more people agree to commit a crime or actively associate in a joint unlawful enterprise, each will be responsible for specific criminal conduct committed by one of their number which falls within their common design.
In other words, there was a common purpose to commit a crime. It is a perversion of the doctrine to suggest that whatever common crime it is alleged the miners were pursuing, that the killing of their colleagues by the police was a foreseeable outcome on their part of achieving that goal.
This nonsensical decision by the NPA to charge the miners in this manner may have led many to conclude that these charges were politically motivated and an attempt to prevent further protests.
The terms of reference of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry include an investigation of all the parties involved and mandate the Commission to refer any matter regarding the conduct of any person or group for prosecution. In addition, the South Africa’s Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) has also initiated an investigation into the conduct of the police that led to the tragedy.
It is therefore very worrisome that there is very little complementarity between these investigations. As the Judicial Commission of Inquiry has been specifically established to conduct an independent and impartial investigation, it is more prudent for entities to work collaboratively with the Commission.
The decision by the NPA to charge the miners in terms of the doctrine of common purpose seems shortsighted for at least three reasons: Firstly, in the context of the establishment of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry, it should await the results and recommendations of the investigation before deciding the appropriate course of action.
Secondly, the requirement of active association upon which it seems to rely is a misapplication of the doctrine which could lead to the unintended consequence of limiting human rights in other contexts. Lastly, its decision could have exacerbated the already tense situation and set off another Molotov cocktail.
Cameron Jacobs is the South Africa Director at Human Rights Watch
Source: Human Rights Watch
Monday, September 3, 2012
Marikana murder charge withdrawal: the first glimmer of sanity
The NPA seems to have regained a small sprinkling of sanity – it looks like the charges of murder against 270 protesting Lonmin miners will be withdrawn. Yet a number of so-called experts and scholars are still claiming, although feebly, that the charge could have held water. Let’s not kid ourselves – the law is perfectly clear.
The decision by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) preliminary to withdraw charges of murder against 270 Marikana miners for the killing of 34 of their colleagues by the police was the only remotely rational course of action to take. It is probably too late to save the NPA from becoming the laughing stock of most South Africans and people across the rest of the world, but the decision seems like a glimmer of rationality in a sea of madness.
Yet it is more than surprising that the NPA is maintaining its original decision to charge the miners was legally sound. It’s like a child denying that he ate his mother’s chocolate cake when he has chocolate icing smeared all over his face. Even more surprising is that a legal academic from Wits has argued that, theoretically at least, the miners could be convicted of murder under the common purpose doctrine.
According to these defenders of the NPA, the decision was legally sound because the state would only have to prove that the miners were present at the scene of the killing and aware of an attack on the police; that the miners intended to associate with those attacking the police and had manifested their sharing of the common purpose by some act; and lastly that the miners had the intent, in the form of dolus eventualis, by showing the miners foresaw the (reasonable) possibility that someone may be killed by the actions of those in the crowd who provoked the police to shoot and kill some of them.
Could these views have been animated by a blinding animosity towards the miners; or by a fear of the protesting (black) hordes; or by an unexamined belief that the miners deserved to be punished collectively because one or more persons who took part in the strike had allegedly killed two police officers? Or have those who made this decision to prosecute or defended it – even if only on theoretical grounds – not studied the relevant legal materials properly?
The leading Criminal Law textbooks (quoted approvingly by the Constitutional Court in its judgment on the common purpose doctrine) illustrate that the doctrine is used to impute the criminal conduct of some members of a group to the whole group who had the common purpose to commit a crime. Burchell and Milton define the doctrine as follows:
Similarly, the other Criminal Law guru, Snyman, points out in his textbook that:
This means that the 270 miners could only be convicted of murder if the conduct of one of its members could be shown to have caused the death of the 34 miners and if all the other requirements for common purpose had been met. Given the fact that the police actually shot the 34 miners, it is unclear how the conduct of any of the miners could have cause the death of their comrades.
For a successful prosecution, the state would have to prove that the miners made common purpose with the police with the intention to have their fellow workers killed. It is only where the miners can be shown to have had a common purpose with the police that the conduct of the police (who actually killed the miners) could be imputed to them. As none of the miners actually killed anyone on the day of the massacre, it would help little to prove they had a common purpose to protest or even to attack the police, because none of them were involved in the killing of the 34 miners.
That is why the Constitutional Court confirmed in the Thebus case that a group of people who are not co-perpetrators could only be found guilty of a crime with assistance of the common purpose doctrine if they were aware the crime was being committed and must have intended to make common cause with those who were actually perpetrating the crime. The crime in this case being the killing of 34 miners by the police, it would be impossible to prove that the miners made common purpose with the police to kill their fellow miners.
In any case, even if this was not so, and even if the state only had to prove that the miners acted with a common purpose with one another by walking in a group towards the police and that this led to the shooting that killed 34 of their comrades, the state would never have been able to prove the involvement of the 270 miners in this common purpose. As the Constitutional Court warned, it is the
How would the state ever prove that the 270 actively associated with the one person in the crowd who allegedly shot at the police? Merely being proven to have been in the crowd might have been sufficient to be convicted of murder by one of the members of the crowd during the Apartheid years, but those days are long gone. The Constitutional Court decision makes this abundantly clear. More is required now, and the state would never have been able to meet this more stringent evidentiary burden.
But apart from the evidentiary problems, there is still the problem that none of the miners had actually set out to kill their comrades. Neither had any of the miners killed any of their comrades. The police did that.
To overcome this problem, those who argue that the decision to charge the miners with murder was legally plausible say that all the miners could be guilty of murder if one of them had shot at the police because the person who shot at the police could be found guilty of murder and his guilt could be ascribed to all of them via the common purpose doctrine. But this argument conflates the requirements for common purpose with the requirements for intention.
Those who defend the NPA (as well as the NPA itself) wrongly invoke the 1981 judgment of the Appellate Division in S v Nhlapo and Another, where a guard was shot and killed – possibly by a fellow guard – in a gun battle with robbers. The court stated that the robbers – who were ready to use their guns to overpower the guards – must have reasonably foreseen that someone could get killed in the robbery and therefore possessed the necessary intention for murder (in the form of dolus eventualis). The court therefore convicted the robbers of the murder of the guard – even though the state had not proven that any of them shot the guard.
The problem is that this scenario is entirely different from what the police claimed happened at Marikana. The Nhlapo case did not deal with the common purpose doctrine because all the robbers were co-perpetrators: they all had guns, were prepared to use them, and then reasonably foresaw that someone would be killed. The actions of one robber were not imputed to other robbers via the common purpose doctrine: they were all charged because they had taken part in the shootout. Their actions caused the death of the guard and they reasonably foresaw that it could.
But the actions of all 270 miners did not cause the death of the 34 victims. At most, the actions of one miner who shot at the police could arguably be said to have caused the death of others. To hold otherwise would be to criminalise the behaviour of every member of a crowd of protestors, where the behaviour of one of the protestors might have contributed to the death of someone and where that protestor had reasonably foreseen the possibility that his actions would lead to the death. It would, in effect, abolish most of the requirements for criminal liability for anyone taking part in a protest march and would be so invasive not only of the right to protest freely but also of the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, that it would undermine the very essence of our Bill of Rights.
Unlike those robbers, all of the 270 miners were not armed with guns. They had not all taken part in a shooting match with the police. They were not co-perpetrators going out to overpower the police. Arguably, one of those in their midst had a gun and shot at the police. They could therefore not have been guilty of murder because they had no intention to kill their comrades. To hold otherwise would be to use the common purpose doctrine in a situation for which it has not been designed and for which has not (and never will be) approved by our courts.
In any case, even if this was not so, no court in South Africa is ever going to find that the miners should reasonably have foreseen the possibility that the police would start shooting at them with live ammunition and would kill 34 of their comrades because one among them had a firearm.
We live in a democracy. We have a right to expect the police to obey the law and use minimum force, as they are required to do by the Police Act. We cannot and should not ever accept that it is reasonable to foresee that the police would use maximum force and would shoot and kill 34 protestors because one of them happened to have been armed with a gun. For a court to hold otherwise would be for it to hold that it is reasonable for the police at best to be untrained, bumbling, and bizarrely incompetent or, at worst, to be malicious, vengeful, law-breaking thugs.
It is a pity that some in the NPA seem to have forgotten (or might never have noticed) that we indeed live in a democracy now, and that we can reasonably expect the police to obey the law.
Source: Constitutionally Speaking
The decision by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) preliminary to withdraw charges of murder against 270 Marikana miners for the killing of 34 of their colleagues by the police was the only remotely rational course of action to take. It is probably too late to save the NPA from becoming the laughing stock of most South Africans and people across the rest of the world, but the decision seems like a glimmer of rationality in a sea of madness.
Yet it is more than surprising that the NPA is maintaining its original decision to charge the miners was legally sound. It’s like a child denying that he ate his mother’s chocolate cake when he has chocolate icing smeared all over his face. Even more surprising is that a legal academic from Wits has argued that, theoretically at least, the miners could be convicted of murder under the common purpose doctrine.
According to these defenders of the NPA, the decision was legally sound because the state would only have to prove that the miners were present at the scene of the killing and aware of an attack on the police; that the miners intended to associate with those attacking the police and had manifested their sharing of the common purpose by some act; and lastly that the miners had the intent, in the form of dolus eventualis, by showing the miners foresaw the (reasonable) possibility that someone may be killed by the actions of those in the crowd who provoked the police to shoot and kill some of them.
Could these views have been animated by a blinding animosity towards the miners; or by a fear of the protesting (black) hordes; or by an unexamined belief that the miners deserved to be punished collectively because one or more persons who took part in the strike had allegedly killed two police officers? Or have those who made this decision to prosecute or defended it – even if only on theoretical grounds – not studied the relevant legal materials properly?
The leading Criminal Law textbooks (quoted approvingly by the Constitutional Court in its judgment on the common purpose doctrine) illustrate that the doctrine is used to impute the criminal conduct of some members of a group to the whole group who had the common purpose to commit a crime. Burchell and Milton define the doctrine as follows:
Where two or more people agree to commit a crime or actively associate in a joint unlawful enterprise, each will be responsible for specific criminal conduct committed by one of their number which falls within their common design. Liability arises from their ‘common purpose’ to commit the crime.
Similarly, the other Criminal Law guru, Snyman, points out in his textbook that:
the essence of the doctrine is that if two or more people, having a common purpose to commit a crime, act together in order to achieve that purpose, the conduct of each of them in the execution of that purpose is imputed to the others.
This means that the 270 miners could only be convicted of murder if the conduct of one of its members could be shown to have caused the death of the 34 miners and if all the other requirements for common purpose had been met. Given the fact that the police actually shot the 34 miners, it is unclear how the conduct of any of the miners could have cause the death of their comrades.
For a successful prosecution, the state would have to prove that the miners made common purpose with the police with the intention to have their fellow workers killed. It is only where the miners can be shown to have had a common purpose with the police that the conduct of the police (who actually killed the miners) could be imputed to them. As none of the miners actually killed anyone on the day of the massacre, it would help little to prove they had a common purpose to protest or even to attack the police, because none of them were involved in the killing of the 34 miners.
That is why the Constitutional Court confirmed in the Thebus case that a group of people who are not co-perpetrators could only be found guilty of a crime with assistance of the common purpose doctrine if they were aware the crime was being committed and must have intended to make common cause with those who were actually perpetrating the crime. The crime in this case being the killing of 34 miners by the police, it would be impossible to prove that the miners made common purpose with the police to kill their fellow miners.
In any case, even if this was not so, and even if the state only had to prove that the miners acted with a common purpose with one another by walking in a group towards the police and that this led to the shooting that killed 34 of their comrades, the state would never have been able to prove the involvement of the 270 miners in this common purpose. As the Constitutional Court warned, it is the
duty of every trial court, when applying the doctrine of common purpose, to exercise the utmost circumspection in evaluating the evidence against each accused person. A collective approach to determining the actual conduct or active association of an individual accused has many evidentiary pitfalls. The trial court must seek to determine, in respect of each accused person, the location, timing, sequence, duration, frequency and nature of the conduct alleged to constitute sufficient participation or active association and its relationship, if any, to the criminal result and to all other pre-requisites of guilt. Whether or not active association has been appropriately established will depend upon the factual context of each case.
How would the state ever prove that the 270 actively associated with the one person in the crowd who allegedly shot at the police? Merely being proven to have been in the crowd might have been sufficient to be convicted of murder by one of the members of the crowd during the Apartheid years, but those days are long gone. The Constitutional Court decision makes this abundantly clear. More is required now, and the state would never have been able to meet this more stringent evidentiary burden.
But apart from the evidentiary problems, there is still the problem that none of the miners had actually set out to kill their comrades. Neither had any of the miners killed any of their comrades. The police did that.
To overcome this problem, those who argue that the decision to charge the miners with murder was legally plausible say that all the miners could be guilty of murder if one of them had shot at the police because the person who shot at the police could be found guilty of murder and his guilt could be ascribed to all of them via the common purpose doctrine. But this argument conflates the requirements for common purpose with the requirements for intention.
Those who defend the NPA (as well as the NPA itself) wrongly invoke the 1981 judgment of the Appellate Division in S v Nhlapo and Another, where a guard was shot and killed – possibly by a fellow guard – in a gun battle with robbers. The court stated that the robbers – who were ready to use their guns to overpower the guards – must have reasonably foreseen that someone could get killed in the robbery and therefore possessed the necessary intention for murder (in the form of dolus eventualis). The court therefore convicted the robbers of the murder of the guard – even though the state had not proven that any of them shot the guard.
The problem is that this scenario is entirely different from what the police claimed happened at Marikana. The Nhlapo case did not deal with the common purpose doctrine because all the robbers were co-perpetrators: they all had guns, were prepared to use them, and then reasonably foresaw that someone would be killed. The actions of one robber were not imputed to other robbers via the common purpose doctrine: they were all charged because they had taken part in the shootout. Their actions caused the death of the guard and they reasonably foresaw that it could.
But the actions of all 270 miners did not cause the death of the 34 victims. At most, the actions of one miner who shot at the police could arguably be said to have caused the death of others. To hold otherwise would be to criminalise the behaviour of every member of a crowd of protestors, where the behaviour of one of the protestors might have contributed to the death of someone and where that protestor had reasonably foreseen the possibility that his actions would lead to the death. It would, in effect, abolish most of the requirements for criminal liability for anyone taking part in a protest march and would be so invasive not only of the right to protest freely but also of the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, that it would undermine the very essence of our Bill of Rights.
Unlike those robbers, all of the 270 miners were not armed with guns. They had not all taken part in a shooting match with the police. They were not co-perpetrators going out to overpower the police. Arguably, one of those in their midst had a gun and shot at the police. They could therefore not have been guilty of murder because they had no intention to kill their comrades. To hold otherwise would be to use the common purpose doctrine in a situation for which it has not been designed and for which has not (and never will be) approved by our courts.
In any case, even if this was not so, no court in South Africa is ever going to find that the miners should reasonably have foreseen the possibility that the police would start shooting at them with live ammunition and would kill 34 of their comrades because one among them had a firearm.
We live in a democracy. We have a right to expect the police to obey the law and use minimum force, as they are required to do by the Police Act. We cannot and should not ever accept that it is reasonable to foresee that the police would use maximum force and would shoot and kill 34 protestors because one of them happened to have been armed with a gun. For a court to hold otherwise would be for it to hold that it is reasonable for the police at best to be untrained, bumbling, and bizarrely incompetent or, at worst, to be malicious, vengeful, law-breaking thugs.
It is a pity that some in the NPA seem to have forgotten (or might never have noticed) that we indeed live in a democracy now, and that we can reasonably expect the police to obey the law.
Source: Constitutionally Speaking
Friday, August 24, 2012
The unions, the pseudo-left and the South Africa massacre
The massacre of 34 striking workers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in South Africa has cast into sharp relief the role of the official trade unions, in South Africa and internationally, amid a global upsurge of the class struggle.
A river of blood now separates the miners from the National Union of Mineworkers—the central component of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is closely aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) government. The NUM has revealed itself as a tool of state repression and murder.
The eruption of working class anger against the giant mine owners has put workers in direct conflict with the organizations that supposedly represent them. After the massacre, NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni demanded that “all workers to go back to work and for the law enforcement agencies to crack down on the culprits of the violence and murders”—which, according to the NUM, are the workers themselves.
The conflict between the working class and the NUM does not stop at Marikana. The mining industry site mineweb.com wrote recently, “What is particularly worrying here is that the miners are bypassing the NUM, suggesting a total lack of trust in the traditional mining union setup. The NUM appears to be being seen as a vassal of the ruling African National Congress political party—i.e., part of the new South African establishment.”
This alignment of forces—in which the unions fall in behind the corporations and the government—is international in scope. So too is the growing rebellion of workers against these right-wing, pro-corporate institutions, as the ruling class carries out an international program of social counter-revolution.
In Europe, wherever struggles have escaped from the confines of actions officially sanctioned by the unions, the unions have collaborated with the government in repressing them. During the strike of Spanish air traffic controllers in 2010, the government called out the military to break the strike, with the support of the unions and their political allies.
In the United States, a series of significant struggles have erupted over the past two years in opposition to the AFL-CIO, as workers have sought to fight the corporate attack on jobs and benefits now spearheaded by the Obama administration.
In 2010, workers in Indianapolis, Indiana overwhelmingly rejected a 50 percent wage cut backed by the United Auto Workers, driving out union executives from a local meeting. A section of workers formed an independent rank-and-file committee to organize a fight to defend jobs and wages. A few months before, auto workers erupted in a near-riot against UAW officials supporting the closure of the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California.
Just last week, workers at the Chrysler Dundee Engine plant in Michigan, angered by forced overtime and two-tier wages, voted overwhelmingly against a local contract, to the surprise and anger of management and the UAW. Where struggles have broken out under union control—as in the strike of Caterpillar workers in Joliet, Illinois—workers quickly came up against the fact that the union works for their isolation and defeat.
These events powerfully confirm the analysis made by the International Committee of the Fourth International of the nature of the trade unions. In 1993, the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, explained that the degeneration of the trade unions was rooted in their nationalist and pro-capitalist perspective, which was undermined by the globalization of production and the breakdown of the post-war social order: “The role of these bureaucratic apparatuses in every country has been transformed from pressuring the employers and the state for concessions to the workers, to pressuring the workers for concessions to the employers so as to attract capital.”
At Marikana, the unions have moved from pressuring workers to open, violent repression. When circumstances require it, they will act the same way in Europe, the United States and beyond.
Workers’ efforts to break free of these institutions provoke the outrage not only of the corporate elite, but also of middle class organizations that posture as “left” or even socialist.
Typical is an article on the South Africa massacre published on August 21—after four days of silence—by the International Socialist Organization in the US. After cynically feigning sympathy with the workers and criticizing the NUM, the ISO makes clear that it is adamantly opposed to any attempt to break the stranglehold of this institution. The ISO even criticizes the NUM’s rival union, the more militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).
“Without a doubt, the mining bosses are overjoyed at the sharpening discord between different wings of South Africa's labor movement,” the ISO writes. “And at times, AMCU leaders have been drawn into maneuvers that exacerbate the divisiveness that the mine bosses have hoped to foment.”
In fact, the mine companies are not “overjoyed” by “sharpening discord” between the unions, but desperately afraid that their NUM allies will lose control over the workers. The ISO makes clear that it too is determined to prevent “divisiveness”—i.e., working class opposition to the NUM.
A companion article, reprinted by the ISO from the South African journal Amandla!, denounces the AMCU for advancing “unrealistic demands” and “failing to condemn the violence of its members.” That is, the workers are themselves to blame for their deaths because they have the temerity to desire a decent wage.
Amandla!, closely aligned with the Democratic Left Front of South Africa, writes elsewhere that the “union’s role, once wage negotiations are complete, is to transmit the decision to the rest of the workforce.” And workers are supposed to accept this “transmission” without complaint.
The ISO and its international co-thinkers speak for privileged, complacent and reactionary sections of the upper middle class. For them, the unions are both a source of potentially lucrative careers and a mechanism to maintain organizational and political control over the working class—and thereby prevent any struggle against capitalism.
Whatever the hopes of the trade union executives and their allies, however, the objective crisis is driving millions of people along a different path—towards the formation of new organizations of struggle and towards socialist politics. The bloody events in South Africa have exposed the class lines, and they must become a strategic experience for the entire international working class.
Joseph Kishore
Source: World Socialist Web Site
A river of blood now separates the miners from the National Union of Mineworkers—the central component of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is closely aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) government. The NUM has revealed itself as a tool of state repression and murder.
The eruption of working class anger against the giant mine owners has put workers in direct conflict with the organizations that supposedly represent them. After the massacre, NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni demanded that “all workers to go back to work and for the law enforcement agencies to crack down on the culprits of the violence and murders”—which, according to the NUM, are the workers themselves.
The conflict between the working class and the NUM does not stop at Marikana. The mining industry site mineweb.com wrote recently, “What is particularly worrying here is that the miners are bypassing the NUM, suggesting a total lack of trust in the traditional mining union setup. The NUM appears to be being seen as a vassal of the ruling African National Congress political party—i.e., part of the new South African establishment.”
This alignment of forces—in which the unions fall in behind the corporations and the government—is international in scope. So too is the growing rebellion of workers against these right-wing, pro-corporate institutions, as the ruling class carries out an international program of social counter-revolution.
In Europe, wherever struggles have escaped from the confines of actions officially sanctioned by the unions, the unions have collaborated with the government in repressing them. During the strike of Spanish air traffic controllers in 2010, the government called out the military to break the strike, with the support of the unions and their political allies.
In the United States, a series of significant struggles have erupted over the past two years in opposition to the AFL-CIO, as workers have sought to fight the corporate attack on jobs and benefits now spearheaded by the Obama administration.
In 2010, workers in Indianapolis, Indiana overwhelmingly rejected a 50 percent wage cut backed by the United Auto Workers, driving out union executives from a local meeting. A section of workers formed an independent rank-and-file committee to organize a fight to defend jobs and wages. A few months before, auto workers erupted in a near-riot against UAW officials supporting the closure of the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California.
Just last week, workers at the Chrysler Dundee Engine plant in Michigan, angered by forced overtime and two-tier wages, voted overwhelmingly against a local contract, to the surprise and anger of management and the UAW. Where struggles have broken out under union control—as in the strike of Caterpillar workers in Joliet, Illinois—workers quickly came up against the fact that the union works for their isolation and defeat.
These events powerfully confirm the analysis made by the International Committee of the Fourth International of the nature of the trade unions. In 1993, the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, explained that the degeneration of the trade unions was rooted in their nationalist and pro-capitalist perspective, which was undermined by the globalization of production and the breakdown of the post-war social order: “The role of these bureaucratic apparatuses in every country has been transformed from pressuring the employers and the state for concessions to the workers, to pressuring the workers for concessions to the employers so as to attract capital.”
At Marikana, the unions have moved from pressuring workers to open, violent repression. When circumstances require it, they will act the same way in Europe, the United States and beyond.
Workers’ efforts to break free of these institutions provoke the outrage not only of the corporate elite, but also of middle class organizations that posture as “left” or even socialist.
Typical is an article on the South Africa massacre published on August 21—after four days of silence—by the International Socialist Organization in the US. After cynically feigning sympathy with the workers and criticizing the NUM, the ISO makes clear that it is adamantly opposed to any attempt to break the stranglehold of this institution. The ISO even criticizes the NUM’s rival union, the more militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).
“Without a doubt, the mining bosses are overjoyed at the sharpening discord between different wings of South Africa's labor movement,” the ISO writes. “And at times, AMCU leaders have been drawn into maneuvers that exacerbate the divisiveness that the mine bosses have hoped to foment.”
In fact, the mine companies are not “overjoyed” by “sharpening discord” between the unions, but desperately afraid that their NUM allies will lose control over the workers. The ISO makes clear that it too is determined to prevent “divisiveness”—i.e., working class opposition to the NUM.
A companion article, reprinted by the ISO from the South African journal Amandla!, denounces the AMCU for advancing “unrealistic demands” and “failing to condemn the violence of its members.” That is, the workers are themselves to blame for their deaths because they have the temerity to desire a decent wage.
Amandla!, closely aligned with the Democratic Left Front of South Africa, writes elsewhere that the “union’s role, once wage negotiations are complete, is to transmit the decision to the rest of the workforce.” And workers are supposed to accept this “transmission” without complaint.
The ISO and its international co-thinkers speak for privileged, complacent and reactionary sections of the upper middle class. For them, the unions are both a source of potentially lucrative careers and a mechanism to maintain organizational and political control over the working class—and thereby prevent any struggle against capitalism.
Whatever the hopes of the trade union executives and their allies, however, the objective crisis is driving millions of people along a different path—towards the formation of new organizations of struggle and towards socialist politics. The bloody events in South Africa have exposed the class lines, and they must become a strategic experience for the entire international working class.
Joseph Kishore
Source: World Socialist Web Site
Wildcat strike over at Royal Bafokeng's platinum mine. How painless was that?
Just two days after it started, a wildcat strike at Royal Bafokeng Platinum’s mine just north of Rustenburg ended after the parties met. The lessons offered by Lonmin’s rival are as profound as they are simple. Never forget the little guy. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
On Thursday, just 24 hours after Royal Bafokeng Platinum (RBPlat) confirmed in a statement that there was an unprotected industrial action at the north shaft of the Bafokeng Rasimone Platinum Joint-Venture, there was hardly any sign that anything untoward was happening outside the gates. People were moving in and out after the end of the morning shift and there was no sign of any tension or anger that might suggest that something was happening.
The only alert was a single police Casspir (armoured truck) that was parked some distance away from the gates. The security guard at the entrance of the mine said that members of the press were not permitted to enter the premises, but all striking miners were inside and holding a meeting with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). RBPlat spokesperson Kea Kalebe confirmed the news.
By nightfall, people connected to the matter said that the strike was over, a deal had been reached to the satisfaction of all parties, and workers had in fact returned to their posts on Thursday.
What overshadowed the strike at BRPM was the violence a week before at the Marikana shaft of Lonmin PLC, which saw 44 people killed, 78 injured and some 260 arrested. On the morning of the meeting at BRPM, a fiery memorial service was being held at the Wonderkop squatter camp, located just outside Lonmin’s mine.
Speaking to a few RBPlat standing outside the gates made the impression that the strikes at Lonmin and Impala Platinum (Implats) before that were an inspiration for a few hundred workers to down tools at RBPlats. “Nabo bafuna R12,500,” said one lady. (They too want R12,500.) That figure has been a rallying cry at Lonmin, as angry workers demand to have their net wages more than tripled.
According to three employees interviewed at RBPlat (all of whom declined to be named), the strike at the north shaft was initiated by rock-drill operators, the same group of people at the centre of the ferment, but other types of workers then joined. Most drill operators are hired on a short-term basis, and they wanted to be employed permanently at the higher wage level.
NUM is the majority representative union at BRPM, and thus the bargaining partner to RBPlat. The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, for so long a headache for both NUM and mining companies elsewhere on the Bushveld Complex (site of 80% of the world’s platinum reserves), barely has a presence at this mine.
In an interview with Daily Maverick on Thursday night, the NUM local secretary Jeff Moleke said that the only unions present at the table was his, and the Chemical Energy Paper Printing Wood and Allied Workers Union (Ceppwawu), which represents employees who work in the other areas of platinum production.
“We had a meeting today where the issues of the striking workers were raised. Ultimately we reached an agreement that means that the workers will go to work as from [Thursday],” Moleke said.
Without revealing the exact nature of the agreement, the NUM local secretary said that some of the complaints were dealt with right there at the table, but some solutions would happen in a staggered fashion.
One of the immediate interventions by RBPlat’s management was to lift the suspension of several striking miners.
“The situation was resolved to the satisfaction of all parties,” Moleke said. The violence at Implats and Lonmin was discussed and the workers were told that in a situation such as happened at the other two mines, where violence was ever-present, nobody would win.
“The issue of changing contracts to permanent employment was raised. Given the current economic conditions, management did not accede to that,” he said.
RBPlat could not be reached to confirm the end of the strike and the terms of the deal after the meeting ended late on Thursday.
The swift way in which RBPlat’s management responded to the wildcat strike stands in contradiction to the halting fashion in which Lonmin tried to deal with trouble at its mine. The small numbers of the striking workers along with the absence of a strong Amcu certainly helped; the immediate implementation of a timeline is what diffused the situation.
However, RBPlat’s real secret weapon is one long in the making, and shows how big a difference reaching out to uplift the lives of employees makes. Royal Bafokeng Holdings owns a 100% stake in Royal Bafokeng Platinum Holdings, which in turn owns 57% of RBPlats in partnership with Rustenburg Platinum Mines and publicly floated shares.
The RB Holdings company is an investment vehicle for the Royal Bafokeng nation, which mostly lives in Phokeng, near Rustenburg in the North West.
Platinum profits are invested in many social development programs, including infrastructure investments in all 29 Bafokeng villages, such as roads, street lighting, waste collection, electrification, and water provision. The dividends to the Bafokeng nation also fund healthcare delivery services, including ARV provision to more than 2,000 people and care for the elderly.
“Over the past three years, an ambitious education reform programme has been rolled out to 60+ schools in the region, including early childhood development, a 13th year programme for university-bound students, and a school nutrition programme,” said Susan Cook, an anthropologist working at the time as Research and Planning Executive in the office, in a separate interview with Daily Maverick.
The development of the Bafokeng Nation is measured against the Vision 2020, a guideline or set of principles that outlines short and long term plans for the Bafokeng nation. The plan seeks to make every member of the community self-sustained through education and skills provision.
The community buy-in is non-existent at Lonmin, where the workers complained that they were being fed into a machine with nothing to show for it. While RBPlats is a company created as an investment vehicle for the nation, and thus has an obvious social development mandate; and Lonmin is a company with shareholders in Britain, the latter’s failure to establish any sort of accord with workers or to invest in broad social development in the communities that worked in the mines would have ensured that there was zero trust to begin with. In such an atmosphere, big wage demands are not solved quickly and amicably. DM
Source: Daily Maverick
On Thursday, just 24 hours after Royal Bafokeng Platinum (RBPlat) confirmed in a statement that there was an unprotected industrial action at the north shaft of the Bafokeng Rasimone Platinum Joint-Venture, there was hardly any sign that anything untoward was happening outside the gates. People were moving in and out after the end of the morning shift and there was no sign of any tension or anger that might suggest that something was happening.
The only alert was a single police Casspir (armoured truck) that was parked some distance away from the gates. The security guard at the entrance of the mine said that members of the press were not permitted to enter the premises, but all striking miners were inside and holding a meeting with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). RBPlat spokesperson Kea Kalebe confirmed the news.
By nightfall, people connected to the matter said that the strike was over, a deal had been reached to the satisfaction of all parties, and workers had in fact returned to their posts on Thursday.
What overshadowed the strike at BRPM was the violence a week before at the Marikana shaft of Lonmin PLC, which saw 44 people killed, 78 injured and some 260 arrested. On the morning of the meeting at BRPM, a fiery memorial service was being held at the Wonderkop squatter camp, located just outside Lonmin’s mine.
Speaking to a few RBPlat standing outside the gates made the impression that the strikes at Lonmin and Impala Platinum (Implats) before that were an inspiration for a few hundred workers to down tools at RBPlats. “Nabo bafuna R12,500,” said one lady. (They too want R12,500.) That figure has been a rallying cry at Lonmin, as angry workers demand to have their net wages more than tripled.
According to three employees interviewed at RBPlat (all of whom declined to be named), the strike at the north shaft was initiated by rock-drill operators, the same group of people at the centre of the ferment, but other types of workers then joined. Most drill operators are hired on a short-term basis, and they wanted to be employed permanently at the higher wage level.
NUM is the majority representative union at BRPM, and thus the bargaining partner to RBPlat. The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, for so long a headache for both NUM and mining companies elsewhere on the Bushveld Complex (site of 80% of the world’s platinum reserves), barely has a presence at this mine.
In an interview with Daily Maverick on Thursday night, the NUM local secretary Jeff Moleke said that the only unions present at the table was his, and the Chemical Energy Paper Printing Wood and Allied Workers Union (Ceppwawu), which represents employees who work in the other areas of platinum production.
“We had a meeting today where the issues of the striking workers were raised. Ultimately we reached an agreement that means that the workers will go to work as from [Thursday],” Moleke said.
Without revealing the exact nature of the agreement, the NUM local secretary said that some of the complaints were dealt with right there at the table, but some solutions would happen in a staggered fashion.
One of the immediate interventions by RBPlat’s management was to lift the suspension of several striking miners.
“The situation was resolved to the satisfaction of all parties,” Moleke said. The violence at Implats and Lonmin was discussed and the workers were told that in a situation such as happened at the other two mines, where violence was ever-present, nobody would win.
“The issue of changing contracts to permanent employment was raised. Given the current economic conditions, management did not accede to that,” he said.
RBPlat could not be reached to confirm the end of the strike and the terms of the deal after the meeting ended late on Thursday.
The swift way in which RBPlat’s management responded to the wildcat strike stands in contradiction to the halting fashion in which Lonmin tried to deal with trouble at its mine. The small numbers of the striking workers along with the absence of a strong Amcu certainly helped; the immediate implementation of a timeline is what diffused the situation.
However, RBPlat’s real secret weapon is one long in the making, and shows how big a difference reaching out to uplift the lives of employees makes. Royal Bafokeng Holdings owns a 100% stake in Royal Bafokeng Platinum Holdings, which in turn owns 57% of RBPlats in partnership with Rustenburg Platinum Mines and publicly floated shares.
The RB Holdings company is an investment vehicle for the Royal Bafokeng nation, which mostly lives in Phokeng, near Rustenburg in the North West.
Platinum profits are invested in many social development programs, including infrastructure investments in all 29 Bafokeng villages, such as roads, street lighting, waste collection, electrification, and water provision. The dividends to the Bafokeng nation also fund healthcare delivery services, including ARV provision to more than 2,000 people and care for the elderly.
“Over the past three years, an ambitious education reform programme has been rolled out to 60+ schools in the region, including early childhood development, a 13th year programme for university-bound students, and a school nutrition programme,” said Susan Cook, an anthropologist working at the time as Research and Planning Executive in the office, in a separate interview with Daily Maverick.
The development of the Bafokeng Nation is measured against the Vision 2020, a guideline or set of principles that outlines short and long term plans for the Bafokeng nation. The plan seeks to make every member of the community self-sustained through education and skills provision.
The community buy-in is non-existent at Lonmin, where the workers complained that they were being fed into a machine with nothing to show for it. While RBPlats is a company created as an investment vehicle for the nation, and thus has an obvious social development mandate; and Lonmin is a company with shareholders in Britain, the latter’s failure to establish any sort of accord with workers or to invest in broad social development in the communities that worked in the mines would have ensured that there was zero trust to begin with. In such an atmosphere, big wage demands are not solved quickly and amicably. DM
Source: Daily Maverick
Thursday, August 23, 2012
The Massacre of Our Illusions...and the Seeds of Something New
The story of Marikana runs much deeper than an inter-union spat. After
the horror of watching people being massacred on television, Marikana
now joins the ranks of the Bulhoek and Sharpeville massacres, and the images evoked by Hugh Masekela’s Stimela, in the odious history of a method of capital accumulation based on violence.
But this is not just a story of violence and grief. To speak in those terms only would be to add the same insult to the injury perpetrated by the police on the striking workers, as many commentators have done - seeing the striking miners as mere victims and not as agents of their own future and, more importantly, as the source of a new movement in the making.
The broader platinum belt has been home to new upsurges of struggle over the last five years. From the working class community activists of Merafong and Khutsong to the striking workers of Angloplat, Implat and now Lonmin, these struggles, including the nationwide “service delivery” revolts, are a sign that a new movement is being forged despite the state violence that killed Andries Tatane and massacred the Lonmin workers. Rather than just howl our outrage, it is time to take sides and offer our support.
After Marikana, things will never be the same again.
Firstly, the killings mark the end of the illusion that the ANC has not been transformed into the party of big capital. For some while now the ANC could trade on its liberation credits in arguing that all criticism came from those trying to defend white privilege. The DA was perfect to be cast in this role because it always attacked the ANC for not being business-friendly enough.
But Marikana was an attack on workers in defence of white privilege, specifically the mining house, Lonmin. Lonmin epitomises the make-up of the new elite in South Africa: old white capital garnished with a sprinkling of politically connected Blacks.
In this, the ANC steps squarely into the shoes of its predecessor, apartheid’s Nationalist Party, acting to secure the profits of mining capital through violence.
Secondly, the strike and the massacre also mark a turning point in the liberation alliance around the ANC – particularly COSATU. Whereas the community and youth wings of what was called the Mass Democratic Movement became disgraced after 1994 by their association with corrupt councillors, and eclipsed by the service delivery revolts of today, COSATU’s moral authority was enhanced. Within what is called “civil society”, COSATU continued to be a moral voice. So anyone who had a campaign sought out COSATU as a partner. This moral authority came because COSATU was simply the most organised voice amongst the working class.
Today COSATU’s links with the working class are only very tenuous.
It is almost intuitive that we consider the notion of a worker as someone working for a clear employer, on a full-time basis, in a large factory, supermarket or mine. Indeed classical industrial trade unions were forged by workers in large factories and industrial areas. This was the case in many countries where such unions won the right to organise and was also the case in South Africa, when a new wave of large industrial unions emerged after 1973’s Durban Strikes.
Going along with this structure were the residential spaces of townships. From the 1950s the apartheid regime increasingly came to accept the de facto existence of a settled urban proletariat and built the match-box brick houses in the townships of the apartheid era: the Sowetos, Kathlehongs, Tembisas.
So the working class was organised by capitalism into large industrial sites and brick houses in large sprawling townships.
Since the 1980s, the neo-liberal phase of capitalism has changed this.
Neo liberalism has not only been about privatisation and global speculation. It has also been about restructuring work and home. Today casualisation, outsourcing, work from home, labour brokers and other forms of informalisation have become the dominant form of work and shack dwelling the mode of existence of the working class. The latter is in direct proportion to the withdrawal of the state from providing housing and associated services.
Twenty years ago the underground workers of Lonmin would have lived in a compound policed by the company. Today the rock drill workers live in a shantytown near the mine.
Also, mining itself has changed. Much of the hard work underground is now done by workers sourced from labour brokers. These are the most exploited workers, working the longest hours with the most flexible arrangements. Today it is even possible to own a mine and not work it yourself but to contract engineering firms like Murray and Roberts to do the mining for you. Into the mix can be added so-called “illegal miners” who literally mine with spades and their own dynamite and then sell on to middlemen with links to big businesses.
Lonmin has exploited these divisions – using the old mining industry strategy of recruiting along tribal divisions. The rock drill workers are Xhosas who are railed in from the Eastern Cape to heighten the exploitation at the coalface.
Add to this the toxic mix of mine security, barbed-wire enclosures and informal housing, as identified by the BenchMarks Foundation, and a picture of institutionalised violence emerges.
By way of contrast the dominant trade unions in South Africa have largely moved up upscale towards white-collar workers and away from this majority. Today the large COSATU affiliates comprise of public sector white-collar workers, like the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union. The lower level blue-collar workers are now employed by labour brokers and are in services that have been outsourced, like cleaning, security and so on. They don’t fall within the bargaining units of the Public Sector Bargaining Council.
The Lonmin strike was the second in the last three months to hit the platinum sector. It was preceded by a strike at Implats. Both involved the Association of Mining and Construction Workers’ Union (AMCU) as workers sought an outlet for their frustrations.
The mining trade journal Miningmix published this story in 2009:
In this they have been joined by the media.
With the notable exception of the Cape Times, the media’s culpability in demonising the striking workers has been reprehensible. In addition to only quoting NUM sources for information, or focusing on Malema, there have been no attempts to dig beneath the idea of manipulated workers and inter-union rivalry.
They all depicted the rock drillers as uneducated, Basotho or Eastern Cape Xhosas, whilst flogging the idea of an increase to R12 500 as “unreasonable”.
Then there is the notion that workers went to AMCU because they were promised R12 500. This fiction is repeated endlessly by the media. Journalists are of course happy to source this from “unnamed” NUM sources. The slander here is that workers are so open to manipulation that they will believe any empty promises. This plays to the prejudice repeated by Frans Baleni of NUM from his Nyala that rock drill workers are uneducated, and it bolsters the idea that AMCU is some kind of slick willy operation that must take responsibility for the massacre.
Anyone with any experience of organising knows that trade unions don’t come to workers like insurance salesman. In the main, workers form their own committees and then send a delegation to the union office demanding that an organiser come and sign them up. Or, they simply down tools forcing their employer to contact a union organiser.
Nor is any strike decision, let alone a strike such as this one - unprotected, under the umbrella of an unrecognised union, in a workplace with mine security and where the workers themselves are far from home in a strange region - ever taken lightly. Wildcat strikes are probably the most conscious act of sacrifice and courage that anyone can take, driven by anger and desperation and involving the full knowledge that you could lose your job and your family’s livelihood.
In normal times trade unions can be as much a huge bureaucratic machine as a corporation or a state department with negotiations conducted by small teams far from the thousands of rank-and-file members. Strikes change all that…suddenly unions are forced to be conduits of their members’ aspirations.
Whatever the merits of AMCU as a democratic union or as one with any vision of transformation; whatever the involvement of the Themba Godis, the workers of Marikana made their choice: to become members of AMCU and risk everything, including their lives, for a better future.
For that we owe them more than just pious sympathy. There is a job of mobilisation and movement-building to be done.
Almost 40 years ago, in 1973, workers from companies around Durban came out in a series of wildcat - then really illegal - strikes. Today this event is celebrated by everyone as part of the revival of the anti-apartheid movement and the birth of a new phase of radical trade unionism, culminating in the formation of COSATU.
But in 1973, the media highlighted the threat of violence and called for the restoration of law and order. The apartheid state could not respond with the kind of killings that happened at Marikana because the strikes were in industrial areas, but they invoked the same idea of ignorant misled workers (then they were seen as ignorant Zulus) and had homeland leader Mangosutho Buthelezi send his emissary, Barney Dladla, to talk to the workers.
While in exile, the SACP questioned the bona fides of the strikes, invoking the involvement of Buthelezi to perpetuate the fiction of “ignorant Zulus” because they were not called for by the liberation aligned union body, SACTU. Some in SACTU circles raised the spectre of liberals and CIA involvement in the new worker formations with an agenda to “sideline the liberation movement”. This separation of the ANC and its allies from the early labour movement was to lead to the divisions between the “workerist unions” and the “populist unions” in the labour movement and was to continue within COSATU.
How easily people forget this when workers forge new movements today.
For a long time now the ongoing service delivery revolts throughout the country have failed to register on the iPads and Blackberries of the chattering classes. This is because of the social distance of the middle classes to the new working classes.
Now the sight of the police shooting striking workers on TV has brought the real world of current struggles right into the lounges and bedrooms of public opinion.
So far the strikers have stood firm not only against the police and Lonmin, but also against the media labelling their strike “illegal”. Strikes are not illegal in South Africa; they are only protected or unprotected. Meanwhile NUM and COSATU are rallying behind their ally, the ANC, to stigmatise the strikers and their union as “paid by BHP Billiton and the Chamber of Mines”.
In the midst of our outrage at this brutality let us acknowledge that a new movement is emerging. Such early signs do not as yet indicate something grand and well organised. Movements are notoriously messy and difficult to assign to some kind of predetermined ideological box. We do not know what ups and downs people will go through but when the seeds of a new movement are being planted it is time to ask what the rest of us can do to help it to grow.
But this is not just a story of violence and grief. To speak in those terms only would be to add the same insult to the injury perpetrated by the police on the striking workers, as many commentators have done - seeing the striking miners as mere victims and not as agents of their own future and, more importantly, as the source of a new movement in the making.
The broader platinum belt has been home to new upsurges of struggle over the last five years. From the working class community activists of Merafong and Khutsong to the striking workers of Angloplat, Implat and now Lonmin, these struggles, including the nationwide “service delivery” revolts, are a sign that a new movement is being forged despite the state violence that killed Andries Tatane and massacred the Lonmin workers. Rather than just howl our outrage, it is time to take sides and offer our support.
After Marikana, things will never be the same again.
Firstly, the killings mark the end of the illusion that the ANC has not been transformed into the party of big capital. For some while now the ANC could trade on its liberation credits in arguing that all criticism came from those trying to defend white privilege. The DA was perfect to be cast in this role because it always attacked the ANC for not being business-friendly enough.
But Marikana was an attack on workers in defence of white privilege, specifically the mining house, Lonmin. Lonmin epitomises the make-up of the new elite in South Africa: old white capital garnished with a sprinkling of politically connected Blacks.
In this, the ANC steps squarely into the shoes of its predecessor, apartheid’s Nationalist Party, acting to secure the profits of mining capital through violence.
Secondly, the strike and the massacre also mark a turning point in the liberation alliance around the ANC – particularly COSATU. Whereas the community and youth wings of what was called the Mass Democratic Movement became disgraced after 1994 by their association with corrupt councillors, and eclipsed by the service delivery revolts of today, COSATU’s moral authority was enhanced. Within what is called “civil society”, COSATU continued to be a moral voice. So anyone who had a campaign sought out COSATU as a partner. This moral authority came because COSATU was simply the most organised voice amongst the working class.
Today COSATU’s links with the working class are only very tenuous.
It is almost intuitive that we consider the notion of a worker as someone working for a clear employer, on a full-time basis, in a large factory, supermarket or mine. Indeed classical industrial trade unions were forged by workers in large factories and industrial areas. This was the case in many countries where such unions won the right to organise and was also the case in South Africa, when a new wave of large industrial unions emerged after 1973’s Durban Strikes.
Going along with this structure were the residential spaces of townships. From the 1950s the apartheid regime increasingly came to accept the de facto existence of a settled urban proletariat and built the match-box brick houses in the townships of the apartheid era: the Sowetos, Kathlehongs, Tembisas.
So the working class was organised by capitalism into large industrial sites and brick houses in large sprawling townships.
Since the 1980s, the neo-liberal phase of capitalism has changed this.
Neo liberalism has not only been about privatisation and global speculation. It has also been about restructuring work and home. Today casualisation, outsourcing, work from home, labour brokers and other forms of informalisation have become the dominant form of work and shack dwelling the mode of existence of the working class. The latter is in direct proportion to the withdrawal of the state from providing housing and associated services.
Twenty years ago the underground workers of Lonmin would have lived in a compound policed by the company. Today the rock drill workers live in a shantytown near the mine.
Also, mining itself has changed. Much of the hard work underground is now done by workers sourced from labour brokers. These are the most exploited workers, working the longest hours with the most flexible arrangements. Today it is even possible to own a mine and not work it yourself but to contract engineering firms like Murray and Roberts to do the mining for you. Into the mix can be added so-called “illegal miners” who literally mine with spades and their own dynamite and then sell on to middlemen with links to big businesses.
Lonmin has exploited these divisions – using the old mining industry strategy of recruiting along tribal divisions. The rock drill workers are Xhosas who are railed in from the Eastern Cape to heighten the exploitation at the coalface.
Add to this the toxic mix of mine security, barbed-wire enclosures and informal housing, as identified by the BenchMarks Foundation, and a picture of institutionalised violence emerges.
By way of contrast the dominant trade unions in South Africa have largely moved up upscale towards white-collar workers and away from this majority. Today the large COSATU affiliates comprise of public sector white-collar workers, like the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union. The lower level blue-collar workers are now employed by labour brokers and are in services that have been outsourced, like cleaning, security and so on. They don’t fall within the bargaining units of the Public Sector Bargaining Council.
The Lonmin strike was the second in the last three months to hit the platinum sector. It was preceded by a strike at Implats. Both involved the Association of Mining and Construction Workers’ Union (AMCU) as workers sought an outlet for their frustrations.
The mining trade journal Miningmix published this story in 2009:
(A) gradual change had taken place in the profile of the NUM membership over the last 15 years; one that nobody had taken notice of. The NUM was originally borne out of the lowest job categories of South African mineworkers, mainly from gold mines. More than 60% of its members were foreigners, mostly illiterate migrant labourers.So while the NUM remains the largest affiliate of COSATU, it is changing from a union of coalface workers to a union of above ground technicians. It is these developments that led to the formation of a breakaway union. Whatever the credentials of AMCU, its emergence is a direct challenge to the hegemony of NUM and of COSATU. As such, the federation has embarked on a disgraceful campaign of slandering the striking workers and their union.
Nowadays that number has dropped to below 40%. On the other hand, an increasing portion of the NUM’s membership comes from what can be described as white-collar mining staff, who had previously been represented exclusively by Solidarity and UASA. The local NUM structures in Rustenburg, like the branch office bearers and the shop stewards, are dominated by these skilled, higher level workers. They are literate, well spoken and wealthy compared to the general workers and machine operators underground.
In this they have been joined by the media.
With the notable exception of the Cape Times, the media’s culpability in demonising the striking workers has been reprehensible. In addition to only quoting NUM sources for information, or focusing on Malema, there have been no attempts to dig beneath the idea of manipulated workers and inter-union rivalry.
They all depicted the rock drillers as uneducated, Basotho or Eastern Cape Xhosas, whilst flogging the idea of an increase to R12 500 as “unreasonable”.
Then there is the notion that workers went to AMCU because they were promised R12 500. This fiction is repeated endlessly by the media. Journalists are of course happy to source this from “unnamed” NUM sources. The slander here is that workers are so open to manipulation that they will believe any empty promises. This plays to the prejudice repeated by Frans Baleni of NUM from his Nyala that rock drill workers are uneducated, and it bolsters the idea that AMCU is some kind of slick willy operation that must take responsibility for the massacre.
Anyone with any experience of organising knows that trade unions don’t come to workers like insurance salesman. In the main, workers form their own committees and then send a delegation to the union office demanding that an organiser come and sign them up. Or, they simply down tools forcing their employer to contact a union organiser.
Nor is any strike decision, let alone a strike such as this one - unprotected, under the umbrella of an unrecognised union, in a workplace with mine security and where the workers themselves are far from home in a strange region - ever taken lightly. Wildcat strikes are probably the most conscious act of sacrifice and courage that anyone can take, driven by anger and desperation and involving the full knowledge that you could lose your job and your family’s livelihood.
In normal times trade unions can be as much a huge bureaucratic machine as a corporation or a state department with negotiations conducted by small teams far from the thousands of rank-and-file members. Strikes change all that…suddenly unions are forced to be conduits of their members’ aspirations.
Whatever the merits of AMCU as a democratic union or as one with any vision of transformation; whatever the involvement of the Themba Godis, the workers of Marikana made their choice: to become members of AMCU and risk everything, including their lives, for a better future.
For that we owe them more than just pious sympathy. There is a job of mobilisation and movement-building to be done.
Almost 40 years ago, in 1973, workers from companies around Durban came out in a series of wildcat - then really illegal - strikes. Today this event is celebrated by everyone as part of the revival of the anti-apartheid movement and the birth of a new phase of radical trade unionism, culminating in the formation of COSATU.
But in 1973, the media highlighted the threat of violence and called for the restoration of law and order. The apartheid state could not respond with the kind of killings that happened at Marikana because the strikes were in industrial areas, but they invoked the same idea of ignorant misled workers (then they were seen as ignorant Zulus) and had homeland leader Mangosutho Buthelezi send his emissary, Barney Dladla, to talk to the workers.
While in exile, the SACP questioned the bona fides of the strikes, invoking the involvement of Buthelezi to perpetuate the fiction of “ignorant Zulus” because they were not called for by the liberation aligned union body, SACTU. Some in SACTU circles raised the spectre of liberals and CIA involvement in the new worker formations with an agenda to “sideline the liberation movement”. This separation of the ANC and its allies from the early labour movement was to lead to the divisions between the “workerist unions” and the “populist unions” in the labour movement and was to continue within COSATU.
How easily people forget this when workers forge new movements today.
For a long time now the ongoing service delivery revolts throughout the country have failed to register on the iPads and Blackberries of the chattering classes. This is because of the social distance of the middle classes to the new working classes.
Now the sight of the police shooting striking workers on TV has brought the real world of current struggles right into the lounges and bedrooms of public opinion.
So far the strikers have stood firm not only against the police and Lonmin, but also against the media labelling their strike “illegal”. Strikes are not illegal in South Africa; they are only protected or unprotected. Meanwhile NUM and COSATU are rallying behind their ally, the ANC, to stigmatise the strikers and their union as “paid by BHP Billiton and the Chamber of Mines”.
In the midst of our outrage at this brutality let us acknowledge that a new movement is emerging. Such early signs do not as yet indicate something grand and well organised. Movements are notoriously messy and difficult to assign to some kind of predetermined ideological box. We do not know what ups and downs people will go through but when the seeds of a new movement are being planted it is time to ask what the rest of us can do to help it to grow.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Violence a relic from people’s war to make SA ungovernable
NUMEROUS types of chickens are coming home to roost in South Africa.
During their long campaign to win power by making the country
ungovernable via a no-holds-barred "people’s war", the ruling alliance
made up of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African
Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu),
injected into the bloodstream of the body politic a virus of violence
that they cannot now eradicate.
Whether to enforce strikes or bus or school boycotts, protest against "service delivery" failures, back some or other demand on campus, or complain against trains that are late, violence in South Africa has become routine, not unusual. Nonstrikers are murdered (60 of them in the security guards strike in 2006), city centres or university buildings trashed, roads blockaded or railway coaches set alight. People from other parts of Africa who undercut local traders are threatened or even murdered in so-called xenophobic violence.
It is a tragic and bitter irony that all this is happening in a country that is second to none in constitutionally guaranteed and judicially protected democratic rights. The bitterest irony of all is how the virus of violence has corrupted parts of the trade union movement. During apartheid, when union officials were banned or detained without trial, and black unions frequently barred from factories by hostile employers, the emerging black union movement won its legal rights by a struggle that was essentially nonviolent.
Now, with a privileged position, plus organisational and strike rights that are also second to none around the world, unions have become increasingly intolerant, as the Democratic Alliance experienced during its recent march on Cosatu House.
Killing people in the context of inter-union rivalry at Lonmin is also a manifestation of a principle that the ruling alliance introduced during its people’s war, which was to eliminate rival political organisations as far as possible. One of the chickens that is now coming home to roost is that some of the rival factions within the ANC are now using violence — possibly even assassinations — against one another.
Another of the chickens is the poor quality of the police. Their behaviour at Lonmin is but the most lethal manifestation of a wider lack of professional skill, including frequent inability to master the basics of crime scene investigation.
Any intelligent leadership in the police force would have long ago foreseen the risks arising from our violent political culture. Proper training and equipment would long since have been provided to avoid precisely what happened at Lonmin. But, of course, the ANC has ensured that there is no proper leadership at the top of the police force. Instead, the police have become the plaything of rival factions in the ruling party, not to mention the victims of affirmative action and cadre deployment policies.
So South Africa is in a catch-22. The people’s war was part of the strategy of the national democratic revolution to make the country ungovernable. Continued adherence to the strategy of the national democratic revolution in the form of cadre deployment in particular results in a police force that cannot handle the violence that continues as a hangover from the people’s war.
One consequence of the ineptitude of the police is their inability to handle situations such as that at Lonmin without making things infinitely worse. Another is their inability to put a stop to the violence that now characterises so many demonstrations across the country. A third is their inability to secure prosecutions and convictions of violent demonstrators.
Over all of this presides a president out of his depth as CE of the state. His ministers take unto themselves more and more power. Yet, apart from collecting taxes, his government fails increasingly to get the very basics right, top of which is providing law and order under the rule of law. His fondness for singing about his machine gun while the whole nation listens symbolises the very culture of violence that is helping to ruin this country.
• Kane-Berman is CE of the South African Institute of Race Relations.
Source: Business Day
Whether to enforce strikes or bus or school boycotts, protest against "service delivery" failures, back some or other demand on campus, or complain against trains that are late, violence in South Africa has become routine, not unusual. Nonstrikers are murdered (60 of them in the security guards strike in 2006), city centres or university buildings trashed, roads blockaded or railway coaches set alight. People from other parts of Africa who undercut local traders are threatened or even murdered in so-called xenophobic violence.
It is a tragic and bitter irony that all this is happening in a country that is second to none in constitutionally guaranteed and judicially protected democratic rights. The bitterest irony of all is how the virus of violence has corrupted parts of the trade union movement. During apartheid, when union officials were banned or detained without trial, and black unions frequently barred from factories by hostile employers, the emerging black union movement won its legal rights by a struggle that was essentially nonviolent.
Now, with a privileged position, plus organisational and strike rights that are also second to none around the world, unions have become increasingly intolerant, as the Democratic Alliance experienced during its recent march on Cosatu House.
Killing people in the context of inter-union rivalry at Lonmin is also a manifestation of a principle that the ruling alliance introduced during its people’s war, which was to eliminate rival political organisations as far as possible. One of the chickens that is now coming home to roost is that some of the rival factions within the ANC are now using violence — possibly even assassinations — against one another.
Another of the chickens is the poor quality of the police. Their behaviour at Lonmin is but the most lethal manifestation of a wider lack of professional skill, including frequent inability to master the basics of crime scene investigation.
Any intelligent leadership in the police force would have long ago foreseen the risks arising from our violent political culture. Proper training and equipment would long since have been provided to avoid precisely what happened at Lonmin. But, of course, the ANC has ensured that there is no proper leadership at the top of the police force. Instead, the police have become the plaything of rival factions in the ruling party, not to mention the victims of affirmative action and cadre deployment policies.
So South Africa is in a catch-22. The people’s war was part of the strategy of the national democratic revolution to make the country ungovernable. Continued adherence to the strategy of the national democratic revolution in the form of cadre deployment in particular results in a police force that cannot handle the violence that continues as a hangover from the people’s war.
One consequence of the ineptitude of the police is their inability to handle situations such as that at Lonmin without making things infinitely worse. Another is their inability to put a stop to the violence that now characterises so many demonstrations across the country. A third is their inability to secure prosecutions and convictions of violent demonstrators.
Over all of this presides a president out of his depth as CE of the state. His ministers take unto themselves more and more power. Yet, apart from collecting taxes, his government fails increasingly to get the very basics right, top of which is providing law and order under the rule of law. His fondness for singing about his machine gun while the whole nation listens symbolises the very culture of violence that is helping to ruin this country.
• Kane-Berman is CE of the South African Institute of Race Relations.
Source: Business Day
Lonmin, the 'unacceptable face of capitalism'
The company that preceded Lonmin was once dubbed ‘the unacceptable face
of capitalism’ by a British prime minister. Tiny Rowland, man who turned
the company into an international colossus, wore the slur happily. In
the aftermath of the Marikana shootings, it seems like not much has
changed since his day. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
The deaths of dozens of people on August 16 has thrown South Africa into a frenzy of outrage, grief and soul searching. President Jacob Zuma announced that the following week would be declared one of mourning. Over the weekend the situation had calmed down at Lonmin’s Marikana shaft, close where the shootings happened, but the dead had yet to be fully identified and a breakthrough to the deadly wildcat strike action had not been found yet.
On Sunday, Lonmin issued an ultimatum to its employees: if they did not return to work on Monday, they could be fired summarily.
“The final ultimatum provides RDOs [rock drill operators] with a last opportunity to return to work or face possible dismissal,” the company statement said. “Employees could therefore be dismissed if they fail to heed the final ultimatum.”
News reports out of Marikana said that the news was greeted with anger. The unsanctioned strike would continue unless the miners got the 300% pay hike they were demanding. The ultimatum came at a time when many friends and family of injured or dead miners were still trying to deal with the fallout of the shooting.
“London-based Lonmin accounts for 12% of global platinum output. It is already struggling with low prices, weak demand and may miss its annual production target of 750,000 ounces as the quarter to the end of September is typically its best,” Reuters said.
The ultimatum seems callous, and harkens back to the company’s unflattering roots on the continent.
Lonmin has always battled with unions in South Africa, but this particular incident is a nightmare on a scale that it will never have seen before.
Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland was a British man (born Walter Furhop in India to German parents) who came to southern Africa in the aftermath of World War II to escape the heavy tax regime in England and to enjoy the higher standard of living that European colonialists enjoyed in Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe). He soon ingratiated himself well with African politicians.
The Independent said, “He became a pillar of the social circuit in Salisbury, southern Rhodesia – now Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe – earning his living as an upmarket car dealer. He soon discovered that his undoubted charm and dazzling smile worked well on African politicians eager for respectability and access to Western capital and know-how.”
In 1961 he was chosen to head the London and Rhodesian Mining Company (Lonrho) and quickly changed the way the company made money. He made the business depend heavily on his personal contacts and diversified swiftly. After that, he made some very risky calls on drawing up accounts, which spooked pension fund investors and lead to a commission of inquiry. The company then appointed non-executive directors to try to keep Rowland in check. The certain fight came when he tried to hide certain financial information from the board and the directors tried to get the company shareholders to jettison the volcanic chairman. The decision went the other way instead. It cemented Rowland’s reputation as something of an escape artist. The pension fund investors immediately dumped Lonrho’s shares.
The British prime minister at the time, Edward Heath, disgustedly labelled Lonrho an “unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism". Rowland famously replied that he didn’t want to be its acceptable face.
Lonrho’s dealings in Africa were often viewed with suspicion. He was often accused of helping out less-than-savoury regimes in various ways, especially at times when the thrust of global opinion was not particularly favourable.
“In the 1980s he was accused of helping the Marxist government of Mozambique manage its agricultural resources, and he increased Lonrho's South African holdings while sanctions against the Apartheid government were still in place,” the BBC said. “Then in 1992, Mr Rowland controversially sold a stake in some of Lonrho's hotels to the Libyan leader, Colonel Gadaffi, only three years after the Lockerbie bombing which was attributed to Libyan terrorists.”
The board was especially stung by the Gadaffi revelation, and unseated him as chairman in October 1995. He was removed from the board of the company he had turned into a vast conglomerate the next year, and died in 1998.
At the news of his death, the eulogies from African leaders were extremely flattering. “He made an enormous contribution, not only to South Africa, but to the whole of Africa," said former president Nelson Mandela, who had bestowed upon him the Order of Good Hope in 1996.
Two months before Rowland’s death, the company was split, and Lonrho Plc. was created to handle the non-African businesses and mining assets. In 1999 the company changed its name to Lonmin and narrowed its portfolio to the platinum metal group in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa.
The company struggled continuously with unions, both in its North West and Limpopo operations. In May last year, the company sacked more than 9,000 workers at its Karee mine near Rustenburg – then reinstated them afterwards. That particular call was made after a wildcat strike spurred by an internal union power struggle.
The company’s current CEO, Ian Farmer, was appointed in 2008. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the company paid him £1,220,629 (R15,860,000) in 2011. His pay that year was 293 times more than what rock drill operators working at Lonmin’s Marikana mine earn.
The presidency issued a statement on Sunday saying that North West Premier Thandi Modise and the ministers of mineral resources Susan Shabangu, police Nathi Mthethwa, social development Bathabile Dlamini, co-operative governance Richard Baloyi, labour Mildred Oliphant, defence and military veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, health Aaron Motsoaledi, state security Siyabonga Cwele, and home affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma would be deployed to Marikana to coordinate and lead support to the families and relatives of the dead or injured miners.
At that point, Lonmin’s representatives still had not shown face at the Marikana squatter camp, where the majority of the strike action had been concentrated. And now Lonmin, the company that was at the centre of the great calamity, has issued new threats to the rock drillers. The fact that the dead and injured, more than hundred of them, are still not even identified, seems of little importance.
Unacceptable face of capitalism indeed, Lonmin.
Source: Daily Maverick
Informed people live longer
The deaths of dozens of people on August 16 has thrown South Africa into a frenzy of outrage, grief and soul searching. President Jacob Zuma announced that the following week would be declared one of mourning. Over the weekend the situation had calmed down at Lonmin’s Marikana shaft, close where the shootings happened, but the dead had yet to be fully identified and a breakthrough to the deadly wildcat strike action had not been found yet.
On Sunday, Lonmin issued an ultimatum to its employees: if they did not return to work on Monday, they could be fired summarily.
“The final ultimatum provides RDOs [rock drill operators] with a last opportunity to return to work or face possible dismissal,” the company statement said. “Employees could therefore be dismissed if they fail to heed the final ultimatum.”
News reports out of Marikana said that the news was greeted with anger. The unsanctioned strike would continue unless the miners got the 300% pay hike they were demanding. The ultimatum came at a time when many friends and family of injured or dead miners were still trying to deal with the fallout of the shooting.
“London-based Lonmin accounts for 12% of global platinum output. It is already struggling with low prices, weak demand and may miss its annual production target of 750,000 ounces as the quarter to the end of September is typically its best,” Reuters said.
The ultimatum seems callous, and harkens back to the company’s unflattering roots on the continent.
Lonmin has always battled with unions in South Africa, but this particular incident is a nightmare on a scale that it will never have seen before.
Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland was a British man (born Walter Furhop in India to German parents) who came to southern Africa in the aftermath of World War II to escape the heavy tax regime in England and to enjoy the higher standard of living that European colonialists enjoyed in Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe). He soon ingratiated himself well with African politicians.
The Independent said, “He became a pillar of the social circuit in Salisbury, southern Rhodesia – now Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe – earning his living as an upmarket car dealer. He soon discovered that his undoubted charm and dazzling smile worked well on African politicians eager for respectability and access to Western capital and know-how.”
In 1961 he was chosen to head the London and Rhodesian Mining Company (Lonrho) and quickly changed the way the company made money. He made the business depend heavily on his personal contacts and diversified swiftly. After that, he made some very risky calls on drawing up accounts, which spooked pension fund investors and lead to a commission of inquiry. The company then appointed non-executive directors to try to keep Rowland in check. The certain fight came when he tried to hide certain financial information from the board and the directors tried to get the company shareholders to jettison the volcanic chairman. The decision went the other way instead. It cemented Rowland’s reputation as something of an escape artist. The pension fund investors immediately dumped Lonrho’s shares.
The British prime minister at the time, Edward Heath, disgustedly labelled Lonrho an “unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism". Rowland famously replied that he didn’t want to be its acceptable face.
Lonrho’s dealings in Africa were often viewed with suspicion. He was often accused of helping out less-than-savoury regimes in various ways, especially at times when the thrust of global opinion was not particularly favourable.
“In the 1980s he was accused of helping the Marxist government of Mozambique manage its agricultural resources, and he increased Lonrho's South African holdings while sanctions against the Apartheid government were still in place,” the BBC said. “Then in 1992, Mr Rowland controversially sold a stake in some of Lonrho's hotels to the Libyan leader, Colonel Gadaffi, only three years after the Lockerbie bombing which was attributed to Libyan terrorists.”
The board was especially stung by the Gadaffi revelation, and unseated him as chairman in October 1995. He was removed from the board of the company he had turned into a vast conglomerate the next year, and died in 1998.
At the news of his death, the eulogies from African leaders were extremely flattering. “He made an enormous contribution, not only to South Africa, but to the whole of Africa," said former president Nelson Mandela, who had bestowed upon him the Order of Good Hope in 1996.
Two months before Rowland’s death, the company was split, and Lonrho Plc. was created to handle the non-African businesses and mining assets. In 1999 the company changed its name to Lonmin and narrowed its portfolio to the platinum metal group in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa.
The company struggled continuously with unions, both in its North West and Limpopo operations. In May last year, the company sacked more than 9,000 workers at its Karee mine near Rustenburg – then reinstated them afterwards. That particular call was made after a wildcat strike spurred by an internal union power struggle.
The company’s current CEO, Ian Farmer, was appointed in 2008. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the company paid him £1,220,629 (R15,860,000) in 2011. His pay that year was 293 times more than what rock drill operators working at Lonmin’s Marikana mine earn.
The presidency issued a statement on Sunday saying that North West Premier Thandi Modise and the ministers of mineral resources Susan Shabangu, police Nathi Mthethwa, social development Bathabile Dlamini, co-operative governance Richard Baloyi, labour Mildred Oliphant, defence and military veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, health Aaron Motsoaledi, state security Siyabonga Cwele, and home affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma would be deployed to Marikana to coordinate and lead support to the families and relatives of the dead or injured miners.
At that point, Lonmin’s representatives still had not shown face at the Marikana squatter camp, where the majority of the strike action had been concentrated. And now Lonmin, the company that was at the centre of the great calamity, has issued new threats to the rock drillers. The fact that the dead and injured, more than hundred of them, are still not even identified, seems of little importance.
Unacceptable face of capitalism indeed, Lonmin.
Source: Daily Maverick
Informed people live longer
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Marikana and the man with the green blanket
The women of a South African community are coming to terms with a week of bloodshed that culminated with the deaths of 34 workers shot by police on Thursday during a protest at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana.
A stick to being used to beat Zuma? Just a thought …
Marikana action is a strike by the poor
Marikana was a war zone: Burger
Marikana action is a strike by the poor
Marikana was a war zone: Burger
Friday, August 17, 2012
Lonmin shootings will change SA labour relations
THE emergence of a rival union in the platinum space must be the most worrying event in the 30-year history of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The union is one of the biggest and certainly most politically powerful under the blanket of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, representing close to a fifth of its entire membership and has an important place in the African National Congress (ANC) alliance.
Given the importance of mining in the South African economy, support from the union is integral to the ruling faction in the ANC. It is this political role on which its leaders may have placed too much focus because of populist nationalisation rhetoric as well as the succession battle, to the detriment of its core mandate.
Straying from that focus on the interests of its workers has opened up space on its shop floors for a rival union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu). This happens as the situation remains dire for miners in the platinum sector as prices for the metal remain weak and costs keep rising because of poor management and other factors.
The NUM lays the blame for the unfolding violence in North West on mining houses for making unilateral salary adjustments that undermine existing wage agreements. Amcu may have been opportunistic in using those grievances from the disparities in pay to muscle in, but where has the NUM been? The union should have been alert and ready to react to the grievances.
You’ve got to think the union, which once had held sway over the entire mining industry, has taken its eyes off the ball in a big way. After the warning shots at Impala Platinum, the world’s second-biggest miner, the battle is playing out at Lonmin, the third biggest.
For the first time in the course of the Lonmin dispute, which has caused a number of fatalities, platinum prices have responded. In late afternoon trade, it had its biggest percentage gain in a month.
Anglo American Platinum, the world’s biggest miner, could well be the next explosion point in this festering battle. The NUM has warned that the turf war could spread to other mineral segments too.
The 30-year old NUM monopoly has certainly been challenged and it looks likely that it will continue to be unless its leadership gets focused on the matters at hand, instead of who occupies Luthuli House and the Union Buildings.
The deaths of the Lonmin workers yesterday have changed labour relations in the mining industry forever. Miners and the government may have to invite another party to the negotiating table, further complicating an already complicated mining regime.
...
FOR the average Chinese citizen without access to international markets, there are very few places to go to grow their wealth. The stock market in the world’s second-biggest economy has underperformed all its emerging market peers as well as other major equity markets, with the Shanghai Stock Exchange index down almost 20% over the past 12 months.
In that time, the JSE all share has gained 19%, London’s FTSE 8,9% and the S&P has rallied 18%.
The only alternative is to invest in property and that has been quite the story over the past 10 years. In the country’s major cities, house prices are about 30 times the annual salary and in the smaller metros 10 times. Compare that to five times the annual salary in the US at the height of its housing bubble.
Realising the risk posed by this growth in housing prices, last year the Chinese government raised rates to both cool the housing market and to combat inflation.
Inflationary pressures have eased this year, unfortunately so has growth.
So much so that foreign direct investment in what was once the golden goose in terms of investment destinations has seen the biggest drop in two years.
Data out of China yesterday showed investment slid 8.7%, the eighth drop in nine months and the smallest inflow since July 2010.
China has now come under pressure from investors, much like the US and Europe has over the past four years, to look at measures to boost economic growth — either by cutting rates or lowering the reserve margin required by banks.
But just how far can China go to boost its economy without further fuelling concerns over its property market? It must be keeping the political powers in that part of the world awake at night, especially as there will be a change of guard by the end of the year.
As for other central banks in the global economy, there’s not much room to manoeuvre.
Source: Business Day
Given the importance of mining in the South African economy, support from the union is integral to the ruling faction in the ANC. It is this political role on which its leaders may have placed too much focus because of populist nationalisation rhetoric as well as the succession battle, to the detriment of its core mandate.
Straying from that focus on the interests of its workers has opened up space on its shop floors for a rival union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu). This happens as the situation remains dire for miners in the platinum sector as prices for the metal remain weak and costs keep rising because of poor management and other factors.
The NUM lays the blame for the unfolding violence in North West on mining houses for making unilateral salary adjustments that undermine existing wage agreements. Amcu may have been opportunistic in using those grievances from the disparities in pay to muscle in, but where has the NUM been? The union should have been alert and ready to react to the grievances.
You’ve got to think the union, which once had held sway over the entire mining industry, has taken its eyes off the ball in a big way. After the warning shots at Impala Platinum, the world’s second-biggest miner, the battle is playing out at Lonmin, the third biggest.
For the first time in the course of the Lonmin dispute, which has caused a number of fatalities, platinum prices have responded. In late afternoon trade, it had its biggest percentage gain in a month.
Anglo American Platinum, the world’s biggest miner, could well be the next explosion point in this festering battle. The NUM has warned that the turf war could spread to other mineral segments too.
The 30-year old NUM monopoly has certainly been challenged and it looks likely that it will continue to be unless its leadership gets focused on the matters at hand, instead of who occupies Luthuli House and the Union Buildings.
The deaths of the Lonmin workers yesterday have changed labour relations in the mining industry forever. Miners and the government may have to invite another party to the negotiating table, further complicating an already complicated mining regime.
...
FOR the average Chinese citizen without access to international markets, there are very few places to go to grow their wealth. The stock market in the world’s second-biggest economy has underperformed all its emerging market peers as well as other major equity markets, with the Shanghai Stock Exchange index down almost 20% over the past 12 months.
In that time, the JSE all share has gained 19%, London’s FTSE 8,9% and the S&P has rallied 18%.
The only alternative is to invest in property and that has been quite the story over the past 10 years. In the country’s major cities, house prices are about 30 times the annual salary and in the smaller metros 10 times. Compare that to five times the annual salary in the US at the height of its housing bubble.
Realising the risk posed by this growth in housing prices, last year the Chinese government raised rates to both cool the housing market and to combat inflation.
Inflationary pressures have eased this year, unfortunately so has growth.
So much so that foreign direct investment in what was once the golden goose in terms of investment destinations has seen the biggest drop in two years.
Data out of China yesterday showed investment slid 8.7%, the eighth drop in nine months and the smallest inflow since July 2010.
China has now come under pressure from investors, much like the US and Europe has over the past four years, to look at measures to boost economic growth — either by cutting rates or lowering the reserve margin required by banks.
But just how far can China go to boost its economy without further fuelling concerns over its property market? It must be keeping the political powers in that part of the world awake at night, especially as there will be a change of guard by the end of the year.
As for other central banks in the global economy, there’s not much room to manoeuvre.
Source: Business Day
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Knobkerries, sangoma as Lonmin workers vow to stay on hill
Striking miners vowed on Tuesday to stay at the top of a hill in Wonderkop, near Lonmin's Marikana mine, until their pay was pushed up to R12,500 a month. They claimed they were being paid R4000 per month, and those living outside the hostel R5000. "We want money. We have kids to take care of," said one worker, Alfred Makhaya, from the Eastern Cape.
He had been working for Lonmin for over eight years and was being paid R4000 a month. He was forced to leave the hostel to rent a room so he could have an extra R1000. "This money is too little, I am working hard and I'm being paid so little." He said if he was not going to be paid R12,500 per month, his children would end up being thieves, because he would be unable to pay for their education. Another worker, Lichaba Pafkalasi from Lesotho, said the R12,500 would enable him to support his family. He claimed the mine's staff shot at him at the weekend, killing two of his group.
They then decided to move to the mountain to discuss their next move. They claimed the mines sent the police to shoot them.
Earlier, about 500 men gathered on top of the mountain, armed with knobkerries and iron rods. Local residents said an inyanga (herbalist) or sangoma (traditional healer) would perform a ritual on the mountain top and sprinkle the men with muti (traditional medicine) to "make them brave". Nine people -- two police officers, two security guards, three protesters and two other men -- have been killed during protests at the mine, which began on Friday.
Source: Times Live
He had been working for Lonmin for over eight years and was being paid R4000 a month. He was forced to leave the hostel to rent a room so he could have an extra R1000. "This money is too little, I am working hard and I'm being paid so little." He said if he was not going to be paid R12,500 per month, his children would end up being thieves, because he would be unable to pay for their education. Another worker, Lichaba Pafkalasi from Lesotho, said the R12,500 would enable him to support his family. He claimed the mine's staff shot at him at the weekend, killing two of his group.
They then decided to move to the mountain to discuss their next move. They claimed the mines sent the police to shoot them.
Earlier, about 500 men gathered on top of the mountain, armed with knobkerries and iron rods. Local residents said an inyanga (herbalist) or sangoma (traditional healer) would perform a ritual on the mountain top and sprinkle the men with muti (traditional medicine) to "make them brave". Nine people -- two police officers, two security guards, three protesters and two other men -- have been killed during protests at the mine, which began on Friday.
Source: Times Live
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Xstrata: The world’s fourth largest diversified mining group
Xstrata is the world’s fourth largest diversified mining group. We are ranked among the top five producers of copper, export thermal coal, export coking coal, ferrochrome, nickel and zinc globally, and also have a growing platinum group metals business, iron ore projects and recycling facilities. Our operations and projects, which span 20 countries and employ more than 70,000 people, are supported by a small corporate centre split between the head office in Zug, Switzerland and an office in London. We are is listed on the London and Swissstock exchanges, with a market capitalisation of $54 billion, as at 03 March 2012.
We differentiate ourselves from our competitors and peers by devolving responsibility and authority to our individual commodity businesses. This creates a strong sense of local ownership which we believe ultimately benefits our operations. Our managers are empowered and incentivised to tackle and solve local challenges and seize opportunities when they arise.
At least 1% of Xstrata Group’s profits before tax is set aside every year to fund initiatives that benefit the communities in which we operate. We support local culture and arts projects, programmes to boost community development, enterprise and job creation,health and education initiatives and environmental schemes. We set aside $109 million in 2011,representing 1.3% of pre-tax profits, for these local projects, and have donated $102 million, including $2 million of value in-kind contributions, so far.
Source: Xstrata
We differentiate ourselves from our competitors and peers by devolving responsibility and authority to our individual commodity businesses. This creates a strong sense of local ownership which we believe ultimately benefits our operations. Our managers are empowered and incentivised to tackle and solve local challenges and seize opportunities when they arise.
At least 1% of Xstrata Group’s profits before tax is set aside every year to fund initiatives that benefit the communities in which we operate. We support local culture and arts projects, programmes to boost community development, enterprise and job creation,health and education initiatives and environmental schemes. We set aside $109 million in 2011,representing 1.3% of pre-tax profits, for these local projects, and have donated $102 million, including $2 million of value in-kind contributions, so far.
Source: Xstrata
Friday, August 13, 2010
Mining shaky ground:"Shades of Zimbabwe"
South Africa might well have said goodbye to significant new foreign investment in its mining industry. Foreigners can be unforgiving when they see what they believe are attempts to grab their assets. Which is precisely what they believe is happening with the recent, though quickly rescinded, ban by the Department of Mineral Resources of normal by-product metals sales by London-registered platinum miner Lonmin.
Understandably, politically connected opportunists were seen as being actively helped by the department in their attempts to acquire mining assets cheaply and beyond the legal requirement that 25% ownership of mines be transferred to BEE interests by 2014.
"Shades of Zimbabwe," fund managers muttered. An earlier, similar stratagem directed at an Anglo American subsidiary, Kumba's Sishen Iron Ore, was initially largely overlooked as being an aberration. Now, the word "greenmail" is commonly heard in London. Kumba felt it had adhered strictly to the rules. When global steelmaker ArcelorMittal missed the April 2009 deadline to convert its prospecting rights - a preliminary to granting mining rights - over 21.4% of Sishen's Northern Cape mine, Kumba itself applied to the department for the rights.
Strangely, before it had considered Kumba's legitimate application, the department awarded the Sishen prospecting rights to the hitherto little-known Imperial Crown Trading - which is closely linked to the presidency and ANC top brass. That effectively sterilises part of Sishen, where mining goes back decades. Imperial has no mining skills, credentials or even visible cash - just political connections. Reportedly, it somehow got its hands on Kumba's application documentation and put in a later bid. The Department of Mineral Resources's first-come-first-served rule was ignored. When challenged earlier this year, mines minister Susan Shabangu blustered that she saw nothing sinister in granting rights to people with affiliations to the ruling party. That was just after she and Anglo CEO Cynthia Carroll had been cosying up to each other at a Cape Town mining conference at which all was sweetness and light. Shabangu was touting SA's mining investment merits and Carroll was making emollient statements about Anglo's commitment to South Africa.
Kumba is mounting a legal challenge to the Imperial award. But, in a new twist this past week, Imperial struck an R800-million deal to be taken over by ArcelorMittal, sweetened by a share in a R9-billion 26% stake in the steelmaker's South African mills - all provided that Imperial can deliver the Sishen rights to the steel company. Some favoured individuals are hoping to make quick fortunes, and they are not the ordinary South Africans BEE is supposed to benefit. Wheels within political wheels. If this deal goes through, a good part of the steel mill's stake will be owned by the Gupta Group, controlled by the Indian Gupta family, which finances the ANC and the party's new daily newspaper - set to hit the streets next month. Gupta has Jacob Zuma's son, Duduzane, on one of its boards. Neighbours say that Duduzane occupies a house provided by the Guptas in Saxonwold. How much closer can one get?
The Lonmin imbroglio was strikingly similar. The platinum miner's application to convert old-order to new-order mining rights has been grinding its way through the Department of Mineral Resources's sluggish approval process for months. But Lonmin had temporarily excluded from its application a tiny piece of ground over which rights were subject to negotiation. Prospecting rights on that area were rapidly granted by the department to the mysterious HolGoun group, controlled by Sivi Gounden. Gounden is reputedly a BEE-enriched individual believed to contribute anonymously to ANC coffers. He is, crucially, also a former director of Lonmin and a former director-general of public enterprises under the ANC government. In October, Gounden abruptly resigned his Lonmin directorship, citing pressure of other business. In Lonmin's last annual report he was dutifully praised by chairman Roger Phillimore for his insights. That sort of encomium is often par for the course, irrespective of the real reasons for a departure.
Lonmin is challenging the HolGoun claim. Lonmin might have preferred to keep the matter private while negotiating, but the department's ban would have had a potentially material effect on the company and it had to be disclosed in terms of stock exchange rules and corporate legislation. After one abortive start, Lonmin is now fully BEE-compliant, moored to Cyril Ramaphosa's unlisted Shanduka investment company, which holds indirect stakes in Lonmin's two mines and its smelter.
Why, fund managers ask, should there have been a total ban on established, normal by-product sales, particularly as HolGoun's prospecting claims cover only a tiny part of Lonmin's property? Was it "greenmail", or a crude attempt to induce Lonmin to transfer more to other BEE wannabes? Certainly, there is a lacuna in South Africa's current mining legislation. But Londoners, with Kumba in mind, believe the Lonmin ban represented another example of official processes being abused to enrich ruling-party stalwarts, or, at least, of incompetence in the Department of Mineral Resources. That might be insulting to the independence of our government departments but, unfortunately for us, the belief is a reality to fund managers, who are increasingly questioning this country's investment merits.
It is, perhaps, telling that the latest international investment climate rankings by Canada's authoritative Fraser Institute downgraded South Africa to a level below the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Miners must go where minerals - particularly the platinum mined by Lonmin and Anglo's Anglo Platinum - are found. Auto plants can be moved elsewhere, mines can't. Nonetheless, there are many new mining opportunities around the globe. It's all a deterrent to new investment crucial to the development of an emerging economy such as South Africa's. As one mining executive put it: "The ANC needs to wake up to reality."
Source: Times Live
Understandably, politically connected opportunists were seen as being actively helped by the department in their attempts to acquire mining assets cheaply and beyond the legal requirement that 25% ownership of mines be transferred to BEE interests by 2014.
"Shades of Zimbabwe," fund managers muttered. An earlier, similar stratagem directed at an Anglo American subsidiary, Kumba's Sishen Iron Ore, was initially largely overlooked as being an aberration. Now, the word "greenmail" is commonly heard in London. Kumba felt it had adhered strictly to the rules. When global steelmaker ArcelorMittal missed the April 2009 deadline to convert its prospecting rights - a preliminary to granting mining rights - over 21.4% of Sishen's Northern Cape mine, Kumba itself applied to the department for the rights.
Strangely, before it had considered Kumba's legitimate application, the department awarded the Sishen prospecting rights to the hitherto little-known Imperial Crown Trading - which is closely linked to the presidency and ANC top brass. That effectively sterilises part of Sishen, where mining goes back decades. Imperial has no mining skills, credentials or even visible cash - just political connections. Reportedly, it somehow got its hands on Kumba's application documentation and put in a later bid. The Department of Mineral Resources's first-come-first-served rule was ignored. When challenged earlier this year, mines minister Susan Shabangu blustered that she saw nothing sinister in granting rights to people with affiliations to the ruling party. That was just after she and Anglo CEO Cynthia Carroll had been cosying up to each other at a Cape Town mining conference at which all was sweetness and light. Shabangu was touting SA's mining investment merits and Carroll was making emollient statements about Anglo's commitment to South Africa.
Kumba is mounting a legal challenge to the Imperial award. But, in a new twist this past week, Imperial struck an R800-million deal to be taken over by ArcelorMittal, sweetened by a share in a R9-billion 26% stake in the steelmaker's South African mills - all provided that Imperial can deliver the Sishen rights to the steel company. Some favoured individuals are hoping to make quick fortunes, and they are not the ordinary South Africans BEE is supposed to benefit. Wheels within political wheels. If this deal goes through, a good part of the steel mill's stake will be owned by the Gupta Group, controlled by the Indian Gupta family, which finances the ANC and the party's new daily newspaper - set to hit the streets next month. Gupta has Jacob Zuma's son, Duduzane, on one of its boards. Neighbours say that Duduzane occupies a house provided by the Guptas in Saxonwold. How much closer can one get?
The Lonmin imbroglio was strikingly similar. The platinum miner's application to convert old-order to new-order mining rights has been grinding its way through the Department of Mineral Resources's sluggish approval process for months. But Lonmin had temporarily excluded from its application a tiny piece of ground over which rights were subject to negotiation. Prospecting rights on that area were rapidly granted by the department to the mysterious HolGoun group, controlled by Sivi Gounden. Gounden is reputedly a BEE-enriched individual believed to contribute anonymously to ANC coffers. He is, crucially, also a former director of Lonmin and a former director-general of public enterprises under the ANC government. In October, Gounden abruptly resigned his Lonmin directorship, citing pressure of other business. In Lonmin's last annual report he was dutifully praised by chairman Roger Phillimore for his insights. That sort of encomium is often par for the course, irrespective of the real reasons for a departure.
Lonmin is challenging the HolGoun claim. Lonmin might have preferred to keep the matter private while negotiating, but the department's ban would have had a potentially material effect on the company and it had to be disclosed in terms of stock exchange rules and corporate legislation. After one abortive start, Lonmin is now fully BEE-compliant, moored to Cyril Ramaphosa's unlisted Shanduka investment company, which holds indirect stakes in Lonmin's two mines and its smelter.
Why, fund managers ask, should there have been a total ban on established, normal by-product sales, particularly as HolGoun's prospecting claims cover only a tiny part of Lonmin's property? Was it "greenmail", or a crude attempt to induce Lonmin to transfer more to other BEE wannabes? Certainly, there is a lacuna in South Africa's current mining legislation. But Londoners, with Kumba in mind, believe the Lonmin ban represented another example of official processes being abused to enrich ruling-party stalwarts, or, at least, of incompetence in the Department of Mineral Resources. That might be insulting to the independence of our government departments but, unfortunately for us, the belief is a reality to fund managers, who are increasingly questioning this country's investment merits.
It is, perhaps, telling that the latest international investment climate rankings by Canada's authoritative Fraser Institute downgraded South Africa to a level below the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Miners must go where minerals - particularly the platinum mined by Lonmin and Anglo's Anglo Platinum - are found. Auto plants can be moved elsewhere, mines can't. Nonetheless, there are many new mining opportunities around the globe. It's all a deterrent to new investment crucial to the development of an emerging economy such as South Africa's. As one mining executive put it: "The ANC needs to wake up to reality."
Source: Times Live
South Africa's DRC moment?
The government risks giving South Africa the same reputation as the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) when it comes to mining investments, legal expert Peter Leon warned this week. Leon's comment followed the high-profile legal wrangling between the Department of Mineral Resources and two international companies that have had prospecting rights over their existing mining operations awarded to politically connected rivals.
The first is the case of Imperial Crown Trading, awarded prospecting rights -- the precursor to a mining right -- over an area that is already mined by the Sishen Iron Ore Company, a subsidiary of Kumba Iron Ore. The second concerns platinum miner Lonmin. Business Day reported last week that a company called Keysha Investments, a member of the HolGoun Group headed by former public servant Sivi Gounden and his wife Vanessa, had been awarded prospecting rights over Lonmin's platinum interests. Keysha was granted rights over associated minerals, including nickel, copper and chrome, which Lonmin mines as an ancillary operation.
According to the Department of Mineral Resources, the prospecting right was issued on the grounds that, when Lonmin converted its old-order mining rights to new-order mining rights under the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act, it failed to include associated minerals. Lonmin only did this in December last year, long after the conversion of its mining rights to the platinum group metals two years ago. "At the time when Keysha lodged its prospecting application in respect of the so-called associated minerals, no other application existed," the Mineral Resources Department said this week. Lonmin announced on Thursday, however, that the department had rescinded the order to stop selling the associated minerals, and had processed all of its applications except the "small area which is subject to the prospecting right issued to Keysha".
Peter Leon, a partner at law firm Webber Wentzel, said "Section 16(2) of the Act prohibits the processing (and thus the grant) of a prospecting right application for the same mineral and land over which there is an existing mining right. "In my view, the department should never have accepted, let alone granted, a prospecting right for iron ore to Imperial Crown Trading over the Sishen iron ore mine," he said. However, the Lonmin case was different. "The grant of a prospecting right to Keysha Investments … over a small portion of Lonmin's property does not, on the face of it, appear to have been unlawful, as at the time in question Lonmin did not have the right to exploit the 'associated minerals'," said Leon.
But he said that in the Lonmin case, "it is troubling that the department did not engage more effectively with the company last week and only belatedly granted Lonmin's application after huge ructions in the market … a spate of negative media publicity and considerable collateral damage to South Africa's reputation as an investment destination. "This should not be allowed to happen again, as it risks putting South Africa in the same mining category as the DRC."
The department did not respond to the M&G's questions.
Source: Mail & Guardian
The first is the case of Imperial Crown Trading, awarded prospecting rights -- the precursor to a mining right -- over an area that is already mined by the Sishen Iron Ore Company, a subsidiary of Kumba Iron Ore. The second concerns platinum miner Lonmin. Business Day reported last week that a company called Keysha Investments, a member of the HolGoun Group headed by former public servant Sivi Gounden and his wife Vanessa, had been awarded prospecting rights over Lonmin's platinum interests. Keysha was granted rights over associated minerals, including nickel, copper and chrome, which Lonmin mines as an ancillary operation.
According to the Department of Mineral Resources, the prospecting right was issued on the grounds that, when Lonmin converted its old-order mining rights to new-order mining rights under the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act, it failed to include associated minerals. Lonmin only did this in December last year, long after the conversion of its mining rights to the platinum group metals two years ago. "At the time when Keysha lodged its prospecting application in respect of the so-called associated minerals, no other application existed," the Mineral Resources Department said this week. Lonmin announced on Thursday, however, that the department had rescinded the order to stop selling the associated minerals, and had processed all of its applications except the "small area which is subject to the prospecting right issued to Keysha".
Peter Leon, a partner at law firm Webber Wentzel, said "Section 16(2) of the Act prohibits the processing (and thus the grant) of a prospecting right application for the same mineral and land over which there is an existing mining right. "In my view, the department should never have accepted, let alone granted, a prospecting right for iron ore to Imperial Crown Trading over the Sishen iron ore mine," he said. However, the Lonmin case was different. "The grant of a prospecting right to Keysha Investments … over a small portion of Lonmin's property does not, on the face of it, appear to have been unlawful, as at the time in question Lonmin did not have the right to exploit the 'associated minerals'," said Leon.
But he said that in the Lonmin case, "it is troubling that the department did not engage more effectively with the company last week and only belatedly granted Lonmin's application after huge ructions in the market … a spate of negative media publicity and considerable collateral damage to South Africa's reputation as an investment destination. "This should not be allowed to happen again, as it risks putting South Africa in the same mining category as the DRC."
The department did not respond to the M&G's questions.
Source: Mail & Guardian
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