ESKOM and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) have been granted the right to intervene in the Competition Tribunal’s hearings next week on the merger of the world’s largest commodity trader, Glencore, and mining group Xstrata.
Eskom has proposed that the tribunal impose conditions on the merger that could include measures such as ensuring the ratio of exports to domestic coal supply be kept constant after the merger, and that the merging parties agree to negotiate in good faith on long-term coal-supply contracts as these expire.
The utility says it does not want to stand in the way of the merger, but has to raise its concern about the future supply of coal for the domestic market.
Public hearings on the merger start on Monday.
The company says it has a public mandate to supply electricity to the entire country and is dependent on the right grade of coal at the appropriate time and at an affordable price to be able to deliver on its mandate.
In the absence of industrial policy that provides for the security of domestic supply before exports, the merger highlights Eskom’s vulnerability.
Eskom spokeswoman Hilary Joffe says: “The merged entity would account for approximately 15% of Eskom’s coal supply, with Glencore and Xstrata accounting for the bulk of the supply to the Majuba and Hendrina power stations and supplying smaller quantities to Duvha, Komati, Arnot and Matla power stations.”
Although it has secured the majority of its supply needs until 2018, Ms Joffe says Eskom needs to raise its concern about supply security beyond that.
Eskom indicated that it would propose additional conditions if necessary.
Xstrata is the world’s largest exporter of the type of coal used by power stations, and all of its mines and plants are in South Africa.
Glencore holds almost 34% of Xstrata and after this transaction — valued at $80bn — is approved, the miner will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Glencore.
It currently produces 27.4-million tons of saleable coal a year in South Africa, of which almost 30% is exported.
Source: Business Day
Showing posts with label NUMSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NUMSA. Show all posts
Friday, December 7, 2012
Saturday, September 1, 2012
South Africa after the Marikana massacre
The police massacre of striking miners at Marikana is a watershed for post-apartheid South Africa and for the international class struggle.
It demonstrates in the starkest form imaginable that the perspective of “black empowerment” and the “National Democratic Revolution” providing the basis for overcoming economic and social oppression has failed utterly. The central lesson of Marikana is that the fundamental division within society is class, not race.
The African National Congress, having come to power in 1994 as a result of immense sacrifice and revolutionary struggle by millions of workers, has revealed itself to be every bit as ruthless as its white predecessors in enforcing the most brutal exploitation on behalf of the major global corporations.
The ANC sent in the police to shoot, kill and maim striking workers whose sole crime was to fight for the right to live as human beings and not beasts of burden. Now, after the police have killed 36 and wounded another 78, some 270 imprisoned strikers are being charged with the murder and attempted murder of their colleagues under Apartheid-era “common purpose” laws designed to blame the victims for “provoking” police violence.
The Marikana miners are paid less than $500 a month for living in squalid communal huts and working in hazardous, back-breaking conditions for the UK-based Lonmin, extracting platinum that sells for over $1,400 an ounce. Their fate, worse still, is shared by millions in what has now become the most unequal country in the entire world.
Meanwhile the ANC has spawned a grasping layer of black bourgeois, with a reputation for unparalleled corruption and repression. It is synonymous with terms like Black Economically Empowered (BEE) companies and “tenderpreneurs”—those who have enriched themselves by acting as front-men for the transnational corporations or who have used their control of the state apparatus to secure a direct role in exploiting the working class.
Even as charges were being brought against the arrested miners, South African Minister of Mining Susan Shabangu was reassuring “our investors, incumbent and prospective” at a gathering of mining executives in Perth, Australia, that President Jacob Zuma is “determined to isolate bad elements in our society.”
The ANC in turn relies upon its partners in the Tripartite Alliance—the South African Communist Party and the COSATU trade union federation—to impose the dictatorship of global capital and the South African bourgeoisie upon an increasingly restive population.
The Stalinist SACP insisted throughout the struggle against apartheid that black majority rule of a capitalist South Africa was a necessary stage in an eventual transition to socialism. It has portrayed COSATU as a bastion of working class power within government that would guarantee this transformation.
Events have proceeded in an entirely opposite direction. For services rendered, SACP leaders were granted key roles in the post-apartheid regime and a share in the spoils of office. COSATU and its affiliated unions have functioned as an industrial police force and a mechanism for the self-enrichment of the bureaucracy.
Philip Hirschsohn, Professor School of Business and Finance at the University of the Western Cape, pointed out last year how the trade unions have taken on “oligarchic characteristics.”
The position of shop steward has become a mechanism for securing management positions, as part of the “emergence of entrepreneurial and career unionists,” with SACP membership a favoured “stepping stone” for “access opportunities in managerial ranks or in government.”
Former NUM leader and high-ranking ANC politician, Cyril Ramaphosa is now the 34th richest man in the whole of Africa, with a net worth of $275 million. One of his many companies has a contract to supply labour at Marikana in a form of indentured slavery. He is paid R12 000 ($1500) per worker per month by Lonmin, but only pays his workers R4000 ($500) per month.
Its role as an adjunct of management has meant that NUM membership has declined to less than 50 percent of employees in many mines; most of these are skilled white collar and surface workers. The strikers at Marikana are either members of the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) or not unionized at all.
The NUM, COSATU and the SACP have all called for police to clamp down on the strikers, defending the massacre and urging the suppression of the AMCU. NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni said of the Marikana massacre that, “The police were patient, but these people were extremely armed with dangerous weapons.”
This has not prevented the pseudo-left groups internationally from opposing the necessary break from COSATU and its affiliated unions, without which any struggle against the ANC is impossible.
The South African affiliates of the Committee for a Workers International, the Democratic Socialist Movement, instead urge “workers in both unions to demand united solidarity action, beginning with a local general strike” and ending in a “national general strike”—all presumably led by the NUM and COSATU.
The Socialist Workers Party in the UK is more despicable still, writing on August 17, “Whatever its intentions, AMCU has sometimes been used to introduce disunity at a time when workers face big challenges. It would have been better for the workers who formed the rival union to fight among the NUM rank and file and shift its policies from below.”
Support for the NUM and COSATU is support for the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance government. It is support for the continuation of capitalism and imperialist oppression.
The theory of Permanent Revolution provides the political basis for the workers and youth of South Africa to conduct the life-and-death struggles that lie ahead. The evolution of the ANC is a graphic confirmation of Leon Trotsky’s insistence that bourgeois nationalist movements, tied as they are to capitalism and organically opposed to ending the brutal exploitation of the workers and poor farmers, are incapable of carrying through the struggle for democracy and liberation from imperialist domination.
The working class, mobilising all the oppressed rural and urban layers, must break with the ANC and its defenders in the SACP and the trade union apparatus and build their own socialist party.
A workers government must be established to take the entire economy into social ownership and utilise the vast natural wealth presently monopolised by the super-rich to meet the needs of all for decent jobs, housing, education and health provision. This revolutionary struggle must be extended throughout Africa and internationally through the construction of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world party of socialist revolution.
Chris Marsden
Source: World Wide Socialist Web Site
It demonstrates in the starkest form imaginable that the perspective of “black empowerment” and the “National Democratic Revolution” providing the basis for overcoming economic and social oppression has failed utterly. The central lesson of Marikana is that the fundamental division within society is class, not race.
The African National Congress, having come to power in 1994 as a result of immense sacrifice and revolutionary struggle by millions of workers, has revealed itself to be every bit as ruthless as its white predecessors in enforcing the most brutal exploitation on behalf of the major global corporations.
The ANC sent in the police to shoot, kill and maim striking workers whose sole crime was to fight for the right to live as human beings and not beasts of burden. Now, after the police have killed 36 and wounded another 78, some 270 imprisoned strikers are being charged with the murder and attempted murder of their colleagues under Apartheid-era “common purpose” laws designed to blame the victims for “provoking” police violence.
The Marikana miners are paid less than $500 a month for living in squalid communal huts and working in hazardous, back-breaking conditions for the UK-based Lonmin, extracting platinum that sells for over $1,400 an ounce. Their fate, worse still, is shared by millions in what has now become the most unequal country in the entire world.
Meanwhile the ANC has spawned a grasping layer of black bourgeois, with a reputation for unparalleled corruption and repression. It is synonymous with terms like Black Economically Empowered (BEE) companies and “tenderpreneurs”—those who have enriched themselves by acting as front-men for the transnational corporations or who have used their control of the state apparatus to secure a direct role in exploiting the working class.
Even as charges were being brought against the arrested miners, South African Minister of Mining Susan Shabangu was reassuring “our investors, incumbent and prospective” at a gathering of mining executives in Perth, Australia, that President Jacob Zuma is “determined to isolate bad elements in our society.”
The ANC in turn relies upon its partners in the Tripartite Alliance—the South African Communist Party and the COSATU trade union federation—to impose the dictatorship of global capital and the South African bourgeoisie upon an increasingly restive population.
The Stalinist SACP insisted throughout the struggle against apartheid that black majority rule of a capitalist South Africa was a necessary stage in an eventual transition to socialism. It has portrayed COSATU as a bastion of working class power within government that would guarantee this transformation.
Events have proceeded in an entirely opposite direction. For services rendered, SACP leaders were granted key roles in the post-apartheid regime and a share in the spoils of office. COSATU and its affiliated unions have functioned as an industrial police force and a mechanism for the self-enrichment of the bureaucracy.
Philip Hirschsohn, Professor School of Business and Finance at the University of the Western Cape, pointed out last year how the trade unions have taken on “oligarchic characteristics.”
The position of shop steward has become a mechanism for securing management positions, as part of the “emergence of entrepreneurial and career unionists,” with SACP membership a favoured “stepping stone” for “access opportunities in managerial ranks or in government.”
Former NUM leader and high-ranking ANC politician, Cyril Ramaphosa is now the 34th richest man in the whole of Africa, with a net worth of $275 million. One of his many companies has a contract to supply labour at Marikana in a form of indentured slavery. He is paid R12 000 ($1500) per worker per month by Lonmin, but only pays his workers R4000 ($500) per month.
Its role as an adjunct of management has meant that NUM membership has declined to less than 50 percent of employees in many mines; most of these are skilled white collar and surface workers. The strikers at Marikana are either members of the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) or not unionized at all.
The NUM, COSATU and the SACP have all called for police to clamp down on the strikers, defending the massacre and urging the suppression of the AMCU. NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni said of the Marikana massacre that, “The police were patient, but these people were extremely armed with dangerous weapons.”
This has not prevented the pseudo-left groups internationally from opposing the necessary break from COSATU and its affiliated unions, without which any struggle against the ANC is impossible.
The South African affiliates of the Committee for a Workers International, the Democratic Socialist Movement, instead urge “workers in both unions to demand united solidarity action, beginning with a local general strike” and ending in a “national general strike”—all presumably led by the NUM and COSATU.
The Socialist Workers Party in the UK is more despicable still, writing on August 17, “Whatever its intentions, AMCU has sometimes been used to introduce disunity at a time when workers face big challenges. It would have been better for the workers who formed the rival union to fight among the NUM rank and file and shift its policies from below.”
Support for the NUM and COSATU is support for the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance government. It is support for the continuation of capitalism and imperialist oppression.
The theory of Permanent Revolution provides the political basis for the workers and youth of South Africa to conduct the life-and-death struggles that lie ahead. The evolution of the ANC is a graphic confirmation of Leon Trotsky’s insistence that bourgeois nationalist movements, tied as they are to capitalism and organically opposed to ending the brutal exploitation of the workers and poor farmers, are incapable of carrying through the struggle for democracy and liberation from imperialist domination.
The working class, mobilising all the oppressed rural and urban layers, must break with the ANC and its defenders in the SACP and the trade union apparatus and build their own socialist party.
A workers government must be established to take the entire economy into social ownership and utilise the vast natural wealth presently monopolised by the super-rich to meet the needs of all for decent jobs, housing, education and health provision. This revolutionary struggle must be extended throughout Africa and internationally through the construction of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world party of socialist revolution.
Chris Marsden
Source: World Wide Socialist Web Site
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
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Can't you hear the thunder?
The headlines scream 'Marikana Massacre'; 'Killing Fields of Rustenburg'. Radio and TV Talk shows and social media all display the anger and expose the psyche of a nation badly wounded. The bloodiest security operation since the end of apartheid has left us shocked and asking what went wrong? The reality is, many things went wrong. Way too many things went wrong, for way too long now. Jay Naidoo
When I think of Marikana, I am reminded of Frantz Fanon in Wretched of the Earth: “Come, then, comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent and resolute.”
As a union organiser in the ’80s, I knew that taking workers out on strike on a legitimate wage demand is not an uphill battle. Taking workers back to work after a failed strike is the ultimate test for any union leader. Now is the time for calm heads to prevail.
The Judicial Commission of Enquiry appointed by President Zuma will hopefully present all the facts. It is the right decision. But it will take painstaking commitment on all sides to rebuild the trust that has been shattered. And that involves us all as citizens. There is not going to be a simple solution. This is a complex dispute that is at its very essence a microcosm of South African society.
Today a community struggles to recover from a bloody confrontation that has left the crumpled bodies of 44 citizens lying in the veld, seen starkly in our lounges and across the world. It has split brother from brother and left a community divided and volatile. This is the real trial of leadership on all sides. It is a tinderbox. We do not need demagoguery that stirs explosive emotions or to engage in finger-pointing that adds fuel to the fire.
The critical question is how could this have happened in 2012, 18 years into our democracy and the centenary commemoration of the ANC’s struggle for social justice and human dignity?
The answer simply is that there has been a massive failure of leadership on all sides. The critical question is why we did not act earlier on this festering dispute that today the nation mourns?
There is growing ferment in our land. The people in our townships, rural areas and squatter camps are bitter that democracy has not delivered the fruits that they see a tiny elite enjoying. Our leaders across the spectrum are not talking to our people, they are not working with them systematically to solve their problems, in providing the hope that one day, even in their children’s lives, things will be better.
All they see is the obscenity of shocking wealth and the chasm of inequality growing. The platinum mines they toil in, for a pittance, yield a precious metal that makes exorbitant jewellery that adorns the necks of the affluent and catalytic converters for the expensive cars the middle classes drive. The workers live in hovels, in informal squatter camps, surrounded by poverty and without basic services. All they experience is a political arrogance of leaders who more often than not enrich themselves at the expense the people. They are angry and restless.
A narrow law and order approach will not work in this depressing context. There is genuine anger out there that needs a political solution. I am aghast at the rapid rate at which our government had militarized the security forces and the creeping stranglehold of securocrats within the state. I wonder why our police intelligence failed so miserably to avert a disaster that threatens the country’s economic prospects. Are the securocrats in the state so occupied in searching for imaginary enemies in NGOs and civil society organisations and with passing “Secrecy Laws” that they missed one of biggest crises to face our democracy? There are important choices to be made by the government, but hard questions must first be asked. What are our priorities? What is the root cause of conflict in our society? These may be tough questions, but they are also unavoidable.
Inter-union rivalry is part of the problem. Lonmin management has recognised the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), which claims between 20% and 30% of the workforce, for dealing with shop floor issues affecting their membership; but they have fanned the rivalry by only giving recognition to the dominant unions, the National Union of Miners (NUM) and Solidarity, in official wage bargaining structures.
When you recognise a union but exclude it from the collective bargaining negotiations around the core issue of wages, you have a recipe for disaster.
The leadership of NUM and Cosatu need to address why so many mineworkers chose a different union and why they lost confidence in a Cosatu affiliate.
I have been in many places where I am personally told: “Comrade, we do not see union organisers. We don’t know what is happening in our union. Our leaders are too involved in politics and we do not get the services and education we did in the past.”
Have we lost touch with our members? After all, these workers were seasoned unionists who have fought many battles, yet they consciously joined an alternative union. We will need some brutal self-assessment here.
Collective bargaining is the cornerstone of our democracy. I believe it was the prototype of the political negotiations that laid the basis of our democracy. The battles fought by hardened antagonists who faced each other across a negotiating table that recognised the alternative to negotiations was a “scorched earth”. As trade unionists, we knew all the negotiating tactics: strikes, go-slows and lockouts and compromises. When industrial disputes spilled into the streets we united to find solutions and face the heat of angry workers.
Putting this collective bargaining machinery at risk will be a severe blow to our democracy. We cannot afford a free-for-all in such a fragile stage of our democracy.
Rustenburg is not a homogenous community. The growth of the platinum belt created an opportunity to develop the new non-racial towns of the future. Instead, all we see is the mushrooming of informal settlements, racial divisions and the spatial planning of our apartheid past. As job seekers flooded in from all over the country the competition over scarce resources was inevitable. We ignored the festering discontent in the bosom of our economy.
And linked to that, Lonmin, a company with its head in the sand, was woefully oblivious to the conditions its workers lived under. It is a reminder to corporate leaders that social stability must be part of the mainstream business agenda. It cannot be written off as a responsibility of the local government and political leaders. It’s not good enough to tick off the neat box of social corporate responsibility or say “I pay my taxes and this is not my job.”
Lonmin was more intent in the early stages on accusing workers of an illegal strike. When the massacre left 34 workers dead and 78 injured, its executives vanished, refused to meet the workers and then started issuing ultimatums for workers to return or face disciplinary action. Callous mine management, in their plush boardrooms in luxury London headquarters, are the face of rapacious capitalism. Their only preoccupation is the all-important production target of 750,000 saleable ounces of platinum that will be missed due to the closure of the Marikana mine. It is an attitude that will only stoke the anger in our communities.
And to us, horrified citizens, will we ever know the names of the dead workers and police officers? Who are they, what were their aspirations, how many children and dependents do they leave behind? Have we become so inured to endemic violence that it does not matter anymore?
They are statistics. Alongside the 15-million South Africans who are only saved from starvation because of social grant. Do we care that almost half our population lives in poverty or that that single mineworker probably supports eight people on a take-home minimum wage? According to Labour Force Survey figures, 60% of all workers earn less than R2,500 a month. Many of these workers are the sole income earners in their households.
These are statistics those of us living in the cosy bubbles of walled security suburbs like Sandton ignore at our peril.
The problems at Marikana were further compounded by the fact today many of these workers are sub-contracted. It has all the features of the heinous migrant labour system. Workers families are as invisible as they were in the Bantustan labour reservoirs of the past.
We had a foretaste of this dispute at Impala Platinum last year. The pay hikes granted to rock drill operators there sparked a similar demand at Lonmin. What did it teach us? There has to be a change of heart and business strategy in the mining sector.
I have often heard notable analysts complain of the high cost of labour. I don’t know which universe they live in. But how can you justify company executives and directors earn up to 250 times as much a rock driller? (Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Lonmin’s CEO, Ian Farmer was paid R15 million in 2011.)
Just as Marikana is a wake-up call for Cosatu, so it is for business and the ANC. Our democracy needs a strong union movement independent of political parties and business interests. But too much of Cosatu’s time is occupied debating the upcoming ANC leadership contest. The coming Cosatu Congress will be a watershed, where political divisions in the movement may herald the death knell of an independent labour movement that can represent the interests of the poor and marginalised.
Cosatu need to return to its founding principles of serving its members or Marikana will become the start of a downward spiral.
The Northwest province is ruled by the ANC, which also controls the bulk of the seats in the Rustenburg municipality. The platinum miners are the bedrock of the ANC support. The broken promises and the brazen corruption affect them directly. Criminal tenderpreneurs are flourishing in their midst. Most local authorities are dysfunctional. There is a deep-seated anger growing in the Northwest. There is a deep-seated anger growing in the country. And yet the leaders are not at the coal face. People feel robbed of their voices and powerless.
In the absence of strong, legitimate political organisation in the communities, they see violence as the only language their leaders will listen to. It’s is a vicious cycle that sees our people burning down any institution representing the state, whether a school, a library or a public building.
My hope is that the president will take us into his confidence. I know it hurts you deeply that the blood of our fellow citizens has been needlessly spilled. My desire is that the road to Mangaung should be shaped by the lessons of the road from Marikana. Our people, Mr President, are exhausted by the excuses given by our leaders. They want solutions and not more task teams, policy statements and conferences. They want action that improves the day-to-day lives, that delivers water and textbooks to schools, ARVs and medicines to our clinics.
I, like the majority of South Africans, have more questions than answers. But we must engage in a healthy open and frank debate. The alternative is too ghastly to contemplate.
Source: Daily Maverick
When I think of Marikana, I am reminded of Frantz Fanon in Wretched of the Earth: “Come, then, comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent and resolute.”
As a union organiser in the ’80s, I knew that taking workers out on strike on a legitimate wage demand is not an uphill battle. Taking workers back to work after a failed strike is the ultimate test for any union leader. Now is the time for calm heads to prevail.
The Judicial Commission of Enquiry appointed by President Zuma will hopefully present all the facts. It is the right decision. But it will take painstaking commitment on all sides to rebuild the trust that has been shattered. And that involves us all as citizens. There is not going to be a simple solution. This is a complex dispute that is at its very essence a microcosm of South African society.
Today a community struggles to recover from a bloody confrontation that has left the crumpled bodies of 44 citizens lying in the veld, seen starkly in our lounges and across the world. It has split brother from brother and left a community divided and volatile. This is the real trial of leadership on all sides. It is a tinderbox. We do not need demagoguery that stirs explosive emotions or to engage in finger-pointing that adds fuel to the fire.
The critical question is how could this have happened in 2012, 18 years into our democracy and the centenary commemoration of the ANC’s struggle for social justice and human dignity?
The answer simply is that there has been a massive failure of leadership on all sides. The critical question is why we did not act earlier on this festering dispute that today the nation mourns?
There is growing ferment in our land. The people in our townships, rural areas and squatter camps are bitter that democracy has not delivered the fruits that they see a tiny elite enjoying. Our leaders across the spectrum are not talking to our people, they are not working with them systematically to solve their problems, in providing the hope that one day, even in their children’s lives, things will be better.
All they see is the obscenity of shocking wealth and the chasm of inequality growing. The platinum mines they toil in, for a pittance, yield a precious metal that makes exorbitant jewellery that adorns the necks of the affluent and catalytic converters for the expensive cars the middle classes drive. The workers live in hovels, in informal squatter camps, surrounded by poverty and without basic services. All they experience is a political arrogance of leaders who more often than not enrich themselves at the expense the people. They are angry and restless.
A narrow law and order approach will not work in this depressing context. There is genuine anger out there that needs a political solution. I am aghast at the rapid rate at which our government had militarized the security forces and the creeping stranglehold of securocrats within the state. I wonder why our police intelligence failed so miserably to avert a disaster that threatens the country’s economic prospects. Are the securocrats in the state so occupied in searching for imaginary enemies in NGOs and civil society organisations and with passing “Secrecy Laws” that they missed one of biggest crises to face our democracy? There are important choices to be made by the government, but hard questions must first be asked. What are our priorities? What is the root cause of conflict in our society? These may be tough questions, but they are also unavoidable.
Inter-union rivalry is part of the problem. Lonmin management has recognised the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), which claims between 20% and 30% of the workforce, for dealing with shop floor issues affecting their membership; but they have fanned the rivalry by only giving recognition to the dominant unions, the National Union of Miners (NUM) and Solidarity, in official wage bargaining structures.
When you recognise a union but exclude it from the collective bargaining negotiations around the core issue of wages, you have a recipe for disaster.
The leadership of NUM and Cosatu need to address why so many mineworkers chose a different union and why they lost confidence in a Cosatu affiliate.
I have been in many places where I am personally told: “Comrade, we do not see union organisers. We don’t know what is happening in our union. Our leaders are too involved in politics and we do not get the services and education we did in the past.”
Have we lost touch with our members? After all, these workers were seasoned unionists who have fought many battles, yet they consciously joined an alternative union. We will need some brutal self-assessment here.
Collective bargaining is the cornerstone of our democracy. I believe it was the prototype of the political negotiations that laid the basis of our democracy. The battles fought by hardened antagonists who faced each other across a negotiating table that recognised the alternative to negotiations was a “scorched earth”. As trade unionists, we knew all the negotiating tactics: strikes, go-slows and lockouts and compromises. When industrial disputes spilled into the streets we united to find solutions and face the heat of angry workers.
Putting this collective bargaining machinery at risk will be a severe blow to our democracy. We cannot afford a free-for-all in such a fragile stage of our democracy.
Rustenburg is not a homogenous community. The growth of the platinum belt created an opportunity to develop the new non-racial towns of the future. Instead, all we see is the mushrooming of informal settlements, racial divisions and the spatial planning of our apartheid past. As job seekers flooded in from all over the country the competition over scarce resources was inevitable. We ignored the festering discontent in the bosom of our economy.
And linked to that, Lonmin, a company with its head in the sand, was woefully oblivious to the conditions its workers lived under. It is a reminder to corporate leaders that social stability must be part of the mainstream business agenda. It cannot be written off as a responsibility of the local government and political leaders. It’s not good enough to tick off the neat box of social corporate responsibility or say “I pay my taxes and this is not my job.”
Lonmin was more intent in the early stages on accusing workers of an illegal strike. When the massacre left 34 workers dead and 78 injured, its executives vanished, refused to meet the workers and then started issuing ultimatums for workers to return or face disciplinary action. Callous mine management, in their plush boardrooms in luxury London headquarters, are the face of rapacious capitalism. Their only preoccupation is the all-important production target of 750,000 saleable ounces of platinum that will be missed due to the closure of the Marikana mine. It is an attitude that will only stoke the anger in our communities.
And to us, horrified citizens, will we ever know the names of the dead workers and police officers? Who are they, what were their aspirations, how many children and dependents do they leave behind? Have we become so inured to endemic violence that it does not matter anymore?
They are statistics. Alongside the 15-million South Africans who are only saved from starvation because of social grant. Do we care that almost half our population lives in poverty or that that single mineworker probably supports eight people on a take-home minimum wage? According to Labour Force Survey figures, 60% of all workers earn less than R2,500 a month. Many of these workers are the sole income earners in their households.
These are statistics those of us living in the cosy bubbles of walled security suburbs like Sandton ignore at our peril.
The problems at Marikana were further compounded by the fact today many of these workers are sub-contracted. It has all the features of the heinous migrant labour system. Workers families are as invisible as they were in the Bantustan labour reservoirs of the past.
We had a foretaste of this dispute at Impala Platinum last year. The pay hikes granted to rock drill operators there sparked a similar demand at Lonmin. What did it teach us? There has to be a change of heart and business strategy in the mining sector.
I have often heard notable analysts complain of the high cost of labour. I don’t know which universe they live in. But how can you justify company executives and directors earn up to 250 times as much a rock driller? (Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Lonmin’s CEO, Ian Farmer was paid R15 million in 2011.)
Just as Marikana is a wake-up call for Cosatu, so it is for business and the ANC. Our democracy needs a strong union movement independent of political parties and business interests. But too much of Cosatu’s time is occupied debating the upcoming ANC leadership contest. The coming Cosatu Congress will be a watershed, where political divisions in the movement may herald the death knell of an independent labour movement that can represent the interests of the poor and marginalised.
Cosatu need to return to its founding principles of serving its members or Marikana will become the start of a downward spiral.
The Northwest province is ruled by the ANC, which also controls the bulk of the seats in the Rustenburg municipality. The platinum miners are the bedrock of the ANC support. The broken promises and the brazen corruption affect them directly. Criminal tenderpreneurs are flourishing in their midst. Most local authorities are dysfunctional. There is a deep-seated anger growing in the Northwest. There is a deep-seated anger growing in the country. And yet the leaders are not at the coal face. People feel robbed of their voices and powerless.
In the absence of strong, legitimate political organisation in the communities, they see violence as the only language their leaders will listen to. It’s is a vicious cycle that sees our people burning down any institution representing the state, whether a school, a library or a public building.
My hope is that the president will take us into his confidence. I know it hurts you deeply that the blood of our fellow citizens has been needlessly spilled. My desire is that the road to Mangaung should be shaped by the lessons of the road from Marikana. Our people, Mr President, are exhausted by the excuses given by our leaders. They want solutions and not more task teams, policy statements and conferences. They want action that improves the day-to-day lives, that delivers water and textbooks to schools, ARVs and medicines to our clinics.
I, like the majority of South Africans, have more questions than answers. But we must engage in a healthy open and frank debate. The alternative is too ghastly to contemplate.
Source: Daily Maverick
Miners give team cold shoulder
Angry striking workers at Lonmin's Marikana mine shunned President Jacob Zuma's inter-ministerial committee yesterday, rejecting help in organising a memorial service for those killed last week.
They said Zuma's failure to address them after the killings showed he did not care about their struggle for better living conditions.
Zuma has called for an inquiry into the killing of more than 40 people, including two police officers, and Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane is leading an interministerial team to assist families affected by the massacre.
But Chabane's team received a hostile reception from the North West miners.
The striking workers vented their anger at the ministers and presented them with cartridges they had retrieved from the scene of the Thursdays' shooting.
Xolani Ndzuza, the leader of a committee set up to represent the striking workers, spat on the ground before telling workers to reject an offer for the ministers to be involved in preparations for the memorial service scheduled for tomorrow.
"The memorial service that you say you want to organise for us, we don't want it.
"We don't welcome your help. The person who helped us is Julius Malema [expelled ANC Youth League president]. He is the one who told us that Cyril Ramaphosa sits on the board and spends millions buying animals. We don't want the R2-million he said will assist with the burial services."
Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, speaking on behalf of the ministerial committee, had earlier defended Zuma's failure to address the crowd, saying he had visited injured workers in hospital and "it was too late" in the day for him to meet the other workers.
"We agree with you that blood was spilled. It is not what we would have wanted. As the government, we would like to assist you to organise [Thursday's] memorial service," she said.
The committee had set up a desk at Rustenburg's municipal offices to help families track down missing relatives, who were either dead or injured in hospital, she said.
The ministerial committee said 33 of the 34 bodies had been positively identified, with one being a citizen of Lesotho.
Addressing journalists at the Marikana police station earlier, Malema said the workers had opened two murder charges, the first against the NUM security guards who had allegedly shot dead several striking workers two weeks ago. The second was against the police for the slaying of 34 workers at the Marikana hill last week.
Malema said he had helped workers open cases because he did not have confidence in the commission of inquiry set up by Zuma.
"Opening a case at the police is a process that we believe in . it will not be manipulated by political processes. With a commission of inquiry, we don't know the terms of reference, the judges that are going to be appointed or the criteria ."
Malema said a group of lawyers who had volunteered to help with the case were considering applying for an interdict to secure the release of 259 workers from jail to allow them to mourn the death of colleagues.
Source: Times Live
They said Zuma's failure to address them after the killings showed he did not care about their struggle for better living conditions.
Zuma has called for an inquiry into the killing of more than 40 people, including two police officers, and Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane is leading an interministerial team to assist families affected by the massacre.
But Chabane's team received a hostile reception from the North West miners.
The striking workers vented their anger at the ministers and presented them with cartridges they had retrieved from the scene of the Thursdays' shooting.
Xolani Ndzuza, the leader of a committee set up to represent the striking workers, spat on the ground before telling workers to reject an offer for the ministers to be involved in preparations for the memorial service scheduled for tomorrow.
"The memorial service that you say you want to organise for us, we don't want it.
"We don't welcome your help. The person who helped us is Julius Malema [expelled ANC Youth League president]. He is the one who told us that Cyril Ramaphosa sits on the board and spends millions buying animals. We don't want the R2-million he said will assist with the burial services."
Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, speaking on behalf of the ministerial committee, had earlier defended Zuma's failure to address the crowd, saying he had visited injured workers in hospital and "it was too late" in the day for him to meet the other workers.
"We agree with you that blood was spilled. It is not what we would have wanted. As the government, we would like to assist you to organise [Thursday's] memorial service," she said.
The committee had set up a desk at Rustenburg's municipal offices to help families track down missing relatives, who were either dead or injured in hospital, she said.
The ministerial committee said 33 of the 34 bodies had been positively identified, with one being a citizen of Lesotho.
Addressing journalists at the Marikana police station earlier, Malema said the workers had opened two murder charges, the first against the NUM security guards who had allegedly shot dead several striking workers two weeks ago. The second was against the police for the slaying of 34 workers at the Marikana hill last week.
Malema said he had helped workers open cases because he did not have confidence in the commission of inquiry set up by Zuma.
"Opening a case at the police is a process that we believe in . it will not be manipulated by political processes. With a commission of inquiry, we don't know the terms of reference, the judges that are going to be appointed or the criteria ."
Malema said a group of lawyers who had volunteered to help with the case were considering applying for an interdict to secure the release of 259 workers from jail to allow them to mourn the death of colleagues.
Source: Times Live
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, September 7, 2010
South Africa: workers reject offer but trade union leaders suspend strike
South Africa was moving towards a general strike type situation as the public sector strike that started on August 18 was building up momentum. Now the strike has been suspended by union leaders because of some concessions on the part of the government. This has angered many workers who wanted to step up action, not take a step back.
In a joint press statement on Monday, September 6, public sector unions affiliated with COSATU and the ILC, announced their decision to “suspend the strike” while announcing that this did not mean “that we have accepted the state offer”. (Strike is Suspended, COSATU)
The strike by 1.3 million public sector workers started on Wednesday, August 18 and had paralysed schools, hospitals and other public services. The strike reflected the deep seated anger of South African workers at the two-faced policies of the ANC government led by Zuma, with ministers getting high wages and all sorts of perks during the World Cup, while workers are denied their demands for a living wage and access to housing.
From the beginning the attitude of the government was provocative, with strongly worded statements by ministers saying there was no more money to be offered and giving the trade unions an ultimatum. This was combined with the use of the tribunals, the police and the army against the strikers, as well as a high profile media campaign accusing the strikers of murder for paralysing hospitals. This further enraged the trade union activists, who played a key role in replacing former president Mbeki for Zuma and were expecting him to be on their side.
Despite the government provocations the strike remained solid for two weeks and the mood was building up for solidarity action, possibly leading to a general strike in support of the public sector workers. The municipal workers’ union SAMWU moved a motion at the COSATU executive, which decided that all affiliated unions should issue 7 day notices for strike action. A general strike would have started, effectively, on September 2.
It was only the threat of a general strike, which had the full backing of powerful unions like the mineworkers’ NUM, which forced the government back to the negotiating table. President Zuma returned from his state visit to China and ordered the ministers to reach a deal with the unions. Too much was at stake and Zuma could not risk alienating his labour allies completely (as some were threatening not to support the ANC in forthcoming elections). Under these conditions, the government backtracked from its earlier position of “there is no more money” and agreed to increase its pay increase offer from 7% to 7.5%, though this was still short of the workers’ demands for 8.6%. The unions are correct in considering this as a victory, or at least a partial one.
However, the deal had to be put to union members. At this point, on Wednesday, September 1, COSATU decided to cancel the general strike. This was clearly a mistake. If you are in a position of strength, you do not abandon it. The trade union leaders probably thought that the membership would accept the revised offer. For all their radical language, the trade union leaders did not seem prepared to go all the way in their confrontation with the government.
To their surprise, the union ranks decided to reject the new offer. This was the case particularly with the teachers’ union SADTU, but also with the health and government workers’ union NEHAWU. It seems that even the ILC affiliated unions also rejected the offer, though only narrowly.
However, despite this mandate from the members, the trade union leaders decided to suspend the strike and give themselves 21 days to “finalise consultations on the draft agreement”. It seems likely that at least some of the trade union leaders who participated in the negotiations with the government were confident that they could sell the agreement to their members.
The level of anger at local meetings was such that the union leaders had to acknowledge that the proposal had been rejected. Business Report wrote that, “Sizwe Pamla, the national spokesman for the National Education Health and Allied Workers' Union, said on Friday that after a flood of e-mails and text messages ‘we had to acknowledge the rejections’.” But as this NEHAWU leader was not happy with the decision he tried to turn it into its opposite by saying that, “it was difficult to say it was an official rejection as members had not been properly consulted”. In other words, the trade union leaders did not manage to convince their members, but this was only because they did not explain the agreement properly, or fully, and therefore, another 21 days are needed.
This is a scandalous position. Once the momentum of the strike has been lost, it will be very difficult to build it up again. The union leaders should not have called off the general strike before getting an agreement that was acceptable to its members; this should be the ABC of trade union tactics. Once the threat of a general strike is lifted and the workers go back to work, even if the deal is rejected, what leverage do the unions have to extract more concessions from the government? None.
Many workers were rightly angry when they found out about the decision to stop the strike. City Press reported that NEHAWU “union leaders were chased out of the meeting in Johannesburg this afternoon”. The report quoted NEHAWU member Ramarumo as saying: “Members are angry and they want to protest by going to the national office to burn their membership cards”. The same report quoted the general secretary of Gauteng Central branch of SADTU, Ronald Nyathi as saying: “Teachers are not happy but after we learnt that some unions belonging to COSATU and the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC) accepted the government’s offer, we realised we can’t carry on with the strike alone.”
This will certainly raise a lot of questions amongst the trade union activists about their own leaders, particularly since COSATU has a proud tradition of standing for workers’ control over the union structures and officials.
Whatever the outcome of this particular battle, the main questions that were raised during the strike, particularly in relation to the policies of the ANC government, the relationship of the trade union movement with the government and the ANC, and also regarding the role of the SACP leaders in government, will not go away.
The forthcoming meeting of the ANC National General Council will be the place where many of these issues will be discussed. The ANC Youth League will certainly raise the need to nationalise the mines, as part of their campaign for “economic freedom in our lifetime”. The so-called Black Economic Empowerment will also be discussed. BEE has basically allowed a small minority of blacks (some in the circle of family and friends of Zuma himself) to join the capitalist class, while the majority of working people and the poor who carried out the struggle against apartheid have seen their living conditions deteriorate and the gap between rich and poor increase.
On Sunday, September 5, the chairperson of the Young Communist League, David Masondo, published a sharply written article in the City Press, denouncing BEE as a policy through which “certain black millionaires associated with the liberation movement have been cherry-picked by white businesses.” (BEE has evolved into a family affair, Citypress)The article has already caused divisions within the YCL, with a statement signed by YCLSA National Office Bearers distancing themselves from Masondo’s public criticism of Zuma (Statement by the YCL National Office Bearers on the article by David Masondo, YCL).
What is needed is to focus the debate on the crucial issue: the need for a socialist alternative which can really achieve “economic liberation within our life time”. Only by challenging the logic of capitalism, through the expropriation of the mines and big monopolies, can the pressing problems of the majority of South Africans, the workers and the poor, begin to be addressed. Whilst the economic power remains in the hands of an unelected minority, genuine liberation will not be achieved. Housing, land reform, education and health care for all, jobs… none of these issues can be solved within the limits of capitalism, as has been amply demonstrated in the 16 years since the end of apartheid. The formal rule of the vile regime of racial discrimination was abolished through the heroic struggle of the masses. But the capitalist regime which it served remains in place.
Source: International Marxist Tendency
In a joint press statement on Monday, September 6, public sector unions affiliated with COSATU and the ILC, announced their decision to “suspend the strike” while announcing that this did not mean “that we have accepted the state offer”. (Strike is Suspended, COSATU)
The strike by 1.3 million public sector workers started on Wednesday, August 18 and had paralysed schools, hospitals and other public services. The strike reflected the deep seated anger of South African workers at the two-faced policies of the ANC government led by Zuma, with ministers getting high wages and all sorts of perks during the World Cup, while workers are denied their demands for a living wage and access to housing.
From the beginning the attitude of the government was provocative, with strongly worded statements by ministers saying there was no more money to be offered and giving the trade unions an ultimatum. This was combined with the use of the tribunals, the police and the army against the strikers, as well as a high profile media campaign accusing the strikers of murder for paralysing hospitals. This further enraged the trade union activists, who played a key role in replacing former president Mbeki for Zuma and were expecting him to be on their side.
Despite the government provocations the strike remained solid for two weeks and the mood was building up for solidarity action, possibly leading to a general strike in support of the public sector workers. The municipal workers’ union SAMWU moved a motion at the COSATU executive, which decided that all affiliated unions should issue 7 day notices for strike action. A general strike would have started, effectively, on September 2.
It was only the threat of a general strike, which had the full backing of powerful unions like the mineworkers’ NUM, which forced the government back to the negotiating table. President Zuma returned from his state visit to China and ordered the ministers to reach a deal with the unions. Too much was at stake and Zuma could not risk alienating his labour allies completely (as some were threatening not to support the ANC in forthcoming elections). Under these conditions, the government backtracked from its earlier position of “there is no more money” and agreed to increase its pay increase offer from 7% to 7.5%, though this was still short of the workers’ demands for 8.6%. The unions are correct in considering this as a victory, or at least a partial one.
However, the deal had to be put to union members. At this point, on Wednesday, September 1, COSATU decided to cancel the general strike. This was clearly a mistake. If you are in a position of strength, you do not abandon it. The trade union leaders probably thought that the membership would accept the revised offer. For all their radical language, the trade union leaders did not seem prepared to go all the way in their confrontation with the government.
To their surprise, the union ranks decided to reject the new offer. This was the case particularly with the teachers’ union SADTU, but also with the health and government workers’ union NEHAWU. It seems that even the ILC affiliated unions also rejected the offer, though only narrowly.
However, despite this mandate from the members, the trade union leaders decided to suspend the strike and give themselves 21 days to “finalise consultations on the draft agreement”. It seems likely that at least some of the trade union leaders who participated in the negotiations with the government were confident that they could sell the agreement to their members.
The level of anger at local meetings was such that the union leaders had to acknowledge that the proposal had been rejected. Business Report wrote that, “Sizwe Pamla, the national spokesman for the National Education Health and Allied Workers' Union, said on Friday that after a flood of e-mails and text messages ‘we had to acknowledge the rejections’.” But as this NEHAWU leader was not happy with the decision he tried to turn it into its opposite by saying that, “it was difficult to say it was an official rejection as members had not been properly consulted”. In other words, the trade union leaders did not manage to convince their members, but this was only because they did not explain the agreement properly, or fully, and therefore, another 21 days are needed.
This is a scandalous position. Once the momentum of the strike has been lost, it will be very difficult to build it up again. The union leaders should not have called off the general strike before getting an agreement that was acceptable to its members; this should be the ABC of trade union tactics. Once the threat of a general strike is lifted and the workers go back to work, even if the deal is rejected, what leverage do the unions have to extract more concessions from the government? None.
Many workers were rightly angry when they found out about the decision to stop the strike. City Press reported that NEHAWU “union leaders were chased out of the meeting in Johannesburg this afternoon”. The report quoted NEHAWU member Ramarumo as saying: “Members are angry and they want to protest by going to the national office to burn their membership cards”. The same report quoted the general secretary of Gauteng Central branch of SADTU, Ronald Nyathi as saying: “Teachers are not happy but after we learnt that some unions belonging to COSATU and the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC) accepted the government’s offer, we realised we can’t carry on with the strike alone.”
This will certainly raise a lot of questions amongst the trade union activists about their own leaders, particularly since COSATU has a proud tradition of standing for workers’ control over the union structures and officials.
Whatever the outcome of this particular battle, the main questions that were raised during the strike, particularly in relation to the policies of the ANC government, the relationship of the trade union movement with the government and the ANC, and also regarding the role of the SACP leaders in government, will not go away.
The forthcoming meeting of the ANC National General Council will be the place where many of these issues will be discussed. The ANC Youth League will certainly raise the need to nationalise the mines, as part of their campaign for “economic freedom in our lifetime”. The so-called Black Economic Empowerment will also be discussed. BEE has basically allowed a small minority of blacks (some in the circle of family and friends of Zuma himself) to join the capitalist class, while the majority of working people and the poor who carried out the struggle against apartheid have seen their living conditions deteriorate and the gap between rich and poor increase.
On Sunday, September 5, the chairperson of the Young Communist League, David Masondo, published a sharply written article in the City Press, denouncing BEE as a policy through which “certain black millionaires associated with the liberation movement have been cherry-picked by white businesses.” (BEE has evolved into a family affair, Citypress)The article has already caused divisions within the YCL, with a statement signed by YCLSA National Office Bearers distancing themselves from Masondo’s public criticism of Zuma (Statement by the YCL National Office Bearers on the article by David Masondo, YCL).
What is needed is to focus the debate on the crucial issue: the need for a socialist alternative which can really achieve “economic liberation within our life time”. Only by challenging the logic of capitalism, through the expropriation of the mines and big monopolies, can the pressing problems of the majority of South Africans, the workers and the poor, begin to be addressed. Whilst the economic power remains in the hands of an unelected minority, genuine liberation will not be achieved. Housing, land reform, education and health care for all, jobs… none of these issues can be solved within the limits of capitalism, as has been amply demonstrated in the 16 years since the end of apartheid. The formal rule of the vile regime of racial discrimination was abolished through the heroic struggle of the masses. But the capitalist regime which it served remains in place.
Source: International Marxist Tendency
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Unions reject govt's revised wage offer
The public-sector strike is set to continue after South Africa's main labour federation late on Wednesday rejected a revised government wage offer. "We got a report from unions and the overwhelming majority of provincial structures have rejected the government's offer, the strike continues," Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said.
However, the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC), one of the labour umbrellas representing about 1,3-million workers, was still divided on the offer. Chris Klopper, chairperson of the ILC, said his organisation was "still in the process of collecting feedback from its members on the government's wage offer". "We're not in a position at this stage to pronounce our stance. At this stage it’s a 50-50 ... we will know by Friday what the stance is," said Klopper.
Unions tabled the improved offer to their members after President Jacob Zuma ordered his ministers to negotiate a solution to the 15-day stoppage that has paralysed schools and hospitals. "Unions will meet tomorrow morning [Thursday] to further discuss and assess where we are," said Vavi.
The government revised its offer to a 7,5% wage increase and an R800 housing allowance, up from its previous offer of a 7% raise and R700 for housing. Unions are demanding an 8,6% increase and a R1 000 housing allowance. Cosatu's stance did not come as a surprise as earlier on Wednesday one of the biggest striking unions said it had refused the latest proposal. "We have rejected the offer," said Sizwe Pamla, spokesperson for the National Education Health and Allied Workers, Union (Nehawu), which has about 244 000 members.
Zuma's order to break the deadlock came amid mounting pressure over the walk-out, which is now in its third week, as wage disputes spread to the private auto sector and forced an indefinite shutdown at a Volkswagen plant. But the revised public-sector offer saw sympathy strikes planned for Thursday, including at the country's mines, called off to give civil servants time to vote on the new deal. "The NUM would like to emphasise that this is a suspension and as such should a resolution not be found, the NUM reserves its right to strike," said the 320 000-strong National Union of Mineworkers.
Cosatu, which lists about two million members, had called for the solidarity strikes, which it suspended on Wednesday. However, it also warned that future stoppages were possible. "The federation would, however, stress that this is only a suspension and our affiliated unions remain ready to take solidarity strike action in support of the public-service workers if a resolution to the dispute is not reached."
Source: Mail & Guardian
However, the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC), one of the labour umbrellas representing about 1,3-million workers, was still divided on the offer. Chris Klopper, chairperson of the ILC, said his organisation was "still in the process of collecting feedback from its members on the government's wage offer". "We're not in a position at this stage to pronounce our stance. At this stage it’s a 50-50 ... we will know by Friday what the stance is," said Klopper.
Unions tabled the improved offer to their members after President Jacob Zuma ordered his ministers to negotiate a solution to the 15-day stoppage that has paralysed schools and hospitals. "Unions will meet tomorrow morning [Thursday] to further discuss and assess where we are," said Vavi.
The government revised its offer to a 7,5% wage increase and an R800 housing allowance, up from its previous offer of a 7% raise and R700 for housing. Unions are demanding an 8,6% increase and a R1 000 housing allowance. Cosatu's stance did not come as a surprise as earlier on Wednesday one of the biggest striking unions said it had refused the latest proposal. "We have rejected the offer," said Sizwe Pamla, spokesperson for the National Education Health and Allied Workers, Union (Nehawu), which has about 244 000 members.
Zuma's order to break the deadlock came amid mounting pressure over the walk-out, which is now in its third week, as wage disputes spread to the private auto sector and forced an indefinite shutdown at a Volkswagen plant. But the revised public-sector offer saw sympathy strikes planned for Thursday, including at the country's mines, called off to give civil servants time to vote on the new deal. "The NUM would like to emphasise that this is a suspension and as such should a resolution not be found, the NUM reserves its right to strike," said the 320 000-strong National Union of Mineworkers.
Cosatu, which lists about two million members, had called for the solidarity strikes, which it suspended on Wednesday. However, it also warned that future stoppages were possible. "The federation would, however, stress that this is only a suspension and our affiliated unions remain ready to take solidarity strike action in support of the public-service workers if a resolution to the dispute is not reached."
Source: Mail & Guardian
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Feeding Frenzy: its a BEE feast for Zuma cronies
The controversies surrounding the Sishen and Lonrho mineral rights have raised old questions about black economic empowerment (BEE), including the undeserved enrichment of elite individuals. But now, under the Jacob Zuma regime, there is growing concern about cronyism, patronage, and the role of government officials.
This time the appearance of patronage can be traced to the top. Some individuals, including the president’s son, Duduzane Zuma, could be greatly enriched by gaining ownership of mineral rights in a questionable process. Unease about the process has become more widespread.
The National Union of Metal Workers (Numsa) has commented scathingly on what it calls “the ArcelorMittal and Imperial Crown Trading looting scheme”. Minerals & resources minister Susan Shabangu’s decision last week to place a moratorium on new awards of mineral rights demonstrates that even government has concerns.
These events raise important questions: how are BEE policies working, what are the achievements and weaknesses — and are the effects in line with government’s intentions?
In more than 16 years, BEE has achieved many successes and some failures. It started in the early 1990s with companies such as Thebe Investments, launched by senior ANC officials, and Nthato Motlana’s Corporate Africa, which gained control of New Africa Investments (Nail). Thebe remains a successful enterprise, and there are other enduring black-controlled businesses. Some have grown through strong share price gains, buoyant markets and productive investment.
Among these are Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Minerals, with a R34bn market cap, and MTN (R225bn market cap) which is run by CE Phuthuma Nhleko. One of the most successful is the unlisted Royal Bafokeng Holdings, a community-based investment company . It started with royalties from Impala platinum mining . Under chairman Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi and CE Niall Carroll, a former investment banker, it has diversified into mining, financial and industrial investments. At its financial year-end last December, it had a R30bn investment portfolio and minimal debt.
Nail started as a 20% shareholder in Sanlam’s Metlife, then attempted to become a conglomerate but collapsed . Mvela Group gathered stakes in companies such as Absa and Life Healthcare, but is now being dismantled . Having made his fortune, founder Tokyo Sexwale has returned to politics as human settlements minister.
Throughout these years, there has been debate about how BEE can best be achieved, and it has worked — but also created risks and unease on many fronts. In an institutional or legal sense, rules of the game were set through the Broad- based Empowerment Act of 2003 and the publication of industry codes and charters over the next few years. These changed the way companies and other stakeholders think about the process.
In the 1990s it was mainly about deals and ownership. The codes and charters have formalised a broader approach. They use a balanced scorecard, giving only a 20% weighting to ownership. Companies also gain credit in other areas including preferential procurement, employment equity, skills development and enterprise development (see table). Management control, where influence over a business is large, gets only 10%.
However, ownership of equity in companies and access to other assets such as mineral rights still play a big role in the process. This is where some old themes and questions are constantly at play. Since the charters and new regulations came into effect , most big companies have done deals over the past few years.
In each case, there are familiar questions: how can the deal be funded when the BEE investors have limited or no capital? Should key individuals benefit from the deal, or should the shareholders be entirely broad-based? If lead individual investors are involved, what value will they add to the business? Will they assist in running the business , adding new perspectives on the board — or provide influence among cronies in high places?
The Sishen/ArcelorMittal case has attracted special attention, partly because valuable mineral rights are involved and there are individuals who have direct links to senior politicians. (See next story). In other large BEE deals announced recently, companies have opted for broad-based empowerment shareholders. That includes the Sasol, SABMiller and MTN deals.
Government and other stakeholders have backed the broad-based empowerment principle, which usually seems intuitively more beneficial. But there is still leeway for companies when designing BEE deals and choosing their partners.
The benefits of broad-based empowerment deals are not always achieved as hoped. Funding arrangements linked to the share price can unravel when product prices or financial markets weaken, as occurred two years ago. Sasol’s R30bn Inzalo deal — which gave 10% of the group’s share capital to the black public, broad-based BEE groups, trade unions, employees and the Sasol Inzalo Foundation — was announced in May 2008, when the share price rose to R490. It’s now R284. Other companies, such as Barloworld, have restructured BEE deals for similar reasons.
Jenny Cargill, founder of BEE consulting company BusinessMap, gives several examples of communities that have been disadvantaged by BEE ventures or decisions made by government officials . The Richtersveld community in the Northern Cape is one. Cargill describes the potentially negative effects on communities as BEE’s “powder keg”.
In planning BEE deals, dilemmas on issues such as funding and the shareholding structure can arise. As the Sishen/ArcelorMittal case has shown, the actual or perceived ability to influence decisions on access to those rights through special relationships can be a valuable card for black investors . For some investors, the special relationships may be their only currency .
When they do play that card, and stand to be greatly enriched , investors and other stakeholders are quick to link the decisions — by government and companies — to a culture of corruption and cronyism, though weak laws, poor transparency and inept officials may be part of the problem. That’s a risk that government cannot afford .
WHAT IT MEANS
The empowerment field is not level
ArcelorMittal deal is just plain rotten
Source: Financial Mail
This time the appearance of patronage can be traced to the top. Some individuals, including the president’s son, Duduzane Zuma, could be greatly enriched by gaining ownership of mineral rights in a questionable process. Unease about the process has become more widespread.
The National Union of Metal Workers (Numsa) has commented scathingly on what it calls “the ArcelorMittal and Imperial Crown Trading looting scheme”. Minerals & resources minister Susan Shabangu’s decision last week to place a moratorium on new awards of mineral rights demonstrates that even government has concerns.
These events raise important questions: how are BEE policies working, what are the achievements and weaknesses — and are the effects in line with government’s intentions?
In more than 16 years, BEE has achieved many successes and some failures. It started in the early 1990s with companies such as Thebe Investments, launched by senior ANC officials, and Nthato Motlana’s Corporate Africa, which gained control of New Africa Investments (Nail). Thebe remains a successful enterprise, and there are other enduring black-controlled businesses. Some have grown through strong share price gains, buoyant markets and productive investment.
Among these are Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Minerals, with a R34bn market cap, and MTN (R225bn market cap) which is run by CE Phuthuma Nhleko. One of the most successful is the unlisted Royal Bafokeng Holdings, a community-based investment company . It started with royalties from Impala platinum mining . Under chairman Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi and CE Niall Carroll, a former investment banker, it has diversified into mining, financial and industrial investments. At its financial year-end last December, it had a R30bn investment portfolio and minimal debt.
Nail started as a 20% shareholder in Sanlam’s Metlife, then attempted to become a conglomerate but collapsed . Mvela Group gathered stakes in companies such as Absa and Life Healthcare, but is now being dismantled . Having made his fortune, founder Tokyo Sexwale has returned to politics as human settlements minister.
Throughout these years, there has been debate about how BEE can best be achieved, and it has worked — but also created risks and unease on many fronts. In an institutional or legal sense, rules of the game were set through the Broad- based Empowerment Act of 2003 and the publication of industry codes and charters over the next few years. These changed the way companies and other stakeholders think about the process.
In the 1990s it was mainly about deals and ownership. The codes and charters have formalised a broader approach. They use a balanced scorecard, giving only a 20% weighting to ownership. Companies also gain credit in other areas including preferential procurement, employment equity, skills development and enterprise development (see table). Management control, where influence over a business is large, gets only 10%.
However, ownership of equity in companies and access to other assets such as mineral rights still play a big role in the process. This is where some old themes and questions are constantly at play. Since the charters and new regulations came into effect , most big companies have done deals over the past few years.
In each case, there are familiar questions: how can the deal be funded when the BEE investors have limited or no capital? Should key individuals benefit from the deal, or should the shareholders be entirely broad-based? If lead individual investors are involved, what value will they add to the business? Will they assist in running the business , adding new perspectives on the board — or provide influence among cronies in high places?
The Sishen/ArcelorMittal case has attracted special attention, partly because valuable mineral rights are involved and there are individuals who have direct links to senior politicians. (See next story). In other large BEE deals announced recently, companies have opted for broad-based empowerment shareholders. That includes the Sasol, SABMiller and MTN deals.
Government and other stakeholders have backed the broad-based empowerment principle, which usually seems intuitively more beneficial. But there is still leeway for companies when designing BEE deals and choosing their partners.
The benefits of broad-based empowerment deals are not always achieved as hoped. Funding arrangements linked to the share price can unravel when product prices or financial markets weaken, as occurred two years ago. Sasol’s R30bn Inzalo deal — which gave 10% of the group’s share capital to the black public, broad-based BEE groups, trade unions, employees and the Sasol Inzalo Foundation — was announced in May 2008, when the share price rose to R490. It’s now R284. Other companies, such as Barloworld, have restructured BEE deals for similar reasons.
Jenny Cargill, founder of BEE consulting company BusinessMap, gives several examples of communities that have been disadvantaged by BEE ventures or decisions made by government officials . The Richtersveld community in the Northern Cape is one. Cargill describes the potentially negative effects on communities as BEE’s “powder keg”.
In planning BEE deals, dilemmas on issues such as funding and the shareholding structure can arise. As the Sishen/ArcelorMittal case has shown, the actual or perceived ability to influence decisions on access to those rights through special relationships can be a valuable card for black investors . For some investors, the special relationships may be their only currency .
When they do play that card, and stand to be greatly enriched , investors and other stakeholders are quick to link the decisions — by government and companies — to a culture of corruption and cronyism, though weak laws, poor transparency and inept officials may be part of the problem. That’s a risk that government cannot afford .
WHAT IT MEANS
The empowerment field is not level
ArcelorMittal deal is just plain rotten
Source: Financial Mail
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
'Stop the politicians' feeding frenzy'
Cosatu leader Zwelinzima Vavi has warned that South Africa was slipping into becoming a "predatory state" where a new tier of leaders believed it was their turn to "feed". "There is an order in a predatory state - and I'm not saying that is what is happening - but in an ordinary predatory state there is an order in the feeding trough. The first family must feed first, and then the cabinet must come, and its family, and then the provincial leadership and the council. In the process we have battles of short-term interest," he said.
The Cosatu general secretary was speaking at a political school organised by the National Union of Metalworkers' of SA (Numsa) in Joburg last night. Fellow panellist, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, told the gathering the success of the ANC's struggles was not to be measured "on how many billionaires we have produced", but rather how the poverty experienced by the majority of people was addressed. The alliance leaders' comments come after multibillion-rand deals involving people directly linked to President Jacob Zuma, including his son, Duduzane, and his nephew, Khulubuse Zuma.
Mantashe asked whether having 20 black people among the top richest people in the country was really all that the "national democratic revolution" was about. The ANC's renewal campaign was about returning the party to its members. "It can't be dominated by a small inner circle that controls resources and gives access to wealth," he said.
Steel giant ArcelorMittal has come under fire after announcing a R9 billion deal to sell a 26 percent stake in its business, a transaction in which Duduzane Zuma as well as the Gupta family and other close associates of Zuma have scored millions of rands. Vavi said when it became a matter of politicians awaiting their turn to "feed", this was a "vulgarisation" of the alliance's struggle to liberate black African people. Economic empowerment and job creation were inextricably linked, he said. He criticised the government's "dilly-dallying" and "confusion" over developing a plan to curb the "job-loss bloodbath", that saw more than one million people lose their jobs in the past year. "Since April we are being told there is an economic growth path (policy document) and that it is coming. Up to now we have nothing in our hands, and we are going to discuss it for the first time in the (ANC's national general council, its mid-term policy review conference). Even that shows that there is a state of confusion up there," Vavi said. There was a growth path envisaged by cabinet and a separate one envisioned by the ANC, Vavi said. "As a result... you might be going in two different directions. It is a crisis."
Also present was SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, who called for a review of the country's black economic empowerment policies. "Who has it worked for? And is it being corrupted in a big way?" he asked. Nzimande repeated his warnings against "tenderpreneurs" - people who manipulate state contracts to enrich themselves - and businesses that chased state tenders rather than creating opportunities in the private sector. "BEE is in a big crisis, so its roots (are) in picking on the state. When that goes on, we will turn South Africa into one big tender which will be sold to the highest bidder," he said. "You will bring in counter-revolution, because anything that stands in the way, will be dealt with quite severely."
Source: IOL
The Cosatu general secretary was speaking at a political school organised by the National Union of Metalworkers' of SA (Numsa) in Joburg last night. Fellow panellist, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, told the gathering the success of the ANC's struggles was not to be measured "on how many billionaires we have produced", but rather how the poverty experienced by the majority of people was addressed. The alliance leaders' comments come after multibillion-rand deals involving people directly linked to President Jacob Zuma, including his son, Duduzane, and his nephew, Khulubuse Zuma.
Mantashe asked whether having 20 black people among the top richest people in the country was really all that the "national democratic revolution" was about. The ANC's renewal campaign was about returning the party to its members. "It can't be dominated by a small inner circle that controls resources and gives access to wealth," he said.
Steel giant ArcelorMittal has come under fire after announcing a R9 billion deal to sell a 26 percent stake in its business, a transaction in which Duduzane Zuma as well as the Gupta family and other close associates of Zuma have scored millions of rands. Vavi said when it became a matter of politicians awaiting their turn to "feed", this was a "vulgarisation" of the alliance's struggle to liberate black African people. Economic empowerment and job creation were inextricably linked, he said. He criticised the government's "dilly-dallying" and "confusion" over developing a plan to curb the "job-loss bloodbath", that saw more than one million people lose their jobs in the past year. "Since April we are being told there is an economic growth path (policy document) and that it is coming. Up to now we have nothing in our hands, and we are going to discuss it for the first time in the (ANC's national general council, its mid-term policy review conference). Even that shows that there is a state of confusion up there," Vavi said. There was a growth path envisaged by cabinet and a separate one envisioned by the ANC, Vavi said. "As a result... you might be going in two different directions. It is a crisis."
Also present was SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, who called for a review of the country's black economic empowerment policies. "Who has it worked for? And is it being corrupted in a big way?" he asked. Nzimande repeated his warnings against "tenderpreneurs" - people who manipulate state contracts to enrich themselves - and businesses that chased state tenders rather than creating opportunities in the private sector. "BEE is in a big crisis, so its roots (are) in picking on the state. When that goes on, we will turn South Africa into one big tender which will be sold to the highest bidder," he said. "You will bring in counter-revolution, because anything that stands in the way, will be dealt with quite severely."
Source: IOL
Friday, August 13, 2010
Aurora must take responsibility over shooting: Cosatu
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in Gauteng has joined scores of voices in condemning the recent shooting to death of alleged ‘illegal’ miners three days ago at Aurora’s Grootvlei mine in Ekurhuleni.
Cosatu said, “We have learned with shock the current development surrounding the death of the people at the above mines,” it continued, “We believe that the company must take full responsibility for what is happening in the mine.”
Cosatu says it fully supports the call by its affiliate, the National Union of Mineworker’s, for an investigation into what really lead to the deaths in the mines.
“We will be urgently convening an urgent meeting with the department of labour to deal with the conditions affecting our members in this mine; we will also be seeking a meeting with the Gauteng Government and Ekurhuleni Municipality to find ways and means to assist these workers,” Cosatu said.
Source: Times Live
Cosatu said, “We have learned with shock the current development surrounding the death of the people at the above mines,” it continued, “We believe that the company must take full responsibility for what is happening in the mine.”
Cosatu says it fully supports the call by its affiliate, the National Union of Mineworker’s, for an investigation into what really lead to the deaths in the mines.
“We will be urgently convening an urgent meeting with the department of labour to deal with the conditions affecting our members in this mine; we will also be seeking a meeting with the Gauteng Government and Ekurhuleni Municipality to find ways and means to assist these workers,” Cosatu said.
Source: Times Live
Friday, February 19, 2010
Union slams Malema
While a Cosatu-affiliated union leader described Julius Malema as part of a "marauding gang" threatening to destabilise the ANC, the youth leader in turn warned the federation's Zwelinzima Vavi to stop demanding lifestyle audits. At the centre of it all is a low-intensity war triggered by succession tensions ahead of the ANC's 2012 national conference, following skirmishes over the 2007 conference.
The youth league wants to replace ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe with Deputy Police Minister Fikile Mbalula. This has angered Cosatu and the SA Communist Party as they see the coup intentions as motivated by anti-communist sentiments. Irvin Jim, general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has questioned President Jacob Zuma's silence while Mantashe was being attacked by Malema. Jim intimated that Zuma had failed Mantashe by not defending him.
Numsa singled out Malema and accused him of causing divisions within the alliance. Jim warned Malema that he would have to work very hard to remove Mantashe. "We know that he (Malema) has been one of the people among the ANC Youth League, which is not a class organisation, who have been talking. "We sat down and analysed what has been said and we will defend the ANC because we believe that it is not the property of unscrupulous individuals who are only interested in their wealth and tenders," said Jim. He said a number of alliance members wanted communists and trade unionists out of the alliance.
Numsa said the ANC in the provinces was being used for financial gain - and cited that all provincial ANC conferences had been contested in the quest for power over government tenders. "There's a network of marauding gangs who don't sleep and they impose their hegemony on others... and they do as they wish. "The ANC is not an organisation of tsotsis (thugs) who would sit in shebeens and decide to put their friends as leaders. "Mantashe is being eaten alive and Malema should have been reprimanded," said Jim. "Those who've said Mantashe must go are threatening to weaken, fragment and destabilise this movement. Enough is enough," said Jim. He said Malema was not the only ANC leader to have been booed in public, referring to the jeering of the youth league president by SACP delegates in Limpopo last year.
Numsa questioned why the ruling party had drafted a report to the ANC national executive committee on the booing of Malema but had failed to do the same when former President Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka were booed while in office. "When Julius is booed at the SACP, there must be a report, but Terror (Lekota) got booed in Polokwane, Thabo (Mbeki) was booed in KwaZulu-Natal including Phumzile (Mlambo-Ngcuka) and there was no report," said Jim.
The union also backed the SACP's call that all the names of people, including politicians, who applied for state tenders should be made public to prevent the "depletion" of taxpayers' money. Cosatu general secretary Vavi wants politicians' lifestyles to be audited to expose their inexplicable wealth.
At a meeting between Cosatu and the ANC Youth League leadership yesterday, Malema apparently told Vavi that his demand for audits would expose some of the leaders in the left "who pretend to be working class". According to an insider, Malema said the so-called Left leaders were not as clean as they appeared to be.
Source: IoL
The youth league wants to replace ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe with Deputy Police Minister Fikile Mbalula. This has angered Cosatu and the SA Communist Party as they see the coup intentions as motivated by anti-communist sentiments. Irvin Jim, general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has questioned President Jacob Zuma's silence while Mantashe was being attacked by Malema. Jim intimated that Zuma had failed Mantashe by not defending him.
Numsa singled out Malema and accused him of causing divisions within the alliance. Jim warned Malema that he would have to work very hard to remove Mantashe. "We know that he (Malema) has been one of the people among the ANC Youth League, which is not a class organisation, who have been talking. "We sat down and analysed what has been said and we will defend the ANC because we believe that it is not the property of unscrupulous individuals who are only interested in their wealth and tenders," said Jim. He said a number of alliance members wanted communists and trade unionists out of the alliance.
Numsa said the ANC in the provinces was being used for financial gain - and cited that all provincial ANC conferences had been contested in the quest for power over government tenders. "There's a network of marauding gangs who don't sleep and they impose their hegemony on others... and they do as they wish. "The ANC is not an organisation of tsotsis (thugs) who would sit in shebeens and decide to put their friends as leaders. "Mantashe is being eaten alive and Malema should have been reprimanded," said Jim. "Those who've said Mantashe must go are threatening to weaken, fragment and destabilise this movement. Enough is enough," said Jim. He said Malema was not the only ANC leader to have been booed in public, referring to the jeering of the youth league president by SACP delegates in Limpopo last year.
Numsa questioned why the ruling party had drafted a report to the ANC national executive committee on the booing of Malema but had failed to do the same when former President Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka were booed while in office. "When Julius is booed at the SACP, there must be a report, but Terror (Lekota) got booed in Polokwane, Thabo (Mbeki) was booed in KwaZulu-Natal including Phumzile (Mlambo-Ngcuka) and there was no report," said Jim.
The union also backed the SACP's call that all the names of people, including politicians, who applied for state tenders should be made public to prevent the "depletion" of taxpayers' money. Cosatu general secretary Vavi wants politicians' lifestyles to be audited to expose their inexplicable wealth.
At a meeting between Cosatu and the ANC Youth League leadership yesterday, Malema apparently told Vavi that his demand for audits would expose some of the leaders in the left "who pretend to be working class". According to an insider, Malema said the so-called Left leaders were not as clean as they appeared to be.
Source: IoL
Monday, February 25, 2008
Don't sacrifice lives for profit, says Motsepe
No life could be "sacrificed" in the name of profits, mining magnate and businessman Patrice Motsepe told protesting workers at a ferromanganese smelter near Durban on Monday. Speaking to workers, who on Monday staged a protest at the Assmang smelter following Sunday's blast that claimed the lives of five people, Motsepe said: "There is no life that can be sacrificed in the name of profits or making money. I will not tolerate it."
Motsepe, who is the largest single shareholder in African Rainbow Minerals, which is a 50% shareholder in Assmang, said that the circumstances surrounding Sunday's accident appeared to be similar to an accident that happened at the smelter last year. Motsepe spoke to workers after meeting with the Assmang management as well as senior workers' representatives. The explosion and subsequent fire ripped through the number six furnace of the smelter shortly before 5am in Cato Ridge, about 60km from Durban. One person died at the scene while a further four died during the course of Sunday and Monday morning. After addressing the workers, Motsepe told journalist that he could not comment on the cause of the accident until the completion of investigations. "We are not representing shareholders' interests if there is no zero tolerance towards [poor] safety," he said. Following the blast, the smelter's six furnaces were shut down. Motsepe could not immediately say how much the shutdown was costing the company. However, even though the smelter had been shut down, the estimated 700 workers were still expected to report for work to ensure that they were paid.
KwaZulu-Natal provincial minister of social welfare Meshak Radebe and Durban mayor Obed Mlaba also briefly spoke to the protesting workers. Earlier in the day about 100 workers marched from the smelter to the Cato Ridge Country club with a coffin, which they then placed in the middle of a hall where a Labour Department inquiry into a manganese poisoning case at Assmang was being held. The inquiry had to be postponed and was resumed later in the afternoon when the workers returned to the smelter. The inquiry, headed by Vuli Sibisi, is investigating the alleged 40 cases of manganism caused by workers breathing in fumes with airborne manganese particles.
Manganism is acquired by over-exposure to airborne manganese and is a disease that affects the sufferer's central nervous system, leaving them with symptoms very similar to Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. Assmang executive director, Brian Brookeman, was about to give testimony when the workers marched into the hall with their coffin. On Monday, the Labour Department announced that the company would be subject to a second inquiry that would investigate the cause of Sunday's explosion. Labour department spokesperson Zolisa Sigabi said "a full-scale government investigation is under way following yesterday's [Sunday] massive explosion. The inquiry aims at establishing the cause of the tragedy, including any possible negligence or flouting of occupational health and safety measures," she said. On Sunday she said: "Labour inspectors who immediately arrived at the scene have in a preliminary report indicated that it is suspected that a water leakage into furnace number six caused the explosion to occur."
Earlier, National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) spokesperson Mziwakhe Hlangani said that the company's engineers had ordered that the furnace be shut down before the explosion "after it was detected to have a water leakage". "We do not know how and why it was operated by the night-shift staff operators, because it was declared unsafe to put it [the furnace] in operation and we believe drastic steps after thorough investigations should be taken," Numsa local organiser Siphiwe Ntsele said. He said it was the second blast in nearly three months. He claimed that a worker had died on December 14 2007, in a similar blast.
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Monday condemned the blast and vowed to "pull all stops in getting someone to account for the deaths and injuries" in Sunday's incident.
Source: IoL
Motsepe, who is the largest single shareholder in African Rainbow Minerals, which is a 50% shareholder in Assmang, said that the circumstances surrounding Sunday's accident appeared to be similar to an accident that happened at the smelter last year. Motsepe spoke to workers after meeting with the Assmang management as well as senior workers' representatives. The explosion and subsequent fire ripped through the number six furnace of the smelter shortly before 5am in Cato Ridge, about 60km from Durban. One person died at the scene while a further four died during the course of Sunday and Monday morning. After addressing the workers, Motsepe told journalist that he could not comment on the cause of the accident until the completion of investigations. "We are not representing shareholders' interests if there is no zero tolerance towards [poor] safety," he said. Following the blast, the smelter's six furnaces were shut down. Motsepe could not immediately say how much the shutdown was costing the company. However, even though the smelter had been shut down, the estimated 700 workers were still expected to report for work to ensure that they were paid.
KwaZulu-Natal provincial minister of social welfare Meshak Radebe and Durban mayor Obed Mlaba also briefly spoke to the protesting workers. Earlier in the day about 100 workers marched from the smelter to the Cato Ridge Country club with a coffin, which they then placed in the middle of a hall where a Labour Department inquiry into a manganese poisoning case at Assmang was being held. The inquiry had to be postponed and was resumed later in the afternoon when the workers returned to the smelter. The inquiry, headed by Vuli Sibisi, is investigating the alleged 40 cases of manganism caused by workers breathing in fumes with airborne manganese particles.
Manganism is acquired by over-exposure to airborne manganese and is a disease that affects the sufferer's central nervous system, leaving them with symptoms very similar to Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. Assmang executive director, Brian Brookeman, was about to give testimony when the workers marched into the hall with their coffin. On Monday, the Labour Department announced that the company would be subject to a second inquiry that would investigate the cause of Sunday's explosion. Labour department spokesperson Zolisa Sigabi said "a full-scale government investigation is under way following yesterday's [Sunday] massive explosion. The inquiry aims at establishing the cause of the tragedy, including any possible negligence or flouting of occupational health and safety measures," she said. On Sunday she said: "Labour inspectors who immediately arrived at the scene have in a preliminary report indicated that it is suspected that a water leakage into furnace number six caused the explosion to occur."
Earlier, National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) spokesperson Mziwakhe Hlangani said that the company's engineers had ordered that the furnace be shut down before the explosion "after it was detected to have a water leakage". "We do not know how and why it was operated by the night-shift staff operators, because it was declared unsafe to put it [the furnace] in operation and we believe drastic steps after thorough investigations should be taken," Numsa local organiser Siphiwe Ntsele said. He said it was the second blast in nearly three months. He claimed that a worker had died on December 14 2007, in a similar blast.
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Monday condemned the blast and vowed to "pull all stops in getting someone to account for the deaths and injuries" in Sunday's incident.
Source: IoL
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