[miningmx.com] – ALL eyes fall on South African deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe on Friday who will become the focal point of government’s high stakes gambit to end eighteen months of violent protest on the country’s mines.
Failure to becalm the shifting sands in South Africa’s restive labour market will lead to many more months of unrest, and likely to preface bitter wage negotiations in the platinum, coal and gold sectors.
Motlanthe will head a summit which appears to have the full attention of the Associated Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU), which is more than can be said for the efforts of others, including Lonmin. Despite the platinum firm’s exertions, it has been unable to persuade AMCU to ditch its posturing. The wolf remains ominously at the door.
But in a statement on Thursday, AMCU signalled its willingness to hear out the government, suspending its planned strike action at Lonmin in the interim.
“We figured it is important to afford the deputy president an opportunity of realising the challenges faced by ourselves and engage in the presence of other stakeholders in forging a good working relationship in particular with the employers,’ said AMCU in its statement.
“We have done this in order to assure the nation and whole world of our holistic commitments towards good industrial relationship at the workplace,’ it said.
That’s a massive statement from a union that has borne the label of troublemaker, the lean and hungry Cassius to the noble Brutus the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) would have us believe it is. May it signal a turning point in AMCU’s evolution in which it moves from one dimensional aggression to the more subtle arts of negotiation?
That depends on the leadership. Joseph Mathunjwa, president of AMCU, has stepped back from the threatening words of last month in which he raised the prospect of a mass march to the Union Buildings. But he will need assurance from Motlanthe that the government prizes the welfare of its people over political alliances.
It’s government’s big play; the trump card towards which it has been building over the last four weeks, demonstrated by the utterances of a host of senior ministers including labour and mines ministers Mildred Oliphant and Susan Shabangu, finance minister Pravin Gordhan, and more lately, President Zuma himself.
“If it was not for the mining strikes, the economy could have created more than 57,000 jobs,’ said Zuma in parliament on Thursday. “While the mining sector has recorded some recovery in the first quarter of 2013, the sector is still performing below its potential, he said.
It actually sounded like a moment of rare leadership in which Zuma called for the “. need to support the mining sector and to ensure that there is a restoration of labour peace and order in the mining towns’.
“Close to 60% of South African exports are mining sector related,’ he said.
It could have been the Chamber of Mines talking. Here’s hoping the sensibility can be taken into the crucial discussions on Friday.
