THE National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) wants the South Africa’s mines minister to make good on his threat to withdraw the mining licences of Sibanye-Stillwater’s gold mines, said Fin24 in a report on Monday.
It quoted the NUM has saying: “With poor black mineworkers on strike for almost three months demanding a mere R1 000 and 6% in living wages, Sibanye-Stillwater continues to show workers a middle finger”.
“We will be fully supporting the minister when he starts the process of revoking Sibanye-Stillwater’s mining licence. We are calling for Minister Gwede Mantashe not to capitulate when threatened with legal action by this evil company.”
He added that: “But that’s not what we are trying to do. We are extremely concerned about the fact our employees are not receiving their pay”.
In concluding remarks after the debate on the mineral resources and energy budget vote in Parliament last Thursday, Mantashe said: “The message he is sending to us is that he is not ready to actually mine gold. He has enough money to fight a strike and stop production for years and years”.
“And that actually sends us a message that says the department, relevant officials look into the possibility of the application of section 47. A mine that does not want to mine but sit on the properties … so that we can give that property to companies that want to mine gold.”
Speaking to BusinessLive, the company’s spokesman James Wellsted commented that the firm reserved the right to protect the interests of its stakeholders through appropriate legal channels.
BusinessLive added that the government’s threats were without substance. “I don’t think Mantashe is going to get far with it. The mines are on strike. I think he will not get anywhere in court,” said René Hochreiter, a consulting mining analyst at Noah Capital Markets and Sieberana Research.
So a union that dances around in red shirts, celebrating Communist Russia, the USSR, red type of shirts, 30 years after the global collapse of Communism, of the Communist economic system wants to teach Capitalists how a country should be run. China has 5% business taxes in Shenzhen and in its 36 other special economic zones. Russia has 13% business taxes
Google Russia business taxes
Cuba has tax free business zones
Google Cuba tax free business zones
Brazil is privatizing on mass scale, India too, Russia has already done so. South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world and we persist with a Socialistic / Communist red shirt led ideological outlook 30 years after the global collapse of Communism, of state control, of state run economics. There’s little structural economic reforms, SOE privatization taking place. No labor market flexibility. The worst youth unemployment in the world.
So they destroy 3 months of income for the government, for shareholders, for employees.
When is NUM going to compensate the company tens of billions of Rands?
When are the unions going to pay the ANC R15+ bn in lost revenue, lost jobs, lost income, lost production, lost savings, lost exports, lost investment, lost business confidence, lost business opportunities.
Commodity prices are at historical highs, why are they striking over R150 extra a month?
From Neal Froneman’s remuneration of R300m the government will collect a minimum of R120m. The Sibanye group employs 84 000 employees. Mantashe is prepared to forfeit all the taxes the MD plus employees pay and put all these people out of a job. Unfortunately this is the type of ” creative thinking” that gets our country nowhere. Eish!!!!