[miningmx.com] – THERE’S a degree of scepticism among the ranks of mining leaders regarding Operation Phakisa, a South African government initiative aimed at identifying solutions to issues first identified by the National Development Plan (NDP) such as poverty and unemployment.
The primary concern is that it’ll be another “talk-shop’ akin to recent other encounters held between unions and the private sector such as the annual Mining Lekgotla (cancelled this year).
Mining bosses are also influenced by the lack of agreement on the mining charter – a development that first went to the courts and has now been set aside for another round of talks.
The commentary at a recent mining conference, the Joburg Indaba, repeatedly settled on the need for more honest conversations, not least of which was from one of the authors of the NDP, Trevor Manuel, now deputy chairman of Rothschilds, a bank.
“Phakisa is a long list; it’s a nice list, but it’s also a list for nice conversation,” said Manuel. He warned invited participants not to engage in the talk of “smoke-filled rooms … so that by the end of the fourth bottle of wine everyone feels they are loved”.
“I speak with the freedom of an outsider. Mining is like politics in that both are at a low ebb,” he said.
Operation Phakisa, which is administered through the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation and extends to the whole economy, not just mining, has its origin in President Jacob Zuma’s 2013 visit to Malaysia.
It was during that visit he heard about the country’s successes in tackling unemployment and crime through a process it called Big Fast Results Methodology. Phakisa is, therefore, Sesotho for ‘Hurry up’.
There is, though, not enough ‘hurrying up’ for some, including Bernard Swanepoel, the former CEO of Harmony Gold and Village Main Reef. “The fear with Operation Phakisa is the design,” he said. Extending the mining discussion over more than a month was not practical for the executive class, he said.
“I’m sure it will only have junior people attending because I don’t expect people like Terence Goodlace [CEO of Impala Platinum] to have five weeks to sit on a golf course,” said Swanepoel.
And of the no-shows, perhaps among the most critical is Joseph Mathunjwa, president of the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU). Mathunjwa was scornful of the exercise, saying it made “no sense”, and claiming not to know much about it. AMCU is the largest union in the platinum sector and is rapidly growing its membership in the gold industry.
In the wake of the Marikana atrocity, and amid claims from the Benchmarks Foundation that the mining sector has lost its legitimacy among communities, a conversation with the edgiest of the sector’s union is exactly the kind of “hard encounter” Phakisa’s critics want to see take place.
The size and shape of the difficulties of conversation were perfectly demonstrated in an exchange between Mathunjwa and Impala’s Goodlace at the Joburg Indaba.
Said Goodlace in respect of the need to attract foreign capital: “We’re in a situation now that if we don’t dig ourselves out of the productivity hole we have created, there is no future. It’s that urgent.
“It can’t only be a conversation in wage negotiations; we have to rectify productivity,” he added.
Mathunjwa replied: “Capitalists are not going to invest in order to correct things of the past. I tell you, if this doesn’t change, South Arica will burn. Government policies just seem to be embracing the capitalist approach”.
They – Goodlace and Mathunjwa – may well have been sitting in different rooms, so large was the span by which they talked past each other.
Never one to mince his words, Sibanye Gold CEO, Neal Froneman, said the mining sector had nothing to rely on except its own efforts. “We have looked for leadership from Government but it hasn’t come.
“And we don’t look for it from unions or associations. It won’t come from any other stakeholder but ourselves. We have to be aware of what’s noise; what we can change; and what we can’t. I think Operation Phakisa might be a talk shop,” he said.
