[miningmx.com] – LONMIN is facing an enormous credibility crisis following evidence submitted to the Farlam commission by Joseph Mathunjwa, president of the Associated Mineworkers & Construction Union (Amcu).
The Farlam commission is investigating the events leading up to the Marikana massacre in August when 44 miners were killed at the Lonmin platinum mine amid protests which included wage increase demands.
Mathunjwa’s union was accused of fuelling the violence that led to the mine deaths, but last week the union boss gave detailed evidence describing how he tried to stop the violence.
The bombshell is a claim by Mathunjwa that on the day when 34 miners were shot by police, Lonmin had broken a promise to engage workers if they agreed to lay down their arms and return to work.
Members of Lonmin’s top management attended the hearing during evidence in the Rustenburg Civic Centre. The mining group also appointed a well known flak-catcher, Brunswick, to attend the hearings and help reduce the damage to its public image.
Lonmin, which became the target of a hostile takeover by Xstrata three weeks ago, also hired advocate Schalk Burger, SC, one of the country’s most fearsome cross examiners, to discredit Mathunjwa’s evidence.
Burger’s biggest stumbling block, however, is that key parts of the oral evidence is supported by video footage and sound recordings made by the SA Policie Service (SAPS), news organisations, and even Mathunjwa himself on the fateful day 16 August and run-up to it the previous day.
In one of the sound recordings, made by Mathunjwa with his cellphone, the vice-president for human resources at Lonmin, Barnard Mokwena, promised his company would talk to its workers about their demands as soon as they laid down their arms and returned to their workplace.
Shortly afterwards, Mathunjwa was driven in an armoured police vehicle to the koppie (hill) where the strikers had dug themselves in. He told them through a loudhailer of Lonmin’s undertaking.
Mokwena made the promise during a meeting on the evening of 15 August, the day before the massacre, in the presence of three police generals in charge of the scene, Mathunjwa, as well as the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Senzeni Zokwana.
Major-general William Mpembe, the commanding officer at the scene, pleaded with Mathunjwa and Zokwana to go and talk to the strikers on the koppie behind Wonderkop hostel. He wanted the two union leaders to persuade the strikers to lay down their arms.
“So when the workers are back, disarmed, tomorrow, tonight, through their leaders we will meet them,’ Mokwena said according to the transcript of the meeting.
Mathunjwa then agreed to go and talk to the strikers, but Zokwana at first refused. Later, Zokwana changed his mind, but he insisted going separately to Mathunjwa and under police protection.
The strikers didn’t want to talk to Zokwana and he left. Mathunjwa later addressed them after nightfall under similar circumstances.
He asked them to lay down their arms which would pave the way to talks. The miners asked Mathunjwa to return the next morning at 9am, and not to address them from inside a police vehicle.
“We don’t want to sit here with the police. We don’t want to fight. We want to talk to Amcu,’ one of the strikers shouted in coarse voice in Fanagalo (pidgin based on Zulu, English and Afrikaans) at the window of the of the armoured vehicle.
Mathunjwa returned to the police command post where he informed Mpembe and Lonmin officials that he expected the strikers to lay down their arms the next morning.
But when he arrived the next morning, he couldn’t find Mokwena. Another executive, Jomo Kwadi, arrived and told him that he had bad news: Lonmin could not commit itself to talk to the workers even if they returned to work.
Burger argued in cross examination that a “toxic relationship’ existed between Amcu and the NUM and that that led to the massacre. The NUM accused Amcu on several occasions of instigating the strike in order to unseat the NUM at Lonmin.
Mathunjwa’s involvement in efforts to end the strike was on the invitation of Mokwena, but Burger accused Mathunjwa of abusing the situation in order to recruit members for Amcu, and to force a seat for himself on the Lonmin bargaining forum.
Burger then produced an affidavit from Mohamed Seedat, a non-executive director at Lonmin in which he says Mathunjwa asked him on the day of the massacre to ensure a seat at the table for Mathunjwa in exchange for which Mathunjwa would get the strikers off the koppie.
Burger: You were playing a game of fearsome odds, Mr Mathunjwa, and tried to get a seat at the table.
Mathunjwa: Let’s look at the facts. [I] … wasn’t promised a seat at the table, but later went back to the koppie … without police protection where I begged the workers to come down from the koppie.
