[miningmx.com] – DOES anybody know the identity of the forces laying seige to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) as set down in mines minster Susan Shabangu’s address to the union’s central executive committee meeting on Friday (May 24)?
At first glance, it’s definitely the Associated Mineworkers & Construction Union (Amcu), the rival union that has had a hand in the NUM losing some 44,000 members over the last 12 months.
According to Shabangu, it is making sure “… that no progressive trade union will be present in the mining sector…”. Yes, that would be Amcu as it kicks back against Lonmin’s wishes to have true democratisation in the work place.
Continuing to allude to these forces, however, Shabangu says that they are not only challenging the NUM, but that they have a broader, more sinister intention.
“It is only those who are wilfully blind who will not see that these forces, by extension, want to realise one major objective: ultimately to defeat and dislodge the ANC from power …”.
According to Shabangu, these forces aim at the demise of the union movement in the same way that the UK government under the late Margaret Thatcher used internal divisions within the British trade union movement to weaken its power and eventually diminish its influence in British politics.
It seems a very inexact allusion to history and makes one unsure if this is a realistic fear notwithstanding divisions within the broader organised labour movement. But this was a speech aimed at rallying the flagging morale in the NUM and, therefore, it didn’t care who the common enemy was as long as there was one. ‘Monopoly capital’ also got a poke as we shall see.
Luckily, Shabangu is prepared to acknowledge that her words to this point “. are not just born of political rhetoric.’ but reflect the daily reality facing NUM. In other words, this is political rhetoric, and the NUM is in a crisis; it has lost its way, and its future survival is a stake from challenges both from within and outside the organisation.
She urges the NUM to return to basics. “You genuinely have to return to the classical definition of shop steward and take up shop floor issues affecting mine workers in all the shafts in this industry with even more vigour than you have done historically.’
This sounds like sage advice. “Comrades, you also need to look on the ground, to check whether, some among us, are still acting to advance the interests of the workers and those of the national democratic revolution,’ Shabangu said.
These are the high points of Shabangu’s address and the fact that this week she will discuss in her budget speech in parliament the possible interventions discussed by MIGDETT (Mining Industry Growth and Development Task Team) to address the condition of South Africa’s platinum sector.
The low points are all to do with her style as a politician. Shabangu is a volatile minister; quite often, a confrontational and aggressive speaker which sees her stroking the mining sector from time to time, and taking the sledgehammer to it the next, depending on the audience.
So we find in her address that NUM and Amcu should not be enemies, but should find a common purpose against “monopoly capital’ – the employers.
To speak in such polarising terms is firstly unhelpful in these emotionally charged times, but also not entirely truthful. The South African mining sector has been striving to transform as set down by Government in the 2004 MPRDA, a necessary piece of legislation aimed at breaking the dominance of white-owned capital. Perhaps it hasn’t worked, as indirectly indicated.
It also seems a pity that amid the investigation into the Marikana atrocity, and as labour tensions wind inevitably tighter, the minister should be choosing to pick out Impala Platinum’s (Implats’) departure from the collective bargaining process in 2011 as a key cause of the events at Marikana.
Shabangu is referring to Implats’ fateful (and incorrect) decision to grant increases in wages to miners, and exclude the rock drill operators, thus triggering the labour unrest in Rustenburg in January 2012, and beyond.
At the end, Shabangu sees hope. She thinks the NUM will reorganise itself, and regroup, as she terms it. She also briefly refers to what’s really there by acknowledging MIGDETT’s ability, and future potential, in saving jobs.
For now, however, the NUM has lost its influence in the platinum sector which is where the well-being of the country’s resources sector is being played out. All eyes then on Lonmin and Amcu and whether arbitration at the CCMA this week can provide a basis for workplace democratisation. Until then, the NUM is a spectator.
