[miningmx.com] – IT’S only logical that the Marikana massacre and the setbacks suffered by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) will have political consequences for the ANC.
Everyone knew that the Marikana massacre on 16 August and the subsequent crippling unprotected strikes would have an impact on the collective bargaining system. Independent analysts said so, employer organisations said so, and even top spokesmen in the South African government and the ANC said so.
However, trade unions have so far all been silent about it.
The first references from official sources about what could possibly follow were in the speech by ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe in March when he said that the economic damage and the violence accompanying the strikes were “an invitation to the South African government to become part of collective bargaining’.
Mantashe stated it even more strongly: the lawlessness of strikes and Cosatu’s inability to perform collective bargaining efficiently would lead to the destruction of Cosatu within a year, he said. “They (the lawlessness and violence) amount to the breaking down of collective bargaining,’ he said.
Two senior government representatives, mineral resources minister, Susan Shabangu, and Kwa-Zulu Natal premier and ANC treasurer Zweli Mkhize, added a new angle on the issue. At NUM’s mini-conference in Irene both of them said the “attack’ on NUM, Cosatu’s largest trade union, is an attack on the ANC itself in an attempt to unseat the party.
And this week labour minister, Mildred Oliphant, said she would recommend to the security ministers in the cabinet that security forces should be deployed at mines to bring the situation under control. This would have to be at all mines, because it wouldn’t help to do so only at some mines.
You can describe it any way you like, but this means only one thing: a state of emergency.
Oliphant made her proposals to Motlanthe only seven days ago.
So far the South African government has said no more about it, which makes one feel that Motlanthe didn’t think it was actually a matter of great urgency. But behind the scenes it is being talked and thought about, and paperwork and planning are being done.
And when the next round of violence occurs, when further accusations are slung to and fro and further emotional mass funerals are held, we will all be moving one step closer to paramilitary intervention.
The latest developments are the indications of a “third force’. Monday’s murder of NUM shaft chairman at Lonmin’s Wonderkop hostel and of the AMCU’s regional organiser in a tavern three weeks ago were clearly well-planned and professional assassinations – not hate gangs wiping out alleged traitors as happens in trade union violence.
That, and the government’s belief that its authority is being threatened, is a toxic recipe in which collective bargaining will make way for a low-grade civil war – an extended version of Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland massacre in the early Eighties.
However, nobody in the South African government or in NUM is talking about the fundamental reason for the shift in trade union loyalty: that thousands of people do backbreakingly hard work underground and above ground, but do not earn enough from it to make a decent living.
This is a highly emotive issue. That’s why there is so much bloodshed and violence. There are many reasons for this, including the debt levels of workers who took out unsecured loans and whose cash is swallowed up by ruthless moneylenders.
Many people predict that AMCU will not keep up the pace and that NUM will win back its support in a year or two, as happened with the Mouthpiece Union in the nineties.
The problem with this is that NUM lost support because it did nothing about the needs of its members. Even if AMCU doesn’t achieve any better results, it will definitely not simply be rejected, nor does that mean these suffering workers are going to return to NUM.
Worse lawlessness and chaos are a more likely result.
There is a great danger indeed that the platinum industry, which is supposed to be the source from which South Africa will build its prosperity, will be entirely destroyed.
