Johannesburg - There is a theory doing the rounds at the very top echelons of unions and among some of the mining bosses that perhaps the discontent on mines is not just about wages and living conditions. All agree that these need to improve but what if the mine strikes are a clever ploy to ensure mines fall under control of the state, or the agents of top politicians in the private sector, instead of the tawdry, market-scaring ploy of nationalisation?
Anglo is already talking of selling its platinum mines, and Lonmin is weighing its options. They are not alone. I spoke to one mining boss who claimed he was a billionaire a year ago and now he counts his wealth in the low hundreds of million. His wealth, he claims, is now around ten percent of what it was and he attributes the loss to ongoing disputes at his mines. If his claim is correct, then it is a huge slide in profits by any estimation.
Another mining overlord, ahead of flying to Mauritius for the weekend to ‘relax from the stress of the strikes' scoffed, "if accessing platinum becomes too difficult for the automotive industry [which is a primary user of the precious metal], then they'll focus their attention on alternatives."
And they already are; options range from carbon to a new compound called mullite all of which are far cheaper to produce than platinum. They're also compounds that can be produced in labs, not dangerous mines and with far fewer employees.
Talk is rife among top unionists of high-level colleagues who head key unions being paid off by "war chests" established by senior politicians. This, they claim, has served a dual function, to split the unions, which confuses workers and makes organization and control near impossible.
They also point to a spate of assassinations of shop stewards. In October, Frans Baleni, secretary general of the National Union of Mineworkers - which has opposed nationalization of mines - said that so far this year 13 shop stewards had been assassinated, and membership has plummeted. At Impala Platinum, as one example, NUM now represents only thirteen percent of workers. The killing of 13 members from one union top unionists say tends to point at an organized attack on the union, rather than random criminality. In any union the secretary general is less important than the shop stewards, it is they who have the ear of workers, who best understand their challenges and who are most capable of winning more to their cause. The murder of a shop steward not only discourages others from organizing for that union, put creates fear among members.
This follows a pattern of mysterious deaths among mid-level African National Congress officials. In July Hibiscus Coast chief whip Wandile Mkhize and councilor Nhlakanipho Ntshangase were shot after a fractious ANC policy conference in Midrand. Mkhize died, and before that eThekwini regional secretary Sbu Sibiya and ANC eThekwini regional executive committee member Wiseman Mshibe were murdered.
So who stands to gain from this?
An organised union is an asset to capital, good shop stewards and union leaders play by the rules set by law and union agreements. They were also an asset to the ANC as it sought to build power in South Africa, certainly Cosatu still has more signed up members than the ANC - but the National Party attained and maintained power through divide-and-rule. That lesson is as true today as it was sixty years ago.
Cowboy unions, and poorly organized workers lead to the sort of mayhem seen in mine strikes recently. It's already seen Standard and Poor threaten to list Anglo stocks as ‘junk,' according to Forbes magazine - this means share prices drop, investors query the value of keeping the mine or mines, and they start looking for buyers with a bargain basement sale ticket.
All of this can occur without market panicking talk of nationalisation. Some unionists complain that members of the increasingly tight security structure found around President Jacob Zuma have done little to arrest the union destabilization on mines.
They question why these officers who are found at the highest levels of Crime Intelligence have been unable to establish why there is a growing list of unsolved murders of middle-ranking political party officials and unionists, especially shop stewards, and to bring those guilty to book.
Senior unionists claim that Brigadier KB "Bhoyi" Ngcobo, a former senior member of the presidential protection unit, who was appointed acting head of crime intelligence in April had been particularly active in his interest around the affairs of unions and unionists. Efforts to obtain comment from President Zuma's office were not successful.
There is another twist to these theories. What too if some of those who appear to be foes to the President are in fact his allies? There has been talk about the apparent about-face of Irvin Jim of the National Union of Metalworkers and Thobile Ntola, president of the South African Democratic Teachers Union. Although they have appeared critical of the president it is they who in September at Cosatu's congress pushed for the congress to back Zuma's re-election as president, a move Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi is privately opposed too. Ntola and Jim are staunch proponents of nationalization of mines, the seizure of land and what they call monopoly industries.
A journalist for Independent Newspapers commented before that Cosatu conference, "[Jim] refuses to indulge in discussions about the trade union federation's disappointment with Zuma's leadership." In that interview he told the journalist: "We are not going to wait for a spontaneous uprising like the Arab Spring. We need to mobilise the working class and take to the streets to realise some things."
A month later worker actions on mines began being characterized by violence. And the state response has been the worst violence against civilians, including torture, seen since the darkest days of apartheid.
President Jacob Zuma recently said that unlike the "huge cover-up during apartheid times...one incident cannot mean our system is a system that is killing people", he was talking of the task set to the Farlam Commission. It will be interesting to see how those hearings continue, and what their outcome will be.
This article was published with the assistance of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF). The views presented in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FNF.
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