Amnesty International this week issued a damning report on Lonmin, which detailed a catalogue of abuses that the world’s third biggest platinum miner had subjected its workers to.
The international human rights group said Lonmin had failed to live up to the requirements it had signed up to in order to get the mining licence to mine platinum in the area.
In the report, titled Smoke and Mirrors: Lonmin’s Failures , the group accused Lonmin of making flimsy excuses on why it should not be held responsible for the plight of its workers.
Expectedly, the company came out guns blazing yesterday and defended its track record in the platinum belt, charging that all its hostel blocks had been converted to single or family accommodation units in accordance with its social labour plans.
It said it had donated some 50 hectares of land to the government in 2013 for integrated human settlements, which also included Lonmin employees.
“Planning between Lonmin and the government of a further development for family and single accommodation units is under way,” the company pontificated in a statement.
“This includes opportunities for home ownership for employees that choose to reside in the Marikana area.”
In the broader scheme of things, Lonmin should be applauded for its commitment to the social wellbeing of its workforce. It should be seen as a model company and a torch bearer of how not to treat one of your most valuable assets in the production value chain.
Except that in its statement, the company hardly told the world how it had treated its employees over time, while making its directors and shareholders billions of rands in the process.
And that despite a promise it made in 2006 to construct 5 500 houses for its workers by 2011, it had only built three in 2012. The amnesty report should, therefore, not be seen as a stunning rebuke to Lonmin.
It should be seen as an indictment to the government that promised to deal with such excesses when it came to power in 1994.
For Lonmin is not alone in these shenanigans. The entire mining industry has prospered on the back of the migrant labour system, which allowed it to decide on where or how its employees lived, breathed and survived the belly of the earth.
Amnesty International also told us nothing we did not know already.
It repeated what Judge Ian Farlam said in his findings into the Marikana massacre.
The strike in Marikana, a sleepy informal settlement on the outskirts of Rustenburg, started off as an unprotected industrial action for a fair share in the profits. Unprotected as it was, it brought to the fore the squalid conditions that the workers lived under.
Clashes
By the end of that fateful day, on August 12 2012, 34 workers were left dead, plus 10 other people, who had already been killed in clashes between striking workers on the one hand and mine security guards and the police on the other.
During the commission, mine bosses tried to paint the workers as greedy, arguing that they pay them a living-out allowance for decent accommodation.
What the mine bosses did not tell Judge Farlam was that these allowances are the root cause of squalor that surrounds many mining towns.
For workers, who are paid so little, the little that they make out of these allowances is spent on immediate needs, such as education for their children and support for their family members they have left behind.
In nearly all the mining towns in South Africa, mining companies have condemned these workers, who are mostly migrants from rural South Africa and surrounding countries, to abject poverty and forced them to live in squalor.
A study by the Cape Peninsula University of Technology civil engineering department found that the Lily Mine accident, in which three mineworkers have been trapped underground since February, could have been a result of human error.
Lily Mine was placed under business rescue after suspending operations when three workers were trapped underground after the lamp room container they were working in fell into a sinkhole created by a collapsed crown pillar before being covered by huge rocks.
The bodies of Pretty Nkambule, Solomon Nyerende, and Yvonne Mnisi still have to be retrieved.
In the meantime, the government has back pedalled on holding mining companies accountable for their failure to adhere to the requirements of the Mineral Resources Development and Petroleum Act.
The Mining Charter, which seeks to compel the industry to do some good for its workers, has been shifted to the back burners since the industry complained that it was not realistic.
And every five years or so South Africa gets to contend with a new mineral resources minister, because the one before does not fit the political objectives of the new administration.
Shuffled about
The result is that bureaucrats, who are supposed to drive transformation in the industry, get shuffled about and new ones brought in to restart the whole process from scratch.
Ngoako Ramatlhodi, who tried to knock some sense into the thick skulls of the industry, was unceremoniously sacked when he started asking tough questions. The less said about his successor, Mosebenzi Zwane, the better.
The situation is likely to remain so for some time, because mine bosses have now found themselves a keen defender of their exploits in politically connected gatekeepers, who rise to their defence every time questions are asked about the industry’s social responsibility strategies.
Yesterday South Africa commemorated the fourth anniversary of the Marikana massacre.
As expected, politicians came, whipped up a good few emotions and made pledges towards the survivors. There were also some full-time activists who wanted the victims not to forget their professional dedication to their cause.
They told them of what petitions to sign and what their lawyers had been doing behind the scenes
And when the sun came down, all of those quietly retreated to their comfortable homes and marvelled at their ability to put the tiny town of Rustenburg firmly on the national and international map once again.
The widows, mothers, children and relatives of the 44 victims of the massacre also returned to their shacks to live for yet another year before people show interest in their squalid living conditions.
What the Amnesty International report and the Marikana massacre should do is to rally all South Africans behind the happenings in the mining industry. It should be a clarion call for us to work towards a fair industrial relations regime where participants share in the success of businesses.
It should force all of us to reconsider our collective responsibility to the lives of thousands of mineworkers who defy the vagaries of their job on a daily basis.
It should say we will never allow another Marikana to happen in our lifetime.
Sadly, this will only be realised when this unholy alliance between business and politics is dismantled.
* Journalist Sechaba ka’Nkosi’s opinion column - The Shake-Up - is published in Business Report.
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