Mining bosses blind to real crisis

Published Aug 9, 2015

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The word crisis has been bandied about by mining executives, ministers, labour leaders and the media with great abandon over the last month.

Its use reached critical mass this week as the Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi suspended the licence of Glencore’s Optimum colliery in response to the company’s retrenchment plans, and summoned corporations and unions to an urgent meeting to demand “commitments from all parties toward mitigating retrenchments”.

The use of the word “crisis” implies we are dealing with an event or situation that is, or is expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or society as a whole.

Mining in South Africa, with its history and legacy of exploitation, has, since the discovery of huge deposits of diamonds and gold, propelled the country to lurch from one crisis to the next.

In each case, the greed and interests of “entrepreneurs” like Cecil John Rhodes and his company De Beers, or Mark Cutifani and his company Anglo American, has always been the measure by which the sector and its level of crisis would be assessed.

These powerful men did not and do not hesitate to use their wealth and position to drive their own agendas. As one author comments on Rhodes: “Imperial expansion and capital investment go hand in hand.”

The word crisis also implies another important element, which often gets overlooked as we latch on to the cues from these powerful men. Without their approval, a crisis would not be recognised.

There are two pertinent points which need to be made to contextualise the current mood of panic which has been fomented from the towers of power.

The first is that market cycles are not new or unexpected. The downward cycle has been in the making since 2008. The sudden anxiety and panic created by the power players of the sector is either shortsighted poor leadership or scaremongering and manipulation to achieve selfish ends.

The second is the sector is not only faced with the problem of lower commodity cycles, but a structural legacy of exploitation, which manifests in low wages, impoverished host communities and extensive environmental degradation set against the opulence of multimillionaire mining executives and a history of super profits.

This has had the effect of relegating a crisis to deserving of attention only after the crisis has been averted.

In this way, the crisis of mining’s legacy of exploitation has been left to the next generation ad infinitum.

We are constantly burying our heads in the sand in the hope that when we emerge the crisis will have resolved itself.

The driving focus of the current “crisis” is not “jobs, jobs, jobs” as the minister would have us believe, but profits.

Nothing is worthy of the label “crisis” in the mining industry until it threatens profit.

With the mining magnates calling the shots, the minister is only focused on the short-term interests of profits and has completely ignored the structural crisis of mining.

A few weeks ago the minister was reminded of the social crisis when angry community members, who had shut down the Bokoni mining operation, walked out on him when he urged them to be patient.

 

The minister’s insistence on speeding up mining processes while ignoring the crisis unfolding before his eyes, is partly bad leadership, partly ignorant leadership. However, it is in all respects the type of leadership which is consistent with the legacy of mining in this country.

A legacy Rhodes and Cutifani will applaud, but which brings us no closer to solving the crisis.

* Rutledge is the mining and extractives co-ordinator at ActionAid SA and is the convenor of the Coalition on the MPRDA. He writes in his personal capacity.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

The Sunday Independent

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