By
Weizmann Hamilton and Liv Shange
Having
opened 2013 by testing the waters with closure threats at Kusasalethu and
Amplats, the mining bosses at the end of January appeared to adjust their tack,
with Amplats agreeing to a two-month moratorium on the retrenchment of 14 000
workers, Harmony Gold hinting towards reopening Kusasalethu and Lonmin
announcing plans for an employee-share scheme. The waters may have been found
too rough, for now – immediate strike action and protestations even from the
industry’s most loyal servants, the ANC government, alerted the bosses to the
need to smooth their approach. They are however only biding their time, in the
hope that the mineworkers’
combativeness will ebb and allow them a safe return
to workplace dictatorship and dream profitability. Having overplayed their hand
at first, the bosses will try to play the rest of the unfolding game all the
more cleverly, applying both carrot and stick. The working class’ response to
this resumption of hostilities will decide the outcome.
The
last skirmishes of the 2012 mineworkers’ struggle took place at Harmony Gold’s
Kusasalethu mine outside Carletonville, with the last of a series of
underground sit-ins defused by a combination of bloody police repression and a
promise of talks. It was also Harmony Gold which opened up the mine bosses’
offensive on New Year ’s Day, 2013, by throwing workers out of their hostels
and locking them out of the mine. The government was silent. The workers had to
focus on securing shelter and food before any serious fightback could begin.
Emboldened, the mining bosses opened up a second front at Amplats centred on
the Rustenburg shafts which had been at the forefront of last year’s strike.
Amplats threat to retrench 14 000 workers is an open challenge to the entire
working class. It would be the largest retrenchment by a single company in the
history of South Africa.
Battle
for control of the mines
The
significance of the capitulation of the Lonmin bosses last year went far beyond
the wage increases. They were compelled to condone the collapse of the
authority of their bass boy union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), to
sign an agreement outside of the provision of the collective bargaining system
for the first time, and to recognise the strike committees set up by the
workers independently of all the unions. This is why Lonmin was condemned by
big business as well as the NUM.
The
real motive of the mining bosses, all behind Harmony and Amplats, is to recover
from this political setback and restore the balance of power in the mining
industry. This is revealed by the vengeful but premature comment of Harmony
Gold CEO Graham Briggs: ‘The tables have turned. It is us the company, which
has demands on the table now’ (Business Day, 13/01/15). Management’s position,
Briggs states further, is to disregard past grievances and to demand that workers
return to work on their terms. The terms stipulated by Harmony – e.g. a
prohibition of workers’ mass meetings – are in effect aimed at frustrating
workers’ exercise of their collective power (and democratic rights).
This
is an orchestrated strategy to break the defiance of the workers, re-establish
the authority of the NUM as a collaborator in maintaining ‘discipline’ over the
workers, or (second-best) to co-opt the Association of Mineworkers and
Construction Union (AMCU) into that position and break the back of the
independent strike committees – in short, to restore the pre-Marikana
dictatorship of the mines.
Negotiating
illusions
The
NUM leadership’s initial reaction to the threat of retrenchment was to echo
management’s threats. They continue to swallow the argument that the
retrenchments are being forced on management due to a combination of
circumstances out of their control and the ‘unreasonable’ demands of the
workers. Instead of exposing
management’s hypocrisy and mobilising for mass action to defend jobs, they are
using the moratorium to peddle the illusion that the differences between the
bosses and workers can be resolved by negotiations. In fact they are disarming
the workers. It is ruled out that any alternative jobs created through
management’s proposals would absorb 14 000 workers.
Bosses:
profits for us, losses for you
While
the shut-down of the mining industry last year meant lost production, such
amounts remain small change to these multinational companies compared to the
political cost – the overthrow of the very framework which capitalists have
relied upon since the early 1990s: the NUM’s containment of workers. Lost
production also pushed up the price of ore, while the level of wage increases
pale in comparison with other cost increases such as electricity.
Despite
the decline in demand for platinum since the global economic crisis hit in
2008, fabulous profits are still made across the mining industry. According to the Labour Research Service, in
2011, the nine largest mining houses made a combined profit of R39 billion.
This could have enabled these companies to pay each of their about 350 000
workers R88 000 a month and still make a profit. They did not denounce the
workers’ demand for R12 500 because it was ‘unaffordable’, but because it
threatened the balance of power.
Harmony
made a profit of R2.5bn for the year ended March 31, 2012. Harmony was the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s best performer of last year. Year-on-year, it
increased net operating profit by 80% from R3.3bn to R5.9bn for the period
2011/2012! Nor did the strike and its outcome make a serious dent on profits –
in the December quarter, operating profit increased by 16%, to R1.6bn, despite
lower output due to the continued protest action at Kusasalethu. In contrast,
lost production resulting from the strike, October 2-29, 2012, amounted to
R325m. Increased wages will cost the company a mere R10m a month. While
refusing its workers shelter, the company is confident enough to pay out a 50c
per share dividend to its owners. Graham Briggs earns R7.3m a year even after
being forced to forego a bonus of 50% of his salary (because the company failed
to prevent fatal accidents). The wage gap in the mining industry is 390 to 1,
with the average CEO earning R55 000 per day!
In
2011, Amplats made a profit of R7.96bn but still retrenched workers. The
company now attempts firstly to blame the workers’ struggle for 2012’s turn to
a loss of R6.34bn, and secondly to make them pay for it with jobs and organised
strength. While Amplats undoubtedly faces real problems from the capitalists’
view, and is not paying out a dividend, the company is reassuring capital that
it still has plenty of room to manoeuvre. According to Amplats’ own figures,
the four Rustenburg shafts earmarked for closure increased labour productivity
and output of 20% and 30% respectively in the first half of 2012. The strategic
aims of the restructuring (cutting production) are both to offload the burden
of the world-wide economic downturn on the workers, and most importantly to
break their fighting capacity.
SA’s
mines – platinum in particular – have been making beyond-fabulous profits in
the past decades. By mid-2012 however, five years into the worst crisis of the
capitalist world economy in a century, with an overcapacity in car production
equal to the size of the entire United States’ market, the forecast over-supply
of platinum was 210 000 ounces for the year. Overproduction and waste alongside
massive unfulfilled needs are no accidents, but problems built into the very
nature of the capitalist system. The vast majority of the world’s population is
being exploited to such an extent that there simply aren’t enough buyers for
the products of this exploitation – how many mineworkers own cars or jewellery,
for example? The mining giants compete by churning out ore in bulk, blasting
several times a day; pressing down the prices further, depleting the mineral
resources and leaving only environmental and social degradation to show for it,
instead of industrial and social development.
Already
at the onset of 2012, it was clear the mining capitalists were contemplating
how to get out of the corner they had put themselves in, tiptoeing around an
offensive to cut production, correctly fearing the workers’ response. Several
platinum shafts, e.g. Aquarius’ K4 and Everest mine, were closed; others were
in the pipe-line. The bosses’ hand was only stayed by the workers’ revolt,
which was partly informed by the recognition that this was a time to either move
forward or be thrown way back. As most mining strikes were drawing to a close
in November 2012, the mining magnates renewed, with ever-more urgency, their
plans to unleash the cost-cutting and in the process crush the key gain of the
strike movement – the workers’ regained class independence. While they may be
forced to smoothen out their tactics, there is clearly no going back on their
strategic targets. As one analyst explained at the onset of the Lonmin strike,
the clash between workers’ demands for decent wages and living conditions and
the bosses’ drive for profitability is one of ‘immovable object and unstoppable
movement’.
ANC
will not defend workers
Minister
of Minerals and Energy, Susan Shabangu’s, condemnation of the Amplats
retrenchment announcement is sheer hypocrisy. She was at the forefront of the
entire economic and political elite’s hostility towards the Lonmin workers’
strike which was most clearly expressed in the Marikana massacre. What Shabangu
and the ANC really reacted to is the fact that the mining bosses’ action
exposes the contempt in which the capitalists hold the ANC government. After 19
years of bending the knee to big business, the mining bosses rightly see them
as their stooges. If you lie on your belly in front of the bosses, they will
kick you in the teeth!
The
‘arrogance’ of the bosses’ counter-offensive was directly invited by the ANC –
the Mangaung rejection of nationalisation and rewarding of the butchers of
Marikana was sweet comfort to the likes of Amplats CEO Chris Griffith (see p. 5
for more). Despite its noises about withdrawal of licences, the ANC government
is incapable of taking any decisive action in defence of the mineworkers. Its
real attitude is reflected most clearly in NUM’s blanket acceptance of the
capitalist logic that leaves only a question of exactly how the working class
will be made to pay for the crisis.
Socialism
or barbarism
The
threat to withdraw Anglo American’s mining licences, however, points to the
potential for the struggle ahead. Neither government hand-outs of mining rights
to Aurora-type speculators and parasites, nor nationalisation limited to
creating a new mining-‘Eskom’ can resolve the crisis. Only a worker-led
struggle for nationalisation of the mines and other key points of the economy,
such as banks, factories and land, under democratic control of workers and
communities can provide the way out of the dead-end.
Only
on the basis of such public ownership and democratic planning of production and
allocation of resources according to the needs of the majority can we move
beyond the false choices between improved wages and job creation, between
livelihoods and environment and between viable businesses and viable
communities. The LRS study revealed that with just the profits of the nine biggest
mining companies in SA, 2.3m workers could be hired on a wage of R12 500. Today
these companies employ less than 350 000 people. To try and make ends meet,
most work at least six days a week with long over-time hours, destroying their
lungs and their general health. Meanwhile, the talent and energy of millions
who go without work are wasted. The beginnings of socialist planning on the
basis of a nationalised economy would allow for sharing out the work, providing
jobs for all while still increasing wages. Moreover, the wealth produced would
be used not for gambling on stock markets or with people’s lives but to take
society forward; developing sustainable industries beyond mining, education and
protection of the natural resources.
The
revolt that broke out after the Marikana massacre carries the seeds that can
grow into the kind of movement needed to carry out a true ‘mining revolution’
along these lines. The alternative is not ‘back-to-normal’ but a backlash of
intensified exploitation and oppression. The mining bosses have lined up behind
Harmony Gold and Amplats because they know the stakes. Workers across the
mining industry will need to mobilise a greater force based on the working
class as a whole – workers across mines, farms, transport, manufacturing, the
public sector, as well as students, youth and the unemployed – in a struggle
for socialism.
Izwi
labasebenzi/ the Democratic Socialist Movement calls for:
•
General strike to defend jobs – an injury to one is an injury to all
•
Nationalise the mines under democratic control and management of the working
class
•
For national minimum wage of R12 500 a month
•
Recognise the independent strike committees
•
Build the Workers and Socialist Party into a mass fighting socialist party
First published by Izwi La Basebenzi, Friday, 01 March 2013, 18:03
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