Business
Technology Trumps Tradition in Bid to End South Africa Mine Strike
The world’s top three platinum firms faced a huge challenge after opting to tackle South Africa’s worst mining strike by sidestepping AMCU. They faced a huge logistical challenge; how to contact 70,000 men spread across the country and cowed by violence. With many workers sitting out the four-month strike at home in rural areas such as the Eastern Cape, the answer was a two-pronged approach combining ancient and modern; a reflection of the split personality of Africa’s most developed economy.
Besides SMS and email bursts and local language radio slots, the companies : Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), Impala Platinum (Implats) and Lonmin; called on tribal elders to help sell their pay offers to strikers. “The miners want to go back to work but they are afraid of being killed,” said Xolile Ndevu, general secretary of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa and one of the intermediaries asked to negotiate after talks deadlocked.
The response by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which is accused of enforcing its will by violence and crushing dissent by taking decisions via a show of hands at meetings, was uncompromising and disdainful. AMCU snubbed a meeting with Ndevu and management in March in the platinum belt town of Rustenburg, 120 km (70 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, and then humiliated the respected elder at a soccer stadium rally attended by only 100 people.
“Some of them were AMCU members and they sang and disrupted us and booed us. And those are the people who are supposed to respect us,” Ndevu told Reuters, a pained expression etched on his face. Most of the workforce at the strike-hit mines are AMCU members. Others are members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) – the traditional mining sector union – or Solidarity, which represents white-collar workers. AMCU ousted NUM on the platinum belt in a bloody turf war in 2012.
‘YES’ OR ‘NO’
However, the modern approach has borne more fruit for the companies, which say a majority of miners have expressed a desire to return to work. Foremost have been mass mobile phone messages in English and languages such as Xhosa and Sotho – South Africa has eleven official languages and many miners speak little to no English – outlining the wage offers and asking for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ reply.
“I want to go back to work but I have security concerns,” one AMCU member at Lonmin told Reuters in a mine recruiting office in Mthatha, a provincial capital 700 km south of Johannesburg. He showed Reuters Lonmin’s April 30 phone message and said he had replied ‘yes’ about his wish to return to work but did not want to give his name because of fears he would be assaulted or worse if AMCU’s leaders found out.
Four miners were killed in and around the Rustenburg platinum mines at the weekend and the three companies reported 20 incidents of intimidation over the previous two days and so far, police have made no arrests. AMCU’s leaders deny the intimidation accusations and say most of their members have rejected the wage offer.
