The bloody shadow falling over South Africa’s mines

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South African olice guard the body of a slain NUM shop steward. Photo Credit: AFP/Estelle Maussion

The fatal shooting of a labour union official at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in Rustenburg just four days shy of the first anniversary of the deaths there of 34 striking miners at the hands of police is a tragic reminder of the violence still troubling South Africa’s mines amidst a bitter inter-union power struggle.

Last year’s massacre triggered two-months of wildcat strikes and unrest across the platinum belt and beyond, denting foreign investors’ confidence in South Africa. Each indication of further trouble at Marikana makes it more difficult to restore that confidence, and for South Africa’s fragile and mining-reliant economy — Africa’s largest — to generate more growth.

In the latest incident, a female shop steward for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was gunned down late morning outside her home on the Markiana complex. Another NUM leader was shot dead in front of the union’s office there in in July, two months after an organiser for the newer and more militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) was shot dead in a nearby bar. At least eight union members have lost their lives in the violence since last August 16′s massacre, South Africa’s worst post-apartheid political violence.

Since then NUM has lost thousands of members in the platinum mines to Amcu. The defectors were disillusioned by what they say are too cozy relationships between the NUM and the government and the mining companies; the NUM has traditionally been close to the old-guard of the ruling African National Congress, itself beset by inter-generational divisions. Violence has often erupted at NUM recruitment meetings as the union attempts to reverse the loss of its majority union status to Amcu at Marikana.

In April, Lonmin gave the NUM formal notice of its intention to withdraw the facilities that majority status brought. The matter is now before independent arbitration, but the initiative has clearly passed to Amcu. The younger union favors decentralized wage negotiations in which it believes it can play one mining company off against another, especially in the platinum belt where the companies are trying to undertake wrenching restructuring following last year’s strikes. The NUM has traditionally supported centralized wage bargaining.

The NUM has expressed its outrage at the latest killing, and criticized police for not making arrests in previous cases where its officials and members have died. “The union is concerned that the company’s pre-occupation with profits and the police incompetence may lead to a serious bloodbath in Rustenburg,” the union’s spokesperson, Lesiba Seshoka says.

In July, the unions, the mining companies and the government signed a tripartite agreement intended to limit the strikes and violence in the mining industry. It seems to have been as ineffective as a February accord to bring peace to the mines.

The battles between the two unions are likely to be carried over to the gold mines as Amcu pushes to establish a toehold there. The annual round of wage negotiations in the mining industry has just got underway in gold and coal, but which will be most critical to the platinum mining companies, still struggling to recover from the impact of last year’s strikes and facing demands for further substantial wage increases.

Complicating the issue further is that next year’s 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid in South Africa has given an added political dimension to negotiations. That is casting an even longer shadow over the bloody one cast by last year’s Marikana massacre.