“Thinking of us, our struggles and pain, grieves in me a song more dismal than the sparrows’ protest to the morning rain”
― John J Geddes

On Tuesday, thousands of family members, residents, religious leaders, mineworkers and political leaders gathered at the Wonderkop Koppie, in honour of miners who gave their lives for the progress of their colleagues and families. They gathered praying, singing and dancing in remembrance of the unforgettable event. The memory of this tragedy is still very fresh in the hearts and minds of the workers who fought for better living conditions.

In August 2012, 3000 workers left their jobs in Lonmin’s mines to conduct a strike protest over low wages and poor working conditions. The strike was impelled by the workers’ demands for a R12,500 salary hike as they were earning between R4,000 and R5,000 monthly. On the seventh day of the strike, South African police opened fire on 112 miners, killing 34 miners and injuring more than 70 other workers. About 10 others, including two policemen and two Lonmin security men, had been murdered before the August massacre.

The working conditions of miners

South Africa is the world’s leading producer of platinum, supplying roughly 78 percent of global demand. The Platinum sector contributes nearly $4 billion to the country’s GDP. However, the living condition of workers in the mining industry is pitiable. In a report by Amnesty International, Lonmin had written a letter revealing that about 13,500 of their staff were in need of formal accommodation. Lonmin is the third largest Platinum producer in the world.

South Africa operates a sectorial minimum wage. Based on the Labour relations Act of 1995 (LRA), the mining industry workers negotiate their wages working conditions through collective bargaining. By August 2012, the Lonmin mine had approximately 28,000 employees and about 10,000 contractors. Two main unions, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), represented the workers. The AMCU was a breakaway union from the NUM and this created a major rift between the two. The Lonmin mine exploited the majoritarian principle of the LRA by creating an affair with top representatives in NUM. The workers felt that the NUM representatives were being compensated highly by Lonmin and this was affecting the fair representation of the workers.

The miners living conditions reflect the struggle of the post-apartheid movement in the country as more than half of Lonmin staff were migrant workers. Large populations of the workers lived in mucky, informal settlements. Several of them built shacks, one or two bedrooms that served as their bathroom, kitchen and bedroom with several people living in them. The miners gained little from the end of the apartheid migrant labour system, which housed the workers in a single sex hostel. In eradicating the existing hostels and converting them to individual units, the miners were given an option of a measly “living out allowance.” This made the workers resort to micro lending in order to make ends meet.

Slacks in Marikana
Lonmin mine workers sitting outside their shack.

According to the International Labour Organization, the miners were often exposed to a variety of safety hazards: falling rocks, exposure to dust, intensive noise, fumes and high temperatures, amongst others. They also suffered from silicosis and tuberculosis. They were even prone to HIV, because the workers left their families for long periods of time and were engaging in casual sex. Andile Yawa, a father of one of the massacred victims and a former worker in the Platinum mine, described how he was forced to stop working due to ill health and allowed his son to take over his job, not knowing that his replacement will earn him further misery. “We went to the koppie and shack to collect his spirit. The events relating to how my son was actually killed remain unclear,” said Yawa.

Fight for equality

In a reaction to a report issued by Amnesty International, the Lonmin group issued a media release on Tuesday, stating that the hostel blocks had been converted to single and family units; these are the units which the workers complained of and were built as shacks. They also said that they were building apartments to provide the employees with better accommodation. In 2006, the company promised 5,500 houses in an agreement with the workers, but the evidence of this promise is still unnoticeable.

The cries of both the dead and living miners are still loud as the fight for equality amongst citizens trudges on. “Government has done absolutely nothing for us. Not even our own President Zuma, never mind the government. No one has come to us to apologise or to even talk to us about what happened and why it happened,” said widow Nandipha Guluza. The battle for better living is a struggle that can only be won on the support and intervention of the government against these companies and their unscrupulous exploitation of South Africans.

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