Parliament, government and mining industry: Lonmingate is your fault

But, while accusations fly about \xe2\x80\x98\xe2\x80\x99militant ungrateful workers, forceful or sweetheart unions and police brutality\xe2\x80\x99\xe2\x80\x99 very little attention is directed at the mining industry\xe2\x80\x99s culpability and government policy on a range of mining issues that deeply affect mining communities- that inevitably lead to violent protests for better wages and working conditions in the first place.

For these, and other mine workers, poor and low wages, insufficient benefits during and post employment, inadequate death benefits, poor housing conditions -for gravely dangerous work, are just the tip of the ice berg. Yet, this is an industry that for the better part of 100 years has remained largely but deliberately unregulated, and thus given special legal treatment for historical reasons. The ANC with its BEE kingpins are reluctantly slow to effect costly reform in an industry that is credited for being the bed rock of our economy.

And unsurprisingly, the industry\xe2\x80\x99s only concern in recent years has been the ANCs policy position (not yet fully or cleverly articulated) on nationalisation of mines. Now the chickens have come home to roost \xe2\x80\x93 and on the international stage.

Ironically, about just over a month ago the mining industry\xe2\x80\x99s who\xe2\x80\x99s who met at the Annual Mining Indaba and then a few weeks later at the ANC policy conference. At both meetings, media reports suggest that up for discussion was \xe2\x80\x98policy choices on ownership\xe2\x80\x9d. Just prior to the ANC policy conference, Cynthia Carroll the Chief Executive of Anglo American wrote in the SA newspapers and called for \xe2\x80\x98\xe2\x80\x99policy certainty\xe2\x80\x99\xe2\x80\x99 on this aspect. The nationalisation debate has pre-occupied the industry and government, creating either investment angst or political possibilities- until now. What this week\xe2\x80\x99s horrific stand- off has shown is that, there are indeed larger policy issues in the mining sector that require urgent attention and resolution by the ANC government and the Zuma administration. The mining industry is now compelled to deal with many uncomfortable truths, and it has to start prioritising issues other than just certainty about nationalisation.

And we can choose, as many have, to just focus on the strike violence and unfairly fully blame workers for all the killings, without apportioning blame to the real and powerful corporate and government culprits or refusing to understand the deeper structural issues. But then, very little attention would be directed at the daily bread and butter issues of mine workers \xe2\x80\x93 wages and benefits. The former impacts on the latter and the correlation cannot be ignored. These two issues in turn affect worker productivity, annual wage negotiations and levels of protest action, union membership and participation.

Because of \xe2\x80\x98\xe2\x80\x99Lonmingate\xe2\x80\x99\xe2\x80\x99, the ANC government, President Zuma and his Ministers have to take the lead in re-building trust between rival unions, mining companies and workers and their communities. It has to step up effective regulation of the industry and use substantial portions of the large royalty payments made by mining companies to government for the improvement of mine worker lives.

Government has no choice but to reform the manner in which workers and their families in SA and other SADC states are currently being treated by the industry and their unions. Particular and specialised attention has to be focused on workers who get sick because of mine work and who often have to leave their employment because of lung illnesses acquired when digging for platinum, gold and diamonds. As long as we continue to treat miners and their families as a source of cheap labour without giving them proper employment and post employment benefits such as health, housing, pension, funeral, education support, then violent industrial action will be a feature of our political landscape.

Many readers will probably not know that inexplicably we STILL have a different set of laws for mine workers who get a lung disease at work (ODMWA- Occupational Diseases and Injuries in Mine Workers Act) and that ODMWA provides for inferior financial and processing benefits— when compared to workers in other sectors, who are governed by a different law (COIDA). The continued differential and inequitable treatment makes no rational or Constitutional sense. If one looks at the trajectory of ODMWA, it is clear that vested capital interests from as far back as 1911 have ensured that mine workers will get lower compensation amounts or \xe2\x80\x98inferior compensation\xe2\x80\x99, something that even the Constitutional Court has recognised in a recent judgment against AngloGold Ashanti. The last amendment to ODMWA was in 1993, just before our democratic elections, and that amendment was only to bring all mine workers in SA (not just white mine workers as it previously had) under the ambit of a very regressive law.

The question is why has the ANC been so slow to bring about real and much needed industrial reform and effective regulation in the mining sector and instead invest all its energies in a confusing ideological debate about ownership? Because if it did, ANC BEE members in the mining industry and some of the party\xe2\x80\x99s benefactors would stand to lose money otherwise apparent in profits and value.

In the absence of mining companies paying their dues, so to speak, the burden has largely fallen on the SA health sector, communities, and the health sector of neighbouring states (migrant mine workers) with SADC countries bearing a disproportionate burden of the socio-economic consequences of the conduct of mining companies and inaction of the SA government. Ample research indicates that thousands of mine workers have had to shockingly wait for very long periods of time (in some cases 4-5 years) before their claims are fully processed. Independent and expert research indicates that among some claimant cohorts, only under 2% have successful claims, and with other cohorts of miners, only 20% received compensation.

The second question is why has the mining industry not demanded policy certainty on this aspect of legal reform (benefits)? Because, low compensation settlement benefits and the non-assumption of legal liability saves it millions of rands, otherwise pumped into mining shareholder profits.

The third question is why has the public in general not demanded a change in such policy to benefit mine workers or mobilised the way civic groups are mobilising around textbook deliveries or the passing of the Secrecy Bill? Because, to be honest, very few of us have been taught to really care about mine workers and their wages, lives and health, many of whom are getting sick and prematurely dying, silently. This is largely, due to government, the mining industry and its shareholders doing such an excellent public relations job to ordinarily persuade many South Africans that the striking workers and their demands are not worthy of our collective outrage and support, that they are just greedy, violent and unstrategic.

Let us hope that the next six months sees government and Parliament play the role that it should be playing: demanding an independent inquiry into the violence and acting on the recommendations, investigating the incidence and causes of labour strife in the mining sector, analysing historical and current mining wage levels, investigating conditions for mine workers generally in both controlled and uncontrolled mines, investigating the disparities in compensation awards for miners who get blacklung disease, TB and silicosis, and finally, urgently reforming ODMWA (as it promised to do as far back as 1994). It owes the public and its voters that much.

Hassan is a human rights lawyer and activist. She is a Tom and Andi Bernstein Senior Human Rights Fellow at Yale University.