Fighting Platinum Murderers

Platinum mining reaps colossal profits for a few, which is derived from the systematic abuse of many others… the others being workers who live in make-shift shacks and daily risk their lives in the employ of a depraved ruling class which craves only precious minerals and broken backs.

South African political elites, whether members of the African National Congress (ANC) or otherwise, are well versed in exploitation, with the platinum mining industry serving as a major means of their efficient plunder of both humans and their labour.

In this viscous power play the conservative Congress of African Trade Unions (COSATU) and their largest affiliate the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) have fulfilled a sad but vital role in bolstering corporate profits. In recent times such sickening efforts have faced a serious threat from a rightfully furious workforce organized through the bold working class-orientated efforts of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the Metal and Electrical Workers Union of South Africa (MEWUSA).

Tragically, the state’s response to the increased solidarity and militancy of the recent Lonmin miners’ strike; a police-led massacre no less. The day before this massacre the Financial Times reported that Lonmin was “attempting to restore production” at their Marikana platinum mining complex “with police assistance and a threat to fire absent employees.” Come sunrise the police force assisted Lonmin by murdering 34 strikers. “This is the capitalist ruling class’ premeditated effort to restore their order – the dictatorship of the bosses – by crushing the mine workers’ uprising in blood.”

Lonmin of course is not the only corporate body content to fill South Africa’s platinum mines with their workers blood-soaked bodies. So while Lonmin is counted as the world’s third largest producer of the precious mineral, Anglo American Platinum ranks first, followed by Impala Platinum, then Lonmin, and Aquarius Platinum forth. Other major mining entities include Royal Bafokeng Platinum and Eastern Platinum. All however are united in choosing to punish their already massively exploited workers for their own declining profits. Declines that one might add are caused by themselves and their obscenely rich friends.

So who one might ask are these ruling class platinum executives so intent on crushing efforts to resist their will to dominate every aspect of their workers lives? Clearly they are all powerful and well-connected capitalists, but in the interest of brevity, rather than providing a tedious list of all of them, I will suffice to introduce just a selection of them whose corporate backgrounds illustrate the incestuous nature of ruling class cliques dominating the platinum mining sector.

Cyril Ramaphosa – board member of Lonmin, founding General Secretary of NUM, and former Secretary General of the ANC.

Zwelakhe Sisulu – board member of Eastern Platinum, former board member of Aquarius Platinum, and former president of the Media Workers Association of South Africa (MWASA). He is the son of ANC founder Walter Sisulus, and serves as an advisor to the grossly misnamed Free Africa Foundation.

Mohammed Valli Moosa – board member of Anglo American Platinum, former member of the ANC’s National Executive, board member of WWF South Africa, and president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

G. Edward Haslam – board member of Lonmin until 2004, when he then became a board member of Aquarius Platinum.

Stuart Murray – CEO of Aquarius Platinum. He began his career at Impala Platinum in 1984.

Sam Jonah – former president of AngloGold Ashanti, and until recently a board member of Lonmin. In 2009 he served as the chairman of the highly controversial Moto Goldmines which operated in the blood-drenched Ituri province of the Congo.

René Médori – board member of Anglo American Platinum, DeBeers (the world’s largest diamond supplier), and Scottish and Southern Energy plc. He is a former finance director of the British energy giant the BOC Group plc, being succeeded in his position at BOC by Alan Ferguson, a man who went on to become Lonmin’s Chief Financial Officer (retiring from this position in 2010).

Alan Ferguson – former Chief Financial Officer at Lonmin, board member of Johnson Matthey plc, Croda International plc, and the Weir Group plc (where he sits alongside former NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen).

The chairman of Croda is Martin Flower who is a board member of Morgan Crucible Company plc — a longtime haunt of the US prince-of-darkness himself, Richard Perle. The current chairman of Morgan Crucible is Andrew Shilston, a man who is a board member of healthcare privatiser Circle Holdings. It is also noteworthy that former chief executive of the London Metal Exchange and current Morgan Crucible board member, Simon Heale, serves as the treasurer of Macmillan Cancer Support and as a board member (along with Lord Renwick of Clifton) of Kazakhmys plc – a mining company whose primary work is in, yes you guessed it, Kazakhstan.

Note: one recent board member of Johnson Matthey is Robert Walvis, who is a current board member of the BESNA dirty seven company Balfour Beatty plc.

David Munro – board member of Lonmin, former Chief Development Officer of BHP Billiton plc, and until 2011 the Development Director for the aforementioned Kazakhmys plc. He is a former General Manager of Manganese mining corporation Samancor, a business that in 1995 recruited then Assistant General Secretary of NUM, Gwede Mantashe, to their board of directors. Mantashe is presently the Secretary General of the ANC and the chairperson of the South African Communist Party, and until 2006 he was NUM’s Secretary General.

Jim Sutcliffe – board member of Lonmin, CEO of Life Businesses at Old Mutual plc, and senior advisor of CVC Capital Partners. A current managing partner of CVC is Atos board member Bertrand Meuier.

Len Konar— board member of Lonmin and chairman of Exxaro Resources. In 2006, when Exxaro Resources was known as Kumba Resources he served on their board of directors with Barry Davison (an individual who formerly served as the CEO and chairman of Anglo American Platinum) and Bill Alan Nair (who went on to become a board member of Murray & Roberts). Konar recently served on the board of directors of the Development Bank of Southern Africa where he worked alongside the former COSUTU General Secretary, Jayaseelan Naidoo.

Jonathan Leslie– board member of Lonmin, former Chief Executive of the Diamonds and Gold Group of Rio Tinto plc.

Michael McMahon – board member of both Impala Platinum and Murray & Roberts, and chairman of Central Rand Gold.

Steve Phiri – CEO of Royal Bafokeng Platinum, and board member of Impala Platinum.

Robin Mills– board member of Royal Bafokeng Platinum, and former executive director of projects at Anglo American Platinum.

Martin Prinsloo– was the Chief Financial Officer of Anglo American Platinum until 2008 before becoming the Chief Financial Officer of Royal Bafokeng Platinum.

As the preceding analysis illustrates, members of the ruling class are closely associated and well-positioned to develop suitable management policies to attack the pay and conditions of their employees across the entire platinum mining sector. This is no anomaly, as given their class consciousness the ruling class has always organized to protect and extend their own unjustified position in society.

Given this situation, the only way to undermine their treacherous abuse of the sanctity of human life on the glistening altar of platinum profits, is for workers to likewise recognize their class interests and organize to defend them. Which is exactly what is currently happening in South Africa: with increasing numbers of miners switching allegiance from class collaborationist unions like NUM to militant unions that are actively engaged in fighting for working class interests.

The brave example set by the Lonmin workers in the face of massive repression has meant that the struggle against the bosses is rapidly extending to other mines. For example, just this Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that Anglo American Platinum had “received a demand for a pay increase from its South African workers,” while miners at Royal Bafokeng Platinum’s Rasimone site have now launched their own strike.

As the Socialist Party’s South African counterpart the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) demands: “It is time for the working class to stand up and fight back – for a general strike of all North West mines and working class communities.”

Movement in this direction is certainly on the cards as: “Over the past few years, workers at Murray and Roberts, Lonmin, Impala, Samancor, Anglo, have again and again been forced to strike in rebellion against the NUM leaders because they have struck deals with management behind the workers’ backs.” The Democratic Socialist Movement’s report on recent events thus concludes by making the following recommendations for the way forward…

The Association of Mine workers and Construction Union (AMCU) has stepped into the vacuum left by the NUM leaders’ betrayal but it has yet to prove it can unite workers behind a real alternative.

The DSM believes that for AMCU to be able to provide a way forward it would have to base itself on a programme that recognises that what is flaring up in Rustenburg is a more intense phase of the class war in which the platinum bosses, along with their likes all over the world, are trying to offload the burden of the escalating global economic crisis onto the backs of the workers. In that situation trade unions must either take the side of the bosses, as the NUM has in effect done, or take up the battle and turn it against the bosses, fighting against closures, retrenchment and short-time until the end while launching a mass campaign for the nationalisation of the mines under worker control and management.

A union worth the name should also call for the all workers, whether they belong to AMCU, NUM or another union, to unite behind the demand for a living wage for all. The crisis can only be resolved by workers uniting across union and tribal lines.

UPDATE: For an up-to-date article written by Democratic Socialist Movement activist Liv Shange, see “Marikana massacre, the struggle continues.”