Tshukudu's union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), struck Anglo American Platinum, the world's largest producer of the metal, on September 18. His reference to 1652--the year that Jan van Riebeeck led three Dutch ships to establish what became the Cape Colony at the southern tip of the African continent--captures part of what this strike by tens of thousands of miners is about.

While the immediate demand is for a pension increase, miners are fighting, in their own words, to be treated as human beings, which necessitates dismantling the organization of labor and social conditions established under apartheid white minority rule.

Anglo American Platinum, or Amplats, a division of Anglo American Corporation, employs about 43,000 miners and refinery workers in South Africa. Seven of these mines, and three smelters, are in this area of the country's Northwest Province, employing approximately 17,000 miners and 3,000 refinery workers, according to NUM organizer Zola Sontonga.

Of these, says Sontonga, at least 12,000 had joined the strike by October 7. This figure does not include strikers at Amplats operations in other parts of South Africa.

Union spokesperson George Molebatsi says a majority of workers at the company's mines in the Northern Province are also on strike. The numbers are fluid because miners belonging to rival unions have not all joined the strike. The company claims that with the exception of the NUM its final offer, "unilaterally implemented" October 4, has been accepted by all unions and staff associations representing half the workforce.  
 
Pension fund increase
The workers' central demand is for a 1 percent increase in the pension fund. The company and NUM have already agreed to a 9 percent wage increase, which is only 1 percent or 2 percent above current fluctuations in the consumer inflation rate. Workers refer to the entire package as a 10 percent demand.

"Minimum salary for a miner is about 1,100 rands a month (about $150). After deductions, take-home pay is about R900 ($123). We feel we are being very reasonable in our demands in that their profits are so good," said John Segotlong, 25, a refinery plant operator.

Strikers say the company's refusal to meet their demand for an additional 1 percent for the pension fund is about teaching the union a lesson. "They are aware that our union is prepared to do everything, and that the only union that can represent all the workers is the NUM. It's a matter of testing our power. Already 8 percent of the increase will be taken away by inflation. So we are only asking for 2 percent so we can lead a better life," says Segotlong.

Ever since a wave of workers struggles led to widespread unionization in the mid-1980s, the South African mining bosses have been probing to break or weaken the National Union of Mineworkers, which has 290,000 members in gold, platinum, coal, and other mines throughout the country. Their efforts resulted in the formation of the Mouthpeace Workers Union at Amplats mines in 1996. This organization signed an agreement with Amplats on September 27.

Lizwe Kwezi, 26, who works underground, describes Mouthpeace as "a counterrevolutionary organization." He displays a list, produced by the NUM, of 22 of its members that it says have been murdered by Mouthpeace over the past several years. The courts and police, he says, are complicit in protecting these thugs.

"The company uses Mouthpeace to hurt the NUM," states Kwezi. "Even if you look at their leadership, it includes people who are coming from the AWB [the rightist Afrikaner Resistance Movement]. Mouthpeace is just there to counteract government legislation and what the NUM is fighting for." He says the primary adherents of the group are Xhosa speakers from certain regions of the Eastern Cape--and that the company is attempting to play up tribal divisions.

Workers say that the NUM has made headway among some Mouthpeace members, who have joined the strike. In contrast, none of the strikers have crossed the picket line to return to work.

In the first week of October the NUM launched what strikers call the "second phase" of the walkout. "We are embarking on rolling mass action," says Sontonga. NUM refinery workers, whose contract expires at the end of the year, have been called out on a solidarity strike with the miners. A national march of NUM members and their supporters is scheduled in Johannesburg on October 11, where Amplats strikers other unionists will demonstrate outside the company's headquarters.

Apartheid rule turned blacks into rightless noncitizens, and the mining industry in particular was built on the superexploitation of African labor. Black workers were not allowed to take skilled jobs underground; these were filled by whites. All the bosses, including at foreman level, were white. Legislation introduced by the African National Congress government, such as the Employment Equity Act, aims to introduce affirmative action throughout the economy. Workers in many industries are waging a fight to have the bosses implement the law.

"The company is not prepared to change the system underground," says Tshukudu. "It takes a long time for black miners to be appointed (promoted in a system of job and wage categories). A white man who comes in gets an appointment within 12 months. With black miners it can take up to six years.

"The mine I work in is 1.46 kilometers (about nine-tenths of a mile) underground. It is very hot and very hard work. Most of the bosses are white and only black people are doing the hard jobs. The company is not prepared to adhere to affirmative action laws--they only tell the media that. They say they are 'in the process of implementing' the Employment Equity Act, but they are really in the process of slowing it down. It's a gospel of no event. Black miners want to become electricians, boilermakers, and fitters. But they are not given the opportunity of advancing themselves to a better position."

There are several thousand whites in the mines and refineries here--most of them foremen or in "skilled" jobs. None have gone on strike. The NUM is a nonracial union, and in some other mining areas has made progress in recruiting white miners, but not in Rustenburg.  
 
Hostel system
The predominant language among miners in the Rustenburg area is Tswana. Many also speak Zulu, Xhosa, and other languages. Amplats recruits miners from throughout South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, and other countries in the region. The entire mining industry was built on this migration scheme, in which miners are separated from their families by both time and distance. Most still live in single-sex hostels on company property. The NUM has fought for years to do away with the hostel system, but the employers have hardly budged. There are "married quarters," but these are populated only by white mine staff.

Kwezi says: "Last year I lived in a hostel with 10 other men--11 people in one room. There is no sanitation. The toilets are filthy. There is no supervision where black people are staying. The food there is rotten." He now rents a room in a nearby township for R250 of his monthly take-home pay of R1,000. The remainder has to cover food, clothing, transportation fees, and recreation.

Kwezi is from rural Transkei, and only sees his family once a year.

Six years after South Africa's first democratic elections, black life remains cheap in the eyes of the employers. This is especially true in the mines, graveyard of many tens of thousands of Africans over the last 130 years, upon which Anglo American and other mining capitalists built their fortunes. Last year alone, 309 workers were killed underground.

"All that Amplats wants is to maximize profits," says Kwezi. "Last year one of my colleagues went missing underground. We gave information to management, but the very same day, blasting activities took place without any search. Safety equipment is not provided unless government inspectors arrive. Dozens of people were killed in the mine last year.

"Significant changes have not been made. Little changes have," says Segotlong. "But we are determined that as the NUM we will push it to where we want it to be. We've got the hope that we will do it as the union."  
 
 
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