The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.33           September 23, 1996 
 
 
Workers In South Africa Make Progress
Miners are in vanguard of labor's struggle to eradicate legacy of apartheid  

BY GREG ROSENBERG

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Step by step, the working class in this country is making progress in eradicating apartheid's legacy in the workplace.

Many of these changes have begun to occur in the gold, diamond, platinum, and coal mines that constitute the largest industry in South Africa. These changes are the result of unrelenting struggles by hundreds of thousands of mineworkers who work deep underground for companies like Anglo-American and Gold Fields of South Africa. Some 350,000 mineworkers are members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

In its 1996 demands on the Chamber of Mines, the union has advanced proposals to narrow the wage gap between black and white miners. Miners who are white are currently paid on average nearly four times the amount of black miners.

After two months of negotiations with the bosses' association, the NUM declared a dispute August 1. Tens of thousands of mineworkers have joined in protests and marches over the past several months to pressure the Chamber to accept union demands. These include a restructuring of wages to reduce the number of job grades and closing the gap between the lowest and highest paid workers.

The NUM is currently demanding a 13 percent wage increase, while the mine owners are offering 7.5 percent to gold miners and between 6 and 12 percent to coal miners. The employers are also balking at a union proposal that they make a 1 percent contribution of pretax profits into miners' education and training programs.

Expanded rights for migrant workers
Last October, after a series of long negotiations involving the NUM, South African president Nelson Mandela, then-deputy president F.W. deKlerk of the National Party, and Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party, an agreement was announced removing a cornerstone of apartheid's migrant labor system in the mines.

Migrant mineworkers who are originally from the neighboring countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Swaziland are now allowed to apply for permanent residency in South Africa. This affects some 90,000 workers. For more than a century, migrant miners - signed up on contract labor - have been brought to South Africa by the mining houses, forced to live in single-sex hostels far from their families, without any rights, and sent back to their countries of origin at the expiration of their contracts.

"This is a great victory for NUM and for migrant mineworkers," said NUM president James Motlatsi - himself from Lesotho. "At long last the black workers who have produced the wealth of this country and have for generations died in the mines are to be treated as equals with white workers."

Opening the doors of learning
After a long struggle, the NUM has now signed agreements with nine separate mining companies dubbed the Adult Basic Education and Training agreement. These agreements mandate the mining houses - at their own expense - to establish training centers in which all miners will receive education, beginning with basic literacy. A high percentage of miners in South Africa never received any education and cannot read. Training is to be administered by joint union/company committees.

"With education you can know what is happening in the world, can understand your own payslip, understand safety signs, and can read and write your own letters," said NUM shaft steward Gilbert Mphahlele.

Miners point out that securing basic education and literacy is a key to advancing affirmative action in the mines. For decades, skilled jobs such as underground electricians were the exclusive province of white miners. It is also essential component of workers strengthening safety underground.

Reconstruction program
For two years, the ranks of the NUM have been discussing a proposal from the union's Central Committee to actively join in advancing the demands put forward in the government's Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP).

One union proposal was for miners to voluntarily work on one of the dozen national paid holidays now granted annually, and have both miners and mining houses divert wages and profits respectively toward the national RDP fund.

"At the end of last year we had two mines that worked on holidays, and the earnings went to the RDP fund," said NUM general secretary Kgalema Motlanthe. "In one, they did that without a clear proposal on what the funds would be used for.

"In the other mine, they thought they just had to work, and the company just said it would `accumulate' funds for the workforce. When the union National Executive Committee read the reports, we viewed them as positive mistakes.

"We decided to visit those mines and develop clear local projects that could be developed out of those funds."

Motlanthe reported that these proposals have been discussed in the major trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions. "The issue has been raised on several occasions, but little has been done practically," he said.

"It is still early to determine the concrete results of the RDP," as a whole, said Motlanthe. "In some rural areas, for instance in the Eastern Cape, some rural communities are now getting running water. Some work has been done. But the main challenge is how to create jobs. The unemployment figures are quite frightening," standing at nearly 50 percent for blacks in South Africa.

"How can we generate economic growth, with the rand [South African currency] having dropped some 20 percent relative to the dollar this year? And with a state debt inherited from apartheid? How can we attract foreign investors? They seem reluctant. They come in on blue chip stocks - not direct investment - and this doesn't help.

"Even in mining, existing mineral rights laws hinder new investment," Motlanthe said. "The old mining groups sit on mineral deposits and decide whether to sink new shafts. There are indications they are moving towards North Africa where the political situation is different, in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Our proposal is that if a company sits on mineral deposits for three years without mining, the deposits should revert to the state for tender."

The government's mineral policy is under negotiation.  
 
 
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