Analysis: Wage demands pushing the ‘Miner Spring’

SOUTH AFRICA’S mining industry is being sucked into a vicious circle as labour unrest spreads from platinum to gold with steep wage demands neither sector can afford.

Fuelled by outrage over the police killing of 34 striking miners last month, the militancy in the world’s top platinum producer is leading to closed shafts and job losses, triggering in turn more union and social tension.

Tony Healy, an expert on South African labour law, said: “This may be the beginning of a ‘Miner Spring’. Perhaps we have reached a point now where the inequity in the pay scale would lead to broader civil disobedience and protest.”

The worker stridency has found fertile soil in the squalor of the poor communities that ring the mines in South Africa, the continent’s wealthiest economy but one scarred by the inequalities of its racist past.

It is also the most serious challenge since the end of white rule in 1994 to the unwritten pact at the heart of post-apartheid political and economic power: unions aligned to the ruling ANC deliver modestly higher wages for workers, while also ensuring labour stability for big business.

Although the Marikana mine incident has been the most violent, it is just one in a string caused by a turf war between the dominant National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union.

Aquarius Platinum shut its Everest mine in June, citing labour infighting, with the loss of 2,000 jobs. Lonmin has warned if its strike is prolonged, 40,000 jobs will be lost.

But worker anger at the NUM is rife, with the union’s leaders seen as too close to management and the ANC.