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124 OPINION/ANALYSIS
Eastern Cape Today 24 August - 30 August 2012
LETTERS
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comments by emailing news@
ectoday.co.za or sending a fax
to 043 742 2138
Bad police service
My missing girl owes a debt of gratitude to nobody
who is prepared to protect her by insulting anybody
who dares to enquire about her.
On the 24th December 2011, I was phoned by a
guy who insulted me and phoned again after I hung
up. I switched off my phone to get some sleep. This
was not easy as he had warned me that he was on his
way to my house.
Police in King William’s Town advised me to approach
Vodacom. Vodacom told me it was the police’s
function to obtain the information. The man in
charge, although very embarrassed by the attitude
of his subordinates, helped me open a case.
In 2004 when my daughter went missing I had
to find her myself after police told me she was old
enough to know where she was going. She was 17.
This matter has not progressed although I have
enlisted the aid of one of the friendly prosecutors. My
daughter has disappeared again and I have enlisted
the help of friends to try and trace her. I think that if
defenseless elderly citizens are going to be exposed
to attacks, SA is a very bad place to be for them. Unfortunately
they have nowhere else to go!
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Mxolisi Dimbaza, King William’s Town
Acknowledgement
of women power
Because of today’s globalised world, the significance of
gender equality cannot be undermined. I am a man, but
I write as an activist for the advancement of women.
In the job market, women, among the vulnerable
in society are still perceived to be specialists when it
comes to homeworks, particularly in the kitchen and
the laundry. Male dominance in the workplace persists,
ignoring the reality the patriarchal era no longer has a
stronghold in our society of democratic equality as enshrined
in, arguably, the best constitution in the world.
The acknowledgement of women power should
not be limited to women’s day or month.
What about getting inspired by some iconic women
figures currently in our midst like the Thuli Madonsela,
Denorah Pattas and the now boss of the AU Commision,
Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma?
Wake-up women and dont ever forget the motto:
“You educate a man you educate an individual, but
if you educate a woman you educate a nation.”
Ernest Nyemu-Nyemu Hogah
King Williams Town
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Fax: 046 624 4139
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Fax: 041 484 3022
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ECTODAY PUBLISHING
ECHOES OF XOLOBENI
IN MARIKANA
Today we publish an account
of the last mediation efforts by
Bishop Jo Seoka, President of
the SACC and Chairperson of
the Bench Marks Foundation,
an NGO that monitors corporate
performance in the field of corporate
social responsibility and
economic empowerment and
which has done extensive work
on the mines, which captures
probably the very last moments
of sanity and the eerie calm before
the mindless mayhem that
rocked the nation.
Almost everyone, without
exception, has been asking the
question whether all peaceful
avenues of settling the matter
peacefully had been exhausted
before the police took the decision
to fire on the striking workers.
Bishop Jo Seoka, who was at
the scene just as it happenned
seems to tell a completely different
story.
The press statement meticulously
recounts how the police
and management fudged his mediation
efforts.
Bishop Seoka will forever be
haunted by the image of the man
says...
The last peace efforts at Marikana
Last Thursday the President of the SACC and
Chairperson of the Bench Marks Foundation,
Bishop Jo Seoka and a team, met with the
striking Lonmin workers. He was told by the
striking workers that they wanted management
to talk to them.
The SACC team left to seek a meeting with
management as requested by the leaders of
the striking miners. On arrival they were welcomed
and told that the briefing has just been
done. Bishop Seoka met with management
who informed him that they were not in a position
to meet with the strikers because they
were killing innocent people. However later
they agreed to a meeting provided the workers
committed to three conditions: surrender their
weapons, elect a small representative group to
engage with management and disperse from
the mountain. Management later introduced
the Bishop and his team to the Commanding
Officer, Ms Mbombo, who briefly explained to
them that two policemen were killed and that
the strikers were given an ultimatum to surrender
their weapons and disperse. On leaving
the briefing area to report back to the miners,
the SACC team was told they could not go back
to the camp as the place was now a security
risk area under the police. Bishop Seoka said
they saw two helicopters taking off and assumed
that they were going to the mountain
where the workers were camping. ‘As they left
the area a call came through from the man we
spoke to telling us that the police were killing
them and we could hear the gun shots and
screams of people’, says the Bishop. ‘The man
covered with green blanket lying dead was the
last person we spoke to who represented the
mine workers.’
The Bench Marks Foundation’s study, ‘Living
in the Platinum Mines Fields’ released on
the 14th August 2012 paints a grim picture of
mining and communities. The platinum mining
companies appear on the surface to be socially
responsible, respectful of communities
and workers and contributing to host community
development. ‘Nothing can be further
from the truth’, says Bishop Seoka.
The Bench Marks Foundation study pointed
lying dead, a symbol of the shattered
possibilities of peace, covered
with a green blanket and
who happened to be the last person
he and his delegation spoke
to who represented the mine
workers in his thwarted mediation
bid.
The Bench Mark Foundation
study alluded to in the press
statement highlights the squalid
living conditions of the workers.
This is further exacerbated by
the fact that the workers are paid
a pittance, a situation largely attributed
to the involvement of
the controversial labour brokers
and subcontractors from where
Lonmin sources its labour force.
That rank squalor continues
to scar the landscape of communities
hosting these mining
companies is a major indictment
on the society that allows such
injustice.
The emaciated dogs, the filth,
the squalor, all point to the so-
cial degradation in a community
that hosts the third richest platinum
mine in the world and the
failure of corporate performance
in the field of corporate social
responsibility whose focus is social
responsibility and economic
empowerment.
It just shows how such wealth
has not benefitted the community.
These images dominated the
international headlines this past
week.
Some of the mine workers
caught up in this tragedy are
from the Eastern Cape.
They articulated their pain
from hospital beds. And yet others
are no more. Amakhosi from
the Eastern Cape have gone to
Marikana to provide support
and leadership. Back home, from
Libode to Mbizana, poverty continues
to grind, as they prepare
to bury their loved ones.
What is most lamentable
out that the platinum mines rely on labour brokers
and subcontractors that employ workers at
very low wages. The use of migrant and subcontracted
labour, the living-out allowance and the
overcrowding of townships and squatter camps
housing mine workers is a recipe for disaster.
If the truth be told it is shareholders in London
and elsewhere that are to blame. Profits are being
made at the expense of workers and communities
and with the help of political patronage.
Mine companies put politically connected
people on their board, such as director generals
and former ministers, which leads to a breakdown
of democracy, of government oversight,
and of regulatory authorities’ power.
Whose side is the government on? The vivid
imagery of dead miners lying on the ground in
front of heavily armed police evokes a painful
resemblance to the role of the police in the
apartheid era. Is it
not the role of the police to protect its own
citizens? ‘Why is the South African government,
represented by the South African police
force choosing to open fire on its own people,
in order to protect a corporation?’, asks Seoka.
The lives of black mine workers are clearly not
worth much in the eyes of Lonmin or the government.
Unfortunately, recent events at the
Lonmin mine are only the tip of the iceberg of
the continuous exploitation by platinum mining
houses of both mine workers and the sur-
about this tragedy is the apparent
emasculation of the black
owners of the Lonmin mine, the
company’s BEE partners, a partnership
which is increasingly
viewed as collusion in the oppression
of black workers.
For all the people of the Eastern
Cape it is a story that brings
to mind the deadly contestation
that continues to rage around
the Xolobeni mining project in
Mbizana and brings into sharp
focus some of the pertinent issues
raised by the amaDiba Crisis
Committee and other interested
parties in their opposition
to the mineral sands project.
In the nature versus development
debate, the Lonmin disaster
has given the nature lobby a
big boost and set back the cause
for responsible development.
Mining companies should
work out a deal that guarantees
mutual benefit for both corporations
and society.
rounding mining communities.
What is happening at Lonmin is a horrific
example that is symptomatic of a wider structural
problem of exploitation by the mines. The
benefits of mining are not reaching the workers
or the surrounding communities. Lack of
employment opportunities for local youth,
squalid living conditions, unemployment and
growing inequalities contribute to this mess.
The Bench Marks Foundation’s study
warned about deteriorating social relations in
communities, conflicts and the potential for
violent conflict. Now we witness the brutality
of Lonmin not willing to meet their workers.
The latest incidents had nothing to do
with inter-union rivalry. Bishop Seoka, when
speaking to the striking workers last Thursday,
noted that they were in fact peaceful and just
wanted the company to engage them. ‘But we
have witnessed similar events around Impala
Platinum when three workers lost their lives
under similar conditions several months back’,
said Seoka.
Last May Lonmin fired 9000 workers in an
unprotected industrial section. Recently they
began retrenching workers. Low wages along
with all the social disintegration, crime, murder,
rape and prostitution, unemployment and
poverty amidst the third richest platinum mine
in the world, create an incubator rife for huge
worker and community discontent.
‘What must be remembered is that about
10 days ago Lonmin security guards shot dead
two demonstrating workers outside their gate.
This situation could have been avoided. The
killing of over 30 workers, and the quietness
of Lonmin in all of this is truly shocking,’ said
Bishop Seoka.
The Bench Marks Foundation and the SACC
calls for a high level commission of enquiry
involving the churches and other independent
organs to examine the situation of mine
workers, their wages and living conditions and
role of the companies in not effectively dealing
with worker and community discontent when
it has been boiling for months.
John Capel Executive Director,
Bench Marks Foundation