“Mining is the most important industrial activity in the world today and has one of the smallest environmental impacts (…) I would like us to become known as the development industry.”
This is how AngloGold Ashanti CEO Mark Cutifani recently addressed a ‘Mining for Change’ conference. Cutifani pointed out that the global mining industry drives more than 45 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), either directly or through other industries.
The CEO proudly explained that the mining industry exploits less than one per cent of the earth’s surface, consumes less than one per cent of the world’s water and emits less than three per cent of the world’s carbon gases. The mining product revenue contributes 11.5 per cent to global GDP, and that means that mining multinationals make huge profits.
AngloGold Ashanti, for example, is a global gold producer with 21 operations on four continents and with US$50.4 billion revenues in 2011.
In February this year, Mr Cutifani boasted: “With record earnings of US$1.3 billion and stronger cash flow than we’ve ever seen, we’ve laid an exceptionally strong foundation on which to grow the business.”
No wonder then if AngloGold Ashanti’s South African workers, just like their peers at Lonmin and at other mining sites, are now demanding a fair share of those earnings, aiming to reach a basic monthly salary of 12,500 rand (US$1,500).
According to IRIN news agency, many mineworkers live on US$600 a month and lodge with their families "in single-room tin sheds clustered in a shantytown just metres from their workplace".
The miners are often recruited through private intermediaries so companies are exempted from paying workers’ pensions and benefits.
The struggle goes viral
The very next day the strike at the Lonmin mining site in Marikana was fixed, on Thursday, AngloGold Ashanti was hit by a stoppage on Friday at the Kopanang mine, around 180 kilometres southwest of Johannesburg, in which around 5,000 workers are employed.
The protest came as Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) and Gold Fields were trying to get thousands of their own striking workers to return to work. Amplats gave its workers an ultimatum to return to work by the Thursday night shift after declaring the strike action illegal.
But on Wednesday miners and residents blocked roads with rocks and burning tyres to keep the police out. Police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the crowd and arrested 22 protesters.
“No one is willing to go back, absolutely no-one,” workers’ representative Gaddhafi Mdoda said to AFP news agency.
At the Gold Fields mining site, near Johannesburg, 15,000 miners downed tools 11 days ago, causing a loss of 1,400 ounces of gold a day.
Gold Fields, which is the world’s fourth largest gold miner by production in 2011 and operates mines in South Africa, Australia, Ghana and Peru, is now negotiating with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
“The strike was not expected,” said NUM’s spokesman Lesiba Seshoka about the action at AngloGold Ashanti, explaining that the miners around the country’s mining industry have taken a cue from the wage settlement at Lonmin.
The precedent of Lonmin
On Thursday, thousands of miners returned to work at the Lonmin site in Marikana, after ending a six-week strike that resulted in the worst police violence since the end of apartheid, with 34 people shot dead.
“We’re happy to go to work. We got what we wanted,” Yandisa Mehlo, 37, told AFP.
Under the agreement, Lonmin offered a one-off bonus of R2,000 (242 USD), an average rise in wages of 11 per cent that was already due in October and a 22 per cent rise for 4,000 rock drill operators.
“We hope that other mining companies will quickly make offers similar to the 22 per cent increase reportedly agreed between Lonmin and the unions and workers’ representatives, and thus avoid any repetition of the events at Marikana,” said the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
COSATU invited the workers to put an end to divisions between the established National Union of Mineworkers, which is Cosatu’s biggest affiliate, and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, a new union that has gained some influence in the platinum sector.
After the agreement, however, it remains to be seen if the terms will be fully honoured or if miners will have to continue the fight for a decent wage.
Employers say the precedent set by Lonmin could spread through a sector already burdened by uncompetitive labour costs. “One hopes the contagion effects are as limited as possible.
The difficulty is it may set a precedent,” a senior industry official told the Financial Times.
However, the economic losses due to strikes and conflicts might be even bigger. South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma called for a speedy resolution last Monday, warning that the industrial conflict had already cost Africa’s largest economy half a billion dollars.
Beyond South Africa
Another significant, yet different, kind of fight is going on in mineral-rich Bolivia these days. On Tuesday one state miner was killed and nine others were injured during a march organised by mining cooperatives in La Paz.
Some dynamite sticks were thrown against the union offices in the area of El Prado, hitting Hector Choque, who went into a coma for a few hours before dying, EFE Spanish news agency reports. The premises were attacked while over 17,000 ‘independent’ miners were demonstrating in La Paz.
Behind the attack there is a dispute over the control of the Colquiri tin and zinc mine, which Evo Morales’ socialist government nationalised last June. The mine had been previously privatised and sold to the Swiss giant Glencore.
The cooperative miners claim that they should have control over a lucrative section of Colquiri, which is located about 250 kilometers south of La Paz. However, state workers have occupied the site to prevent access to cooperatives.
Over 200 anti-riot police went to guard the union office and fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Deputy Interior Minister Jorge Perez said that a “fellow miner” had been killed and denounced the “clashes and intransigence” of the demonstrators, calling on both sides to meet with officials for reconciliation talks.
