LAST Friday, National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) commemorated the mass murder of striking miners in Marikana, who were gunned down for demanding a better life.
NUMSA said: ‘Thirty-four workers were massacred on this day, August 16, 2012. We must also remember the lives of ten workers, including mineworkers, security guards and the policemen who were killed between the 12th and the 14th of August in the days leading up to the massacre. This remains a dark day in post-Apartheid history, and we must never forget the lives that were lost. To date, the families of these victims are still struggling to live without their loved ones.
‘The tragedy of Marikana is that workers at Lonmin mines embarked on an unprotected strike to demand R12,500, which they viewed as a living wage. The mining company, like most mines in South Africa, was making major profits, whilst exploiting cheap African labour.
‘Whilst the bosses at Lonmin and their shareholders were getting richer, the workers who live in the surrounding area, and the community lived in desperate poverty.
‘The mine management refused to negotiate with them. President Cyril Ramaphosa, was Deputy President at that time, and Jacob Zuma was President. Ramaphosa was the board chairperson of Lonmin mines.
‘He was also the former founder of the NUM union and instead of negotiating with mineworkers, or sympathising with their demands he called for “concomitant action” to be taken against workers which resulted in them being shot and killed, live on TV.
‘It remains an indictment against the ANC government that workers were murdered for simply demanding a living wage.
‘Despite decades of black rule by the ANC the majority of people still live in squalor and extreme poverty. Workers in the mining sector in post-Apartheid South Africa are still paid peanuts, and they are exposed to shocking working conditions.
‘We have experience as a union, where contract workers in the mining sector earn R7,000 per month with no benefits for doing the same work as permanent employees who earn a minimum R15,000 per month.
‘Working in a mine is not safe. Fifty-five workers lost their lives underground in 2023 due to mine accidents, and in 2022 we lost forty-nine mineworkers. Whilst we have seen some improvements in safety, we want to see zero incidents in the mining sector.
‘At the same time, workers get killed just for daring to affiliate with a particular union. NUMSA has lost organisers and members who were killed simply for recruiting workers and openly showing their support for the union.
‘It is a disgrace that in 2024, the lives of ordinary mineworkers remain largely unchanged, and this is another reminder of the failure of the neo-liberal economic policies which the ANC, and also the current right-wing Government of National Unity (GNU), are continuing to promote.
‘The founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, Steve Biko once said: “The true test of a nation’s greatness is not the achievements of its rulers, but the quality of life of its people.”
‘This is particularly true in our case where after decades of ANC rule, we are the most unequal society in the world, with crippling levels of unemployment and poverty.
‘The Marikana massacre is a painful reminder that the only way to transform the lives of the masses is through implementing Socialist policies such as nationalising the mines and the minerals, to ensure that the state is able to meaningfully transform the lives of the majority of people, by providing free quality healthcare, education and housing for all.
‘It is shameful that the wealth of this country remains in the hands of a capitalist minority, whose only interest is to deepen their wealth at the expense of the masses,’ NUMSA concluded.
- Members of the Simunye Workers Forum (SWF) have been on strike at the Mister Sweet factory in Germiston, Gauging province South
Africa, since Monday.
More than 600 workers have downed tools at Mister Sweet Factory in Wadeville, Germiston, demanding a minimum wage of R19,500 a month.
Striking workers protested on Tuesday outside the factory at the corner of Dekema and Bezuidenhout Roads. The strike began on Monday, 19 August, and workers say they will continue striking until the employer meets their demands.
Mister Sweet, which was acquired by the giant Premier Foods in 2021, makes sweets, including gums, jellies, marshmallows, and chocolates.
The union is demanding a basic salary of R19,500 per month and a R15 an hour across-the-board increase for those who already earn that amount.
The company is offering a 7% wage increase.
The SWF says workers have no basic salary and have been earning ‘very low wages’ of R6,000 to R7,000 per month for the past 10 years. The union complains that workers from other branches earn much more.
Striking workers said their work is risky and they do not earn enough to make it worth while. One worker said a colleague had lost a finger this year in a machine.
Striker Nthabiseng Nxumalo said she had worked for the company for 12 years, and had been earning R6,000 a month ‘for as long as I can remember’.
She said: ‘All my money ends up on rent and food. Sometimes I’m compelled to borrow money from a loan shark. The company is now on the Joburg Stock Exchange because we have worked hard to raise it, yet we earn peanuts. We have decided to strike because we are fed up.’
Lebogang Ndluli earns R9,000 a month as a machine operator and says she has worked for the company since 2018. ‘I deserve to earn more than R20,000 because the work that I do is too much,’ she said.
Another machine operator, Alice Maguani, said a big chunk of her wage of R9,000 a month was spent on transport. ‘The company underpays us. It’s high time that the company pays us what we deserve.’
Premier’s spokesperson Siobhan O’Sullivan said the current wage demand was ‘unrealistic’. Premier had offered a 7% wage increase, which had been rejected by the workers.
- The Congress of the South African Trade Unions (COSATU) said on Tuesday it ‘is delighted to be one of the parties that will be signing the Presidential Health Compact at the Union Buildings this Thursday.’
President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to preside over the signing after it was postponed last Thursday. COSATU’s 1st Deputy President, Mike Shingange, will represent the Federation at the ceremony as the labour signatory.
Established by President Ramaphosa in 2019, the Health Compact is a framework of cooperation between stakeholders that critically influence good health outcomes in the country.
The compact assigns roles and responsibilities to a broad range of stakeholders to support the strengthening and preparation of health systems for the implementation of the National Health (NHI). The framework has a monitoring and evaluation component to it.
This compact is an output of the 2023 Presidential Health Summit and builds on the first which came out of the inaugural summit in 2018.
It brought together government, labour, business, civil society, health professionals, statutory councils, services users, academia and researchers to develop sustainable, inclusive solutions to challenges in the national health system.
The initial Health Compact consisted of nine pillars with the 10th added during last year’s summit. The pillars include development of human resources; improving access to medicine, vaccines and health products; upgrading infrastructure; engaging private sector; quality healthcare; improvement of public sector financial management; governance and leadership; community engagement; information systems and pandemic preparedness.
COSATU, its health workers’ Affiliates; the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, the Democratic Nurses of South Africa, the South African Emergency Personnel Union and the South African Medical Association Trade Union have been invited to sign Pillar 1 on Human Resources for Health.
Organised labour is a historical contributor and integral part of the success of the implementation of this pillar.
While COSATU acknowledges the importance of the Health Compact and hopes it will be implemented adequately, making the roll out of the NHI a reality, our dedicated Affiliates view the full and proper implementation of Human Resources for Health 2030 as critical, and are unequivocal that 97,000 healthcare workers must be permanently employed by the end 2024 – a third of which must be Community Healthcare Workers.
This is critical as cutting spending on human resources ultimately leads to increased medical litigations against the Department of Health due to otherwise avoidable factors such shortage of staff, medical equipment, beds, etc.
Most of Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital’s litigations, for instance, stem from its maternity unit and are mainly due to these factors. The department is losing billions of rands that would otherwise be used to improve our public hospitals.
For the Federation and Affiliates, it is crucial that government deliver on its commitment to incorporate 60,000 Community Health Workers into the department, as this commitment has so far seen unbalanced implementation across provinces. Community Health Workers must be prioritised as per Pillar 1’s intent.
COSATU calls for an end to austerity driven budget cuts and urges government to properly fund health, as budget cuts have had a detrimental impact on health infrastructure and the filling of vital vacancies.
COSATU said the implementation of the NHI is critical for the provision of affordable healthcare to the working class, adding: ‘This Health Compact sets us on a path to the realisation of the NHI and its principles.’
