by Benjamin Fogel
The Lonmin Worker’s Council was birthed by last year’s wildcat strike at the London Mining (Formerly London Rhodesian mining) mines in Marikana. The strike itself emanated from a long-running dispute between workers and management stemming both from the demand for R12 500 and the failure of the majority union NUM to take up workers’ demands seriously.
The dispute between NUM and workers was long-running – dating back to a strike in 2009 at the Karee shaft, where some 9 000 workers were dismissed and NUM, after calling the strike, didn’t fight the dismissals. These workers were later re-hired on a contract basis, often through labour brokers. It was at this shaft that AMCU was later going to build a foothold at Lonmin. And it was at this shaft that Rock Drill Operators (RDOS) would make the call for a strike that would later lead to the massacre.
One of the more persistent myths of the Marikana massacre is that the strike was lead by AMCU, but this simply isn’t true. AMCU entered the scene only after it was invited by the workers’ committee (not to be confused with the workers’ council) that led the Lonmin Wildcat strike. The strike at Lonmin was led by workers who created a structure known as the Lonmin Workers’ Committee to defend their interests and plan the strike. This workers’ committee in turn elected a group of four leaders known as the five madoda, who would represent them in negotiations with the police or Lonmin, or in public.
Out of the original five madoda, three were murdered in the massacre – from witness accounts it was clear they were targeted by the police. Mambush, known as ‘the man in the green blanket’ ,was one of these men. No post-mortem report has been made available. These leaders were given the mission to take their demands directly to Lonmin management after NUM refused to take up these demands. NUM officials in fact shot at workers who marched to the NUM offices on 9 August , after workers attempted to force NUM into supporting the strike. Workers allege that NUM officials were paid to defend the shaft from the striking workers.
After having seen the degeneration of NUM, the Lonmin Worker’s Council was formed for the specific purposes of defending Lonmin workers from the return of NUM and the potential degeneration of the new union – AMCU. The other primary task of the workers’ council was to negotiate a new shared solidarity among workers from a variety of different cultural and ethno-linguistic backgrounds; unity among workers was seen by the council as key to future victories.
An example of how these divides were bridged to forge a new solidarity is in the form of cleansing rituals: the council agreed upon a common cleansing ritual to be performed after meetings that would symbolise the commonality of all workers as African rather than divided into different tribal backgrounds.
The Workers’ Council sees it duties as ensuring that AMCU becomes a union controlled by workers, rather than having representatives which claim to speak on behalf of workers but are neither directly accountable to workers nor actually responsive to their needs and demands. They also see themselves as closer to workers’ issues than a head office, and view workers’ control (for lack of a better term) as workers being on the ground and having a better grasp of the challenges and issues they face on a daily basis than do the union officials in far-off offices.
While almost all external parties, from the majority of opposition parties to the mining houses, as well as much of the media, the South African council of churches and responsible civil society are calling for peace on the platinum belt, most workers see it differently.
‘Peace is bullshit, there can be no peace for the fallen, peace only comes with “R12500”.’
Or as Julius Malema put it at the commemoration of last year’s massacre on 16 August: ‘Peace with whom? Only in South Africa can you have calls for peace when nobody has taken responsibility for the massacre.’
These calls for peace are superficial at best and at worst they are a call for workers to surrender their demands and not engage in future strikes for the ‘greater good’ so as not to terrify foreign investors too much.
The Lonmin Worker’s council includes many experienced worker leaders and organisers, some having been involved in the original process of building NUM on the Platinum Belt in the early eighties. They know how unions function and how to organise and carry out a strike, having done this many times before.
As one of the worker leaders put it to me in 1994: ‘the ANC went to NUM’ and then it shifted from representing workers to representing the interests of its leaders and through that capital. This includes the investment fund which is done in the names of the workers.
Lonmin workers are still committed to the struggle for R12 500, but whether AMCU is remains to be answered; they have been notably quiet in public about this demand after finally being recognised as the majority union at Lonmin in August. AMCU fought an uphill battle against a hostile and obstructionist management who allowed NUM the space to resist AMCU’s inevitable takeover.
During this period numerous AMCU workers and their principle organiser Steve were murdered by mysterious forces. This has been passed off in the media as ‘inter-union violence’, but as of yet no evidence of such has been provided. Workers believe that NUM and the police, working together, are responsible for these killings.
Whatever the case, ‘inter-union’ violence allowed Lonmin along with the other mining houses to make a play for ‘peace’ on the Platinum belt and keep AMCU bogged down in the struggle for recognition while solidifying its own position and coordinating its own strategy to attempt to hamper future strike action. In the end Lonmin appears to have tricked AMCU, according to a City Press story, into signing an agreement as part of being recognised at Lonmin, which undermines AMCU’s own position at Lonmin, by including clauses that allow Lonmin to negotiate with minority unions such as Solidarity and NUM, a challenge which didn’t exist when NUM and Lonmin had a safe working relationship.
Calls for peace then are little more than a call for workers to surrender to capital. In this it is the duty of those who support the demand of R12 500 and workers’ struggles on the Platinum belt to provide a narrative critical of ‘peace settlements’ and ‘inter-union’ violence in the public sphere. AMCU is torn between the pressure coming from the media, government and Lonmin to engage in peace talks as part of normalising relations with management and gaining the dubious honour of becoming a ‘respectable’ trade union.
The confrontation that has arisen between AMCU and the Lonmin Worker’s council brings up the question of what are the limits and strengths of workers’ committees as an organisational form. Workers’ committees in South Africa are regularly formed to coordinate strike action, particularly in light of the murkier side of strikes, with the focus on keeping scabs out and ensuring workers don’t break the strike. Tasks which unions are unable to ‘officially’ carry out, but are necessary in any successful strike action.
Workers’ committees are not bound by the structure of unions and are not subject to the same political limitations faced by unions in general and COSATU unions in particular in South Africa, with their ties to the ruling party. Workers’ committees are able to engage with a wider political project, one intent on building independent working-class power not mediated by officials intent on securing their own position within an organisation. Furthermore, they are the starting point for any radical left political project that is focused on workers owning the means of production, as workers’ committees represent a directly elected group of worker leaders able to build the sort of political coherence and leadership/organisational capabilities to move in this eventual direction.
Workers’ committees are able to further link up to other similar committees and coordinate strike action without having to go through the legal wrangling imposed by the Labour Relations Framework within which unions have to operate.
The weaknesses, on the other hand, are that workers’ committees are often seen by workers as temporary structures that are only necessary during strikes, so they tend to fragment as quickly as they were formed. Workers often identify with unions primarily, leading them to put their faith in the established structures and leadership figures in particular rather than their own ability to self-organise. Furthermore the leadership figures within workers’ committees are often liable to cooption from either management or union leadership that is often hostile to independent workers grouping outside of the approved union structures.
The challenge facing both workers and their allies on the left is to attempt to embed militancy either within the structures of AMCU or to ensure that workers’ committees can become permanent structures capable of growing in strength and building new alliances capable of sustaining independent working class power.
