NUM Files for One-Day Safety Strike in South Africa’s Mine

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) petitioned South Africa’s Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) last week to conduct a one-day strike. The strike would call attention to severe safety deficiencies by mining houses operating in South Africa in the wake of the near catastrophe at Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand Mine on 3-4 October.

Some 3,200 miners were trapped there when a piece of steel pipe dropped 2.2 kilometres down an elevator shaft, severing electrical cables and shattering the framework of the mine’s main elevator. Fortunately, all were rescued, but it took the company 38 hours to complete the rescue.

But even after that near tragedy, the death toll in South African mines has risen. On 10 October, three miners were killed at Goldfields Kloof gold mine near Westonaria when a rope hoisting a skip loaded with rock snapped, sending the load back down a shaft and crushing the three miners. On the same day, another Goldfields miner was killed by falling rock 2,700 metres underground at the company’s South Deep Mine.

Three NUM members at Northam Platinum in Thabazimbi lost their lives in accidents recently. The NUM said the company had failed to report the deaths. The company responded by stating that its policy has been not to report single fatalities. On 17 October, one miner at AngloPlatinum’s Paardekraal Mine in Rustenburg perished and another was critically injured and remains hospitalised from an underground rock fall.

A day earlier, Reuters in Johannesburg reported that the subsidiary of Anglo American was contemplating reducing the number of contract workers in its mines because the safety record of such workers is not as good as for permanent staff. “We have identified this as the key challenge,” stated AngloPlats head of Strategy, Frances Petersen.

NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni

The NUM formally applied to the CCMA for a certificate to strike on the same day of the AngloPlats Rustenburg tragedy. The strike could come as early as next week, or the first week of November. It would mark the first time in 20 years that the ICEM affiliate took strike action across the country’s entire mining sector.

In a statement, the NUM said a “genocide is unfolding, and the NUM is preparing for a strike that seeks to divert attention from the obsession with production targets to the one that deals with realising the sacrosanct human life.”

NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni added that the loss of black miners has come at the expense of enormous profits made through continuous operations.