COSATU Media Monitor, , 4 July 2014

[Norman Mampane]

COSATU Media Monitor

Friday, 4 July 2014

 

COSATU Listening Campaign and organizing of vulnerable workers continues in 2014….Join a Trade Union today!

 

 

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The articles in the Media Monitor do not represent the views of COSATU. They are selected because we believe they deal with topics of interest to our readers, who will then be informed on how the media is reporting and commenting on these topics. It will enable them, if necessary, to respond to inaccurate, misleading or biased reports or comment.

If we have excluded other articles which readers wished could have been picked, this was not intentional but because of tight time-frames. If you have seen article worth to be shared email it.

 

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Contents

 

Workers’ Parliament

Ø  National Union of Mineworkers-NUM: Red sails in the sunset

Ø  Deputy President Ramaphosa to testify at Marikana commission

Ø  Impact of platinum strike disastrous: SACP

Ø  Shake up needed in financial sector: SACP

Ø  Government ready to fix platinum belt: Ramatlhodi

Ø  Government ready to fix platinum belt now strike is over

Ø  Construction not transforming - Nxesi

Ø  Marikana Commission: Mr X's testimony collapses under cross-examination

Ø  Farlam: Mr X testimony adjourned for family death

Ø  Worker demands seem more persistent

Ø  Informal traders to get grants

Ø  Collapse traps at least 11 gold miners in Honduras

 

COSATU

Ø  Cosatu questions Victor Matfield's scrum cap

Ø  NUM and the ANC alliance-NUM & ANC: The price of loyalty

 

South Africa

Ø  Rooi Gevaar

Ø  Rand remains on back foot as Numsa strike continues

Ø  Telkom's Wi-Fi hotspots to benefit disadvantaged citizens

Ø  Eskom makes Mpumalanga sick

Ø  Arms deal 'critics' face new challenges at commission hearings

 

Alliance

Ø  Land rights tampering ‘not an ANC issue’

 

International

Ø  AU summit conclusions: Number Ones look out for number one, again

Ø  SA government condemns Egyptian media suppression

Ø  Zimbabwe announces new debt management measures

 

Comment

Ø  Visualising the end of inequality – a new path to negotiation

Ø  Amcu’s brand of unionism rests on wise and wily moves

Ø  Hlaudi is turning SA politics into a bad reality show

Ø  Realignment of SA political landscape in full swing

_________________________________________________________

1.           Workers’ Parliament

National Union of Mineworkers

NUM: Red sails in the sunset

 Sikonathi Mantshantsha, Financial Mail, 03 July 2014

Fm Edition:

July 4 - 2014

THE end of the longest, costliest and most controversial mining strike in SA’s history has changed the face of mining in the country. It has ushered in an era of higher wages — a break from what workers see as the cheap labour regimes of the past.

The relative — and certainly symbolic — triumph of the workers led by newcomers the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (Amcu) in their struggle for better pay, also threatens the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), until two years ago the dominant industry union.

Can the NUM survive this challenge to its three-decade-old hegemony?

Having already been relegated to a spectator in the platinum sector, the NUM is now at risk of losing its support in the gold and coal industries, where its members must now be asking themselves whether they are getting the best deal in terms of wages.

The NUM commands the loyalty of 62% of the 107 000 employees of AngloGold Ashanti, Harmony and Sibanye Gold, the major gold mines, and 75% in collieries, which are more mechanised and have a smaller workforce.

The possibility that Amcu may spread its influence to the gold and coal sectors also raises the question of investor sentiment. Management response will be crucial in determining how long any strife might last.

Like the half-a-million workers who called the NUM their organisational home up to 2005, the gold mining workers could well be asking themselves whether the NUM or Amcu best serves their interests. Platinum miners in the Rustenburg area answered the question in September 2011 when they switched allegiance to Amcu.

Until 2008, the NUM was the largest affiliate of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu). The mining sector then employed 1,5m people. This began to change in the 1990s when the gold mines in particular started retrenching workers, due largely to the falling gold price. Today, mining employs just over 500 000 people, with just under 200000 in the platinum sector.

Led by Joseph Mathunjwa, Amcu last week extracted an agreement from the largest platinum producers to raise the lowest pay grade to R12 500/month by 2017, fulfilling a long-held ambition of about 70 000 former NUM members who defected en masse to the newer, more radical union. Amcu now represents more than 80% of the workforce at Implats, Lonmin and Anglo American Platinum, which together supply about 80% of the world’s platinum.

To these miners, R12 500 represents not only the amount of money they sell their labour for but restores their dignity and goes a long way towards paying for the injustice they feel generations of miners have suffered toiling in the bowels of the earth.

Having endured an unprecedented five-month strike with no earnings, the agreement to raise their salaries by R1 000/month from July 2013 for a period of three years leaves the workers feeling they won the struggle. It’s a minimum increase of 13% and rises all the way to 20% for the lowest-paid workers. But the journey has been a long, hard and tragic one in which the strikers forfeited R10,7bn in earnings (and the companies R24,1bn in lost revenues). Whether the increase was worth the sacrifice in monetary terms is still highly contentious.

Since their quest started in late 2011 in the form of wildcat strikes at Implats, many of their colleagues have paid for the victory with their lives. The death toll in the battle for R12 500 has topped 100, including the 34 Lonmin employees who were killed by the police on the now iconic Marikana koppie.

Standing at the gate to his unplastered government-sponsored house in Sondela township, Rustenburg, the veins prominent in his rock drill operator’s arms, Hloniphile Zimbi was full of smiles when the Financial Mail visited him three days before the strike finally ended, even though he’d lost five months’ pay as a result of the strike.

"I don’t care what I’ve lost in unpaid wages, we are doing this for the next generation of mineworkers," said Zimbi (not his real name). "Our children must not inherit this situation when their time comes to work in the mines. That’s what’s important to me."

An employee of Implats since 2007, Zimbi is the son of a former mineworker from the Transkei Wild Coast district of Ngqeleni. He defected from the NUM to Amcu in 2012, along with about 70 000 others. Before he went on strike in January, his take-home pay was R5 500/month.

Amcu hopes the sentiment expressed by Zimbi will inspire gold, coal and other mine workers, enabling the union to repeat its wage revolution across the mining industry.

After the Amcu deal, Mathunjwa told workers gathered at the Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg: "It’s a better agreement and everything has to have a start. So it’s a good start to show that the workers are tired of the slave salary and the poor working conditions." As he sees it, Amcu’s success is just the start of a wage revolution that it intends spreading across the labour front.

Now that Amcu has sealed its grip on the platinum belt, what does the future hold for the NUM? Will it continue to be relevant in the sectors in which it is still dominant? Can it claw its way back into the hearts and minds of the platinum workers who dumped it two years ago? Can the NUM survive as a worker representative vehicle?

To answer the questions about its future, one needs to look at its past. It could be argued that the NUM’s eclipse in the platinum sector in 2012 was largely facilitated by its achievements. After all, it too mounted strikes — notably in 1987, led by then general secretary Cyril Ramaphosa — to improve working conditions on the mines, assisted, after 1994, by the political transition to democracy.

Formed as a vehicle to champion not only mineworker pay and conditions but also the political emancipation of the oppressed masses, the NUM helped get its members access to provident funds and medical assurance. The companies now even pay burial benefits for their employees. The most visible and important achievement was the NUM’s insistence on better housing, an alternative to the poor conditions of single-sex hostels.

As part of Cosatu, the NUM also convinced the ANC-majority parliament to adopt the Labour Relations Act as one of the first laws of the new political order, giving greater dignity to workers and hugely improving the lot of unionised labour.

Since around 1995, workers were able to claim compensation — a living-out allowance — for living where they chose. The mining houses also started investing in proper houses, dwellings that could be turned into homes in which families could be raised. "We have a good record as representatives of the workers," says NUM general secretary Frans Baleni.

Amcu, says Baleni, is simply riding on NUM’s success. "We fought for and introduced benefits that were previously the preserve of only the white, middle-level managers." The NUM is relying on this record to convince former members to return once the dust settles, he says.

The problem, however, is that those are all past achievements, which understandably are taken for granted by today’s beneficiaries, a new generation of mineworker whose loyalty is clearly not predicated on the union’s historical gains.

Does this mean the NUM has outlived its usefulness and the workers will look increasingly to Amcu to bring more vigour to demands for better pay and working conditions?

What Baleni does not say about the NUM’s record is that it did not do much to push for a rebasing of the minimum wage as part of a post-apartheid dividend. Being part of the ANC-led Tripartite Alliance, through Cosatu, the NUM, from whose ranks the ANC secretary-general has traditionally been drawn, became somewhat more conservative, particularly under the formative ANC governments. It never was as aggressive as the unbeholden, nonaligned Amcu, which appeared like a bolt from the blue demanding a higher basic wage.

Though militant under apartheid, the NUM became gradually institutionalised, its demands confined to within a few percentage points above the inflation rate. No doubt its stance has been tempered by fraternal political considerations, as its senior alliance partner in government set about winning the confidence of suspicious and uncomfortable markets. A radically higher minimum wage was perhaps quietly sacrificed in the pursuit of the new state’s global acceptance.

Has that sacrifice come back to haunt the NUM — and indeed the ANC through the effect of Amcu’s strike on the economy?

Will it consign the NUM to irrelevance and serve to further weaken an already divided Cosatu? How can the NUM defend its membership in the gold and coal sectors? Despite the staggering losses of salaries, which will not be recovered in the three-year R12 500 agreement, platinum miners still feel they have won the battle for higher wages. And they have only themselves and Amcu to thank for that.

"Relax, the NUM is here to stay," Baleni maintains. It will now intensify its organisational campaigns, he says, first to defend its membership base in the sectors in which it is still dominant. The next stage of the campaign will be to sharpen its recruitment policies to regain its lost support on the platinum belt. Baleni admits, however, that "weaknesses in the internal systems" of the NUM may have contributed to its loss of support in the first place, which it is working to reverse.

Between January and April the NUM recruited about 11 000 members on the platinum belt, says Baleni. "We’re likely to gain more members after the strike. That’s because they’ll be dejected and their morale will drop when they sit and analyse their losses sustained during the strike."

According to Baleni, past experience shows that after a prolonged strike, which presents big financial losses to workers, they normally desert their union and seek new organisational homes. "We’re likely to gain more members after the platinum strike," says Baleni.

Former NUM member Zimbi, however, is adamant that nothing will make him return to the organisation. The lost wages were a worthy sacrifice for a better future, a future without the NUM.

The NUM’s collapse is part of the broader Cosatu and general union movement collapse, says Loane Sharpe, a labour analyst at consultancy Adcorp Holdings. Last year, about 300 000 union members across the industry spectrum left their unions, he says. That was a nearly 10% decline from a base of 3,3m, based on statistics compiled by government’s labour department.

There are other reasons for the NUM’s decline. Being part of the governing alliance presented other challenges for the NUM. It has been a training school and feeder for Cosatu’s leadership since the formation of the federation. But its leaders have also graduated to take up influential positions in both parliament and government. History shows the NUM has been bleeding good leaders, which may have contributed to the loss of ideas and worker support.

It all started with its first general secretary, Ramaphosa, who went on to lead the ANC’s negotiating team during the transition to democracy. Former Cosatu president John Gomomo and general secretary Jay Naidoo were also among the first batch of parliamentarians in 1994.

After a stint in the first democratic parliament, where he negotiated the democratic constitution, Ramaphosa is now back as deputy president of both the country and the ruling party. Kgalema Motlanthe and Gwede Mantashe are the former and current secretary-generals running the ANC. They graduated from similar positions in the NUM. The immediate past president, Senzeni Zokwana, was in May appointed agriculture minister.

The gold mining sector was put under pressure as the metal’s price fell in the 1990s, resulting in companies cutting staff and production falling. The NUM concentrated on saving the industry, neglecting the platinum sector. "The NUM did take its eye off the ball in the platinum sector," says Mamokgethi Molopyane, a labour analyst at Voodoo Creative Consultancy.

Perhaps the NUM took its eye off the ball in more ways than one. "That’s the problem with the NUM," says Amcu member Mzwanele Sukude (39), an Implats employee and winch operator since 2007, "they pick one guy and he goes on to succeed, leaving the people behind. When Zokwana left his village, he was uneducated, like us. We paid for his education. Look where he is now. There are many others."

Ramaphosa’s return to leading positions in politics came after a long and profitable detour to the business world, which transformed him into a billionaire within 10 years. Ironically, during the Marikana massacre of Lonmin workers, he sat on the company’s board, as well as many others, and was called on by his fellow directors to solve the strike impasse. He told them he would get his ANC comrades in government "to deal with the criminals".

Less than a week later, 34 mineworkers lay dead, the result, some lawyers say, of orders by the man who came to prominence championing worker rights, for the police to deal with strike violence and intimidation with commensurate force. As if that were not enough of an example to show the NUM’s desertion of its duties to its members, the union itself owned shares in companies, making itself part of the business elite.

That led workers to accuse its leaders of being complicit with management in maintaining their poor lot. A trust deficit arose between union leaders and members.

"The NUM used to eat with the bosses and they stopped caring about us. So we did it our own way," says Zimbi. He was referring to the first round of precedent-setting wildcat, unionless strikes at Implats in September 2011. It all started with the rock drillers, who formed local "strike committees" and demanded an audience with the employers directly. The NUM was not welcome at the meetings.

"In the end we got our money, and there was no union, just us and our spears and knobkerries." In that round, the workers won a basic wage of R9 000/month.

The NUM’s perceived cosiness with management was too apparent. A source of annoyance grew into a sense of betrayal by the NUM, which workers say took advantage of their poor education.

"The NUM used to lie to us and say the strike certificate expires after seven days of strike, and then we’d have to settle. Mathunjwa’s certificate does not expire. That’s a man among men," says Tshezi, a winch operator who won’t give his full name.

Baleni is again on the defensive, saying workers themselves always approved of its negotiating positions and voted for its wage agreements. He says the movement of leaders is part of the natural process of personal development. "You can’t expect people to stay in one place and not develop themselves," he argues.

To ensure its survival, the NUM now has to be innovative and fight to maintain what’s left of its membership, says analyst Molopyane. It is precisely the what and how that the NUM will struggle with, having lost the confidence of its members when it tried to persuade them of the futility of a R12500 wage demand.

According to Adcorp’s Sharpe, Cosatu will still be shielded from being weakened like the NUM, by the ever-expanding public sector, where its membership has grown strongly since 1994.

"They’ll aggressively recruit there, but the NUM is now irrelevant," he says.

Additional reporting by Phakamisa Ndzamela

_________

Deputy President Ramaphosa to testify at Marikana commission

The New Age, 3 July 2014

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and former police minister Nathi Mthethwa will testify at the Farlam commission of inquiry this month, it was revealed yesterday.

Head of evidence leaders Geoff Budlender SC, said the Arts and Culture Minister would start testifying on July 14 and be cross-examined.

“Mr Mthethwa will give evidence on July 14 and 15. We hope we will be able to complete in one day but we will wait and see,” Budlender said.

Mthethwa was police minister when 34 people, mostly striking Lonmin mineworkers, were shot dead in a clash with police.

More than 70 were wounded, and another 250 arrested on August 16, 2012, at the company’s platinum mining operations in Marikana near Rustenburg, North West. Police were apparently trying to disarm and disperse them.

In the preceding week, 10 people, including two policemen and two security guards, were killed.

The commission is investigating the 44 deaths during the strike-related violence.

Budlender said the date for Ramaphosa’s testimony had been moved.

“It’s now at the end of July. The current date is July 29,” he said.

The inquiry will not conduct public hearings next week.

In 2012, on the second day of the public hearings, Dali Mpofu SC, for the miners wounded and arrested in the August 16 shooting, said Ramaphosa had condemned the protests in an email.

He described them as criminal acts, and suggested “concomitant action”.

“This (e-mail) was on August 15 at 2.58pm, exactly 24 hours before the people were mowed down on that mountain,” Mpofu said at the time.

“He advanced that what was taking place were criminal acts and must be characterised as such. In line with this characterisation (Ramaphosa said) there needs to be concomitant action to address the situation,” Mpofu said.

He said the email was addressed to a certain “Dear Albert of Lonmin”.

On Monday, President Jacob Zuma again extended the inquiry’s life span.

After several extensions, the commission, which began sitting in October 2012, had been scheduled to end on July 31. The new deadline is September 30. 

– Sapa

____

Impact of platinum strike disastrous: SACP

The New Age, 3 July 2014

Platinum mineworkers will never recover from the five-month strike in the platinum mining sector, SA Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande said on Thursday.

"We welcome the ending of the strike, although the settlement percentages are close to those previously achieved by NUM," he told delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers central executive committee meeting in Johannesburg.

"The strike was disastrous, and workers will not recover from the five months lost."

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union embarked on a strike at platinum mines on January 23 for a R12,500 monthly salary. The strike ended last week.

Nzimande said the strike settlement had "narrowly" focused on remuneration.

"Remuneration is not the sole component of transformation, there are many other concerns above remuneration."

Mining companies, such Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum, and Lonmin, were preparing to mechanise, close some shafts, and retrench workers.

"These three companies have avoided central bargaining and worked with vigilante unions... meanwhile senior managers there pay themselves huge salaries and benefits."

He said a planned mining indaba should focus on radical economic transformation.

"The mining indaba should be used to drive the second phase of economic transition. It should look into stopping the grading systems in the mines, and examine how lack of housing, the role of loan sharks, and lack of policing services in mining areas impacts on workers."

Earlier, Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi told delegates plans were in place to hold a mining indaba.
       
-Sapa

________

Shake up needed in financial sector: SACP

The New Age, 3 July 2014

A major shake up is needed in the country's financial sector, SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said on Thursday.

 

"It is very unhealthy that the financial sector is dominated by the big four banks," he told delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers' (NUM) central executive committee meeting in Johannesburg.

 

"The economy is being financially built, which is very worrying. Sometimes I wonder if Checkers sells food only or also offers loans...companies make more money from loans than selling food."

 

Billions of rands ended up in the hands of middle men.

"These middle men are called financial brokers, same as labour brokers. These people are feeding off the working class," he said.

 

The monies from investments found their way into the pockets of individuals within the union movement.

"The dirty monies doing the rounds within Cosatu come from these companies in which your own money is invested," he said.

 

"This business unionism should be condemned."

In his secretarial report on Wednesday, NUM secretary general Frans Baleni said the lobbying within the tripartite alliance was influenced by money, in attempts to influence who governed a province or became its chairperson or premier.

 

Baleni said the "money bags" had become prominent in the election list processes within the ANC and resulted in the emergence of political tenderpreneurs. A tenderpreneur is a government official who seeks to use their influence to secure tenders.

           

-Sapa

______

Journalists should have licences: acting SABC boss

Sapa, Times Live, 03 July 2014         

 

SABC acting chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng has proposed that journalists have a licence to practice like those in the medical and law professions, the broadcaster reported on Thursday.

Motsoeneng said journalists who acted unprofessionally should be stripped of their licences.

"You know when you are a journalist, you are a professional journalist. If you don't have ethics and principles and you mislead on your reporting, like lawyers... if you commit any mistake they take your licence," he was quoted as saying.

"We should do the same thing with journalists, that is what we need to do if we want to build South Africa."

He was speaking at the annual Joburg Radio Days at Wits University in Johannesburg.

In February, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela released a report “When governance and ethics fail” which found Motsoeneng's appointment irregular. Among other things, his salary increased from R1.5 million to R2.4m in one year.

She found he misrepresented his qualifications, that he passed matric, to the SABC, and recommended he be replaced.

_________

Licences may be revoked, miners told

Karl Gernetzky, Business Day, 04 July 2014

THE government will put more pressure on mining companies to transform and even revoke licences to force them to comply with the industry transformation charter, Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said on Thursday.

"The charter is now 10 years old, which means we must now hold the mining houses accountable," he told hundreds of National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) delegates at the union’s three-day central committee conference on the East Rand.

"The state’s weapon was to revoke licences, which will be the case in the event of continued and willful noncompliance."

Further, certain minerals could be sold at below global market prices to domestic customers to encourage beneficiation, Mr Ramatlhodi said on the sidelines of the conference. This could be one result of his proposed reconsideration of amendments to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act.

"We are saying certain minerals will be designated strategic minerals for purposes of development of the country," Mr Ramatlhodi said. These could include platinum, coal, phosphates, cement and minerals needed in construction.

He said that government departments were co-ordinating improved service delivery in the platinum belt after the end of the five-month strike there. A mining indaba to tackle the socioeconomic problems plaguing communities living near mines would be convened.

"The mining indaba would review the entire spectrum of the country’s mining industry and how it could best be utilised to improve the lives of our people," Mr Ramathlodi said.

He emphasised that he would pursue social and economic stability in the mining sector. Mr Ramatlhodi assumed his Cabinet post during the longest mining strike in SA’s history.

Director-general in the Presidency Cassius Lubisi was co-ordinating technical matters, while Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe was overseeing the programme, Mr Ramatlhodi said.

South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande urged the NUM to drive the agenda of any mining indaba, as companies would inevitably resist "aligning working class needs with the mining sector" agenda.

"We must be prepared to face them down," he said.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union ’s leadership of the recently ended platinum strike dominated the NUM conference, as it reflected on its loss of support in the platinum mining sector and how to regain membership.

Mr Nzimande accused the producers of "flirting with vigilante unions" and, as a result, with "chronic labour instability".

______

Ratings cut looms over Numsa’s ‘big strike’

 Evan Pickworth, Business Day, 04 July 2014

THE risk of further ratings downgrades for South Africa rose on Thursday when rating agency Moody’s warned that the strike by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) and a weak investment climate were negative for the country’s creditworthiness.

Moody’s already has South Africa on a negative watch. South Africa’s debt was cut to one notch above junk status last month and Fitch placed the country on a negative outlook.

Expectations among economists are now that both Fitch and Moody’s will announce a rating downgrade, as economic conditions are expected to continue to worsen. Credit downgrades affect the cost of South Africa’s borrowing, as the government has to pay more to lenders for what is seen as higher risk for holding South African bonds. Credit downgrades could further damage already fragile investor sentiment.

The five-month strike in the platinum mining sector contributed to the 0.6% contraction in gross domestic product in the first quarter. Numsa has been criticised for its indefinite strike, as it came a week after the platinum mining strike was settled.

The strike for a 15% increase is expected to affect as many as 10,500 companies. Employers have reported varying levels of support for the industrial action.

On Thursday, General Motors SA (GMSA) said it had suspended vehicle assembly in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday night because of the strike. The plant builds one-ton Isuzu bakkies, half-ton Chevrolet Corsa bakkies and Chevrolet Spark cars.

The company builds about 50,000 vehicles a year. Though motor companies are not directly involved in the Numsa strike, many of their suppliers are.

Some motor companies have said lack of parts could force them to halt assembly at the end of next week if the strike lasts until then. Most companies had stockpiled parts in expectation of the strike. But GMSA vice-president Ian Nicholls said this was not feasible for components built on a just-in-time basis — those delivered straight from suppliers to the assembly line. In the case of GMSA, he said there was nowhere in the factory to store heavy sheet-metal parts. As a result, GMSA had had to suspend vehicle production immediately.

Nomura emerging markets analyst Peter Attard Montalto said he expected both Moody’s and Fitch to downgrade South Africa within the next 12 months.

Investec chief economist Annabel Bishop saw a Moody’s downgrade sooner, as they usually took action within two years, she said. Moody’s last downgraded South Africa on September 27 2012, with a negative outlook being attached.

Fitch would have more time to make its final rating decision as it had only recently made its outlook change to negative, Ms Bishop said.

Negative outlooks generally signal a strong chance of a downgrade over six to 24 months.

Moody’s senior analyst Gianmarco Migliavacca confirmed on Thursday that outlooks generally cover a 12-18 month period before his company would decide on a different rating.

Mr Attard Montalto said it sounded as if "they might downgrade and it may come after the medium-term budget policy statement (in October) or the (February) budget",

"But it will depend on how much the strikes tip into the budget," he said.

Ms Bishop said Moody’s "cannot keep South Africa on negative watch forever" and it was usual to see a change within two years. "It looks like they are going to downgrade. The reality is we have a very destructive strike environment and the longer it persists, the more damage will be done."

Moody’s is concerned that renewed strikes leave South Africa unable to take advantage of the recent pickup in growth in its major trading partners.

Kristin Lindow, senior vice-president at Moody’s, said the new strike, the scale of participation in which could make it the largest in South Africa’s history, risked paralysing nearly one-third of the manufacturing sector. It would also wreak further damage on South Africa’s economy and its "already deteriorating reputation among investors".

"Continued weak investment, exports and overall growth will pose serious challenges to the government’s efforts to rein in its budget deficit and stabilise its debt metrics, a credit negative for (South Africa)", she said.

With David Furlonger

____

Government ready to fix platinum belt: Ramatlhodi

The New Age, 3 July 2014

Government is ready to tackle problems in the North West following a five-month strike in the platinum belt, Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said on Thursday.

"Now that the crippling strike is over and peace is being restored, we will move in with security forces, human settlements, and health departments to assist and ensure that social services are implemented," he told delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers' (NUM) central executive committee meeting in Johannesburg.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) embarked on a strike at platinum mines on January 23 for a R12,500 monthly salary. The strike ended last week.

Ramatlhodi, appointed minister after the May general elections, said he had to intervene during the strike to facilitate negotiations.

"My assessment was such a long, dragging strike could not be allowed to continue," he said.

"It had to be stopped at all costs. I looked at the political space and saw that the ANC, SACP, government and even NUM were nowhere to be found... we were paralysed."

Government issues licences to mines with conditions, including that the minerals belong to the country, he said.

"Where there is non-compliance, we have remedies such as revoking the licences. However, our initial attempts are to try and find ways to get licence holders to comply," Ramatlhodi said.

Plans were in place to hold a mining indaba.

"The mining indaba would review the entire spectrum of the country's mining industry and how it could best be utilised to improve the lives of our people."

Last week it emerged in a Mail & Guardian report that he was in the process of relinquishing a stake the newspaper estimated at R20 million in Atlatsa Resources, a black economic empowerment partner of platinum giant Anglo American Platinum.

This may have posed a conflict of interest while mediating in the strike, the publication reported.

The NUM has seen many of its members cross over to Amcu in the platinum sector.
       
-Sapa

______

Government ready to fix platinum belt now strike is over

City Press, 3 July 2014

Government is ready to tackle problems in the North West following a five-month strike in the platinum belt, says Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi.

“Now that the crippling strike is over and peace is being restored, we will move in with security forces, human settlements and health departments to assist and ensure that social services are implemented,” he told delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) central executive committee meeting in Johannesburg today.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) embarked on a strike at platinum mines on January 23 for a R12 500 monthly salary. The strike ended last week.

Ramatlhodi, appointed minister after the May general elections, said he had to intervene during the strike to facilitate negotiations.

“My assessment was that such a long, dragging strike could not be allowed to continue,” he said.

“It had to be stopped at all costs. I looked at the political space and saw that the ANC, SACP, government and even NUM were nowhere to be found … we were paralysed.”

Government issues licences to mines with conditions, including that the minerals belong to the country, he said.

“Where there is noncompliance, we have remedies such as revoking the licences. However, our initial attempts are to try and find ways to get licence holders to comply,” Ramatlhodi said.

Plans were in place to hold a mining indaba.

“The mining indaba will review the entire spectrum of the country’s mining industry and how it could best be utilised to improve the lives of our people.”

Last week it emerged in a Mail & Guardian report that Ramatlhodi was in the process of relinquishing a stake the newspaper estimated at R20 million in Atlatsa Resources, a black economic empowerment partner of platinum giant Anglo American Platinum.

This might have posed a conflict of interest while mediating in the strike, the publication reported.

The NUM has seen many of its members cross over to Amcu in the platinum sector.

- Sapa

_______

Construction not transforming - Nxesi

Fin24, 3 Jul 2014

 

Johannesburg - Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi said on Thursday that the country's construction sector needed massive transformation.

Addressing delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers' (NUM) central executive committee meeting, he said: "The industry has to transform and include black professionals. Engineers, surveyors and all sorts of artisans in the sector are male and white.

"There is no transformation in that sector from where I am sitting."

Collectionve bargaining

A number of industry associations in construction refused to accept collective bargaining, he said.

"NUM is the largest union in the construction sector. You need to organise and make sure social transformation takes place.

"You must ask yourselves how you are going to force these associations to accept collective bargaining," Nxesi said.

Job losses in the sector needed a co-ordinated plan. The industry had the worst fatalities and injuries, he said.

"We need a social plan for the industry to mitigate job losses. As workers lose jobs, training programmes in the EPWP should be in place to ensure that the EPWP absorbs these workers," he said, referring to the expanded public works programme.

Any results

The sector education training authorities (Setas) needed to start showing good results.

Nxesi said most Congress of SA Trade Unions affiliates sat in Seta boards, but there were no returns.

"It cannot be that leaders from affiliates sit in Setas, but we do not see any results."

_______

Sactwu agrees new wage settlement

Shamiela Fisher, EWN, 3 July 2014
CAPE TOWN - The Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu), says about a thousand workers at four factories in South Africa will benefit from a new wage increase in the carpet sector.

Sactwu on Wednesday announced that a wage agreement had been reached.

The 7.75 percent settlement package covers a wage increase and an improved service allowance.

Sactwu’s Delight Simelane says a settlement was reached after a third round of negotiations.

“A dispute was declared after the third round and settlement was reached during conciliation. We’re happy that we’ve come with a settlement on that.”

The settlement was reached under the help of the National Textile Bargaining Council. 

The increase is effective from this month.

(Edited by Leeto M Khoza)

_____

Strike with high stakes

 *Leopold Scholtz, Fin24, 3 July 2014

DON'T underestimate the current strike by the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa). 

This, much more than the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union's (Amcu's) platinum mine strike or Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema’s relatively good showing in the May general election, is a direct challenge to the ANC’s power.

But let us consider the economic implications first.

Let us remember that this strike follows on the heels of the crippling five-month Amcu strike which, according to economists, was largely responsible for converting anexpected 1.6% economic growth into a 0.6% contraction in the first quarter of the year. 

Recession could be on cards

Business Day on Tuesday reported that Finance MinisterNhlanhla Nene said the expected 2.7% growth for 2014 would not be reached. Economists expect a further contraction for the second quarter, which will mean that South Africa will then officially be in a recession.

Numsa is clearly playing hardball. Whereas the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (Seifsa), representing the employers, is offering a pay rise of 8%, Numsa has just increased its demand from 12% to 15%. This in spite of the fact that the strike – according to Seifsa – will cost the economy about R300m per day.

And then we haven’t said anything about the lost wages of the workers themselves. Amcu's members suffered terribly in this regard – some say it will take up to a decade for them to recoup their losses.

Furthermore, the strike may affect the building of two important power stations. These stations are critical to Eskom’s future capacity to supply the South African economy with electricity.

In other words, the ripple effect is spreading throughout the economy. And already the rand’s international value is suffering again, increasing the cost of imports and thereby stimulating inflation. And who suffers most from inflation? Correct - the poor.

As with the Amcu strike, the South African economy – and ordinary South Africans – will, therefore, lose hands down if the conflict is not resolved speedily.

Which begs the question: what is driving the strike?

Well, there is no doubt that poverty is a powerful motivation with many individual strikers. Afrikaans newspapers carried interviews with strikers on Tuesday morning, showing that some of them take home as little as R3 000 every month. On a human level, nobody with a heart can fail to sympathise with them.

However, one also has to stand back a few steps and try to see the wood for the trees. While it is clear that the workers deserve a rise – perhaps more than the 8% offered by the employers – it is equally clear that Numsa is not simply driven by the workers’ plight.

One of the effects of the Amcu strike was that the trade union established itself as a power not to be ignored. That it achieved this on the backs of its members is neither here nor there.

Challenge to capitalism

Numsa’s goals seem to be even more ambitious. Take into account that Numsa has broken with the ANC, and has indicated that it will establish a new socialist workers’ party later this year.

In the Daily Maverick, Ranjeni Munusamy quoted from a statement after a Numsa central committee meeting in May: “The [central committee] affirmed that there are two legs on which Numsa’s work to build the United Front would stand; gaining support for our campaigns and building our concrete support for other struggles of the working class and the poor wherever and whenever they take place.”

This clearly indicates that the strike is about more than workers’ income; it is a direct challenge to the governing ANC – and to the capitalist system as such.

In parliament and some provincial legislatures, Julius Malema’s EFF will continue to generate headlines by intemperate outbursts and boorish behaviour. But I don’t think Malema is the real challenge; his tactics may very well be self-defeating. After all, how much can he actually achieve by limiting his strategy to insulting all and sundry?

No, the real challenge is Numsa and its general secretary, Irvin Jim. If the ANC does not handle the situation wisely, the trade union and the planned socialist party may, in time, threaten its power base.

What is to be done?

Unfortunately, the government’s role in the Amcu strike was pathetic. It stood aside, and the one fluttery attempt at mediation was over almost before it started.

But it will need to do more than mediation, necessary as that may be. It will urgently have to do something to counter the simmering dissatisfaction about its inability to stimulate the economy, its general inefficiency on all governmental levels, and its notorious corruption.

A successful South Africa will take the wind out of Numsa’s sails. The question is, however, whether the ANC will be able to comply.

I have, perhaps unjustly so, my doubts. But let us see. A good beginning has been made with the sacking of several incompetent Limpopo rural mayors. Perhaps we shall be pleasantly surprised.

 -Fin24

* Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.

_____

No problem working with Numsa: Malema

SAPA, SABC News, 3 July 2014

The Economic Freedom Fighters has no problem working with National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) as both are fighting for the same cause, EFF leader Julius Malema said on Thursday.

"(However) Numsa has a problem working with us," Malema told reporters in Johannesburg. "We fully support the Numsa strike that says workers must get a living wage."

Malema said his party had tried on numerous occasions to get in touch with Numsa and build a relationship to advance the needs of workers, but with no success.

"We have tried making advances to Numsa, but we cannot impose ourselves," he said.

Numsa members have been on strike since Tuesday. The union's demands include a 15% wage increase in a one-year deal and a R1000 housing allowance for its members.

Malema warned the African National Congress in Gauteng about the treatment of EFF MPLs in the legislature. He said kicking them out of the legislature would result in the province becoming ungovernable.

"Continuation to remove EFF from legislature through unruly methods will lead to instability in this province. We will fight. We have the capability to mobilise our people and fight physically."

EFF MPLs were removed from the legislature on Tuesday for wearing red overalls bearing slogans. Police were called in when they refused to heed the speaker's order to leave the chamber.

"We are not scared of anything. We will bring our voters into the city and they will know who we are. They must not push because we have the capacity to fight," Malema said.

The ANC should remember it had not won the province during the recent election. He said the results were "corrupt and fraudulent".
Malema said the removal of MPLs from the Gauteng legislature was a sign of an internal battle within the ANC.

"It is an internal political battle more than a battle between the ANC and EFF. They are projecting Zuma as being not so reasonable. This (is) because (in) the National Assembly the ANC accepted overalls and paid attention to the ideological content of debates."

He said EFF members would continue wearing their attire to remind those in legislatures who they represented. "We are defying colonialist decorum. We are not English-made. We are workers, and we are going to wear those clothes and we are unapologetic about it."

Continuation to remove EFF from legislature through unruly methods will lead to instability in this province. We will fight. We have the capability to mobilise our people and fight physically

Malema quashed any suggestions of his party forming a trade union. He said they were working with the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu).

"We are encouraging our members to join Amcu."

He said the focus was on building and strengthening the EFF.

"We have an organisation to focus on. We can't be all over the place."

EFF members were putting pressure on the leadership to form a union, but "we are telling them to relax and focus on building the organisation".

There was room for a trade union movement in the country, which was why Amcu was doing so well in the mining sector, he said.

______
Numsa strike: Vandalism, intimidation continues

Eyewitness News, 3July 2014

JOHANNESBURG - Business owners in Gauteng on Thursday said they’ve resorted to locking their staff members inside factories to protect them from striking National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) members.

Reports of vandalism and intimidation continued to stream in this afternoon, with many claiming people were either forced to leave work or were held against their will inside factories. 

One woman told Eyewitness News that striking workers poured acid inside their offices in Benoni on Gauteng’s East Rand.

“They poured acid all over, and stole laptops and wallets. They [the striking workers] wrecked the place.”

Another woman described chaotic scenes with men hiding under their desks.

“They smashed our gates and windows. We locked our staff upstairs in the office.”

A chief executive officer of a company in Booysens said his staff were terrified.

“We agreed with our staff to give them 12 percent before the strike. We did try to speak to Numsa.”

SEIFSA CONDEMNS VIOLENCE

The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (Seifsa) on Thursday urged National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega to intensify efforts to reign in unruly Numsa members. 

The employer body condemned widespread reports of vandalism and intimidation on the third day of the nationwide strike. 

Seifsa spokesperson Ollie Madlala said they’re concerned about the consequences.

“We’re concerned about the damages perpetrated by Numsa [members]. They are likely to exacerbate South Africa’s current unemployment problem.”

NUMSA REJECTS CLAIMS

Numsa described reports of widespread intimidation and vandalism by its members as a cheap ploy to undermine its struggle for a living wage.

The union said no amount of slanderous accusations by employers in the metals and automotive sectors will undermine its strike.

RUBBER BULLETS FIRED

Earlier on Thursday, Limpopo police fired rubber bullets at Numsa members blocking the entrance to the Medupi power plant.

Nobody was injured in the incident.

Eskom earlier said it would apply the ‘no work, no pay’ principle if employees continued with their stay away.

The union staged a demonstration at the power station this morning in defiance of a Labour Court interdict preventing workers from downing tools at the parastatal.

More than 200,000 Numsa members went on strike this week, demanding a 12 percent salary hike across the board.

(Edited by Refilwe Pitjeng)

_____

Numsa strike threatens SA’s credit rating – Moody’s

City Press, 3 July 2014

South Africa’s credit rating is at risk as strikes by miners and metal workers threaten economic growth and the government’s ability to rein in debt, says Moody’s Investors Service.

A strike by 220 000 National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) workers that began on Tuesday may curb a third of output in manufacturing, Moody’s said in a report today.

It follows a five-month strike in the platinum industry that ended last week. This caused the economy to contract in the first three months of the year.

“Continued weak investment, exports and overall growth will pose serious challenges to the government’s efforts to rein in its budget deficit and stabilise its debt metrics, a credit negative for the economically troubled country,” said Moody’s.

Moody’s has had a negative outlook on South Africa’s Baa1 credit rating since November 2011. This is two levels above Standard & Poor’s, which downgraded the country’s debt on June 13 to BBB-, the lowest investment grade level.

The strikes are making it difficult for South Africa to take advantage of a recovery in growth in its main trading partners like Europe, Moody’s said.

Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene said the economy would probably miss the government’s 2.7% growth target this year because of the stoppages.

Numsa will resume wage talks tonight with the employers’ group, said union spokesperson Castro Ngobese said.

Numsa wants increases of 12% in metals and engineering and at Eskom.

- Bloomberg

___

Solidarity cautions Telkom about race

Fin24, 3 July 2014

Johannesburg - Trade union Solidarity on Thursday warned Telkom not to use race in deciding which employees to retrench.

"Solidarity gave Telkom a final warning on Thursday to abandon the race criteria it uses for retrenchments," the union's industry head Marius Croucamp said in a statement.

He said it was unlawful to do so.

Absolute race

"How can any employer penalise an employee based on his or her race in the decision-making process to retrench people? 

"This criterion is simply built into the process to ensure that Telkom's BEE rating is promoted and to ensure that the ANC's ideology of absolute race representivity is achieved," he said.

Solidarity was consulting its lawyers and preparing to take the matter to the labour court.

"This issue is of such importance to Solidarity that we will take it as far as the Constitutional Court. These practices will open a door for employers to achieve demographic representivity and BEE through retrenchment," said Croucamp.

Best fit

Telkom spokesperson Pynee Chetty denied this and said the company would use various criteria during retrenchments.

"It is important to note that employment equity is only one of the criteria that will be applied to these processes.

"The other criteria include qualification and experience and best fit for the job. Last one in, first one out. That will be when more than one employee qualifies for a position," he said.

________

Seifsa writes to Phiyega over 'war-like' strikers

Fin24, 3 Jul 2014

 

Johannesburg - Concerns of violence in the metals and engineering strike prompted employers to write to national police commissioner Riah Phiyega twice, Seifsa said on Thursday.

Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA (Seifsa) chief executive Kaizer Nyatsumba said its members had reported cases of striking workers behaving unlawfully and, in some cases, violently.

"We are extremely disappointed with the violent behaviour of some union members who have embarked on a wanton campaign of damaging properties... of some of our member companies in the Wadeville and Isando areas since the beginning of the strike."

The two areas are on Gauteng's East Rand.

In his most recent letter to Phiyega, dated Tuesday, Nyatsumba said war-like rhetoric of some union leaders led to fears that non-striking workers would be coerced into joining the strike.

He called on police to prepare for a potentially violent strike.

About 220 000 members of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), the majority union in the metals and engineering industries, began an indefinite strike on Tuesday.

They were joined by members of the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood, and Allied Workers' Union, and the General Industries Workers' Union of SA.

Nyatsumba wrote to Phiyega: "We would deeply regret the loss of life in the course of this strike, and we hope most sincerely the SAPS will work hard to prevent such a possibility."

Rubber bullets

On Thursday morning police used rubber bullets to disperse a crowd, believed to be strikers in the metals and engineering sector, at the Medupi power station in Limpopo,police spokesperson Ronel Otto said.

"A few hundred workers blocking gates into the premises did not heed the call of police to disperse," she said.

Police fired rubber bullets above their heads, and after this the crowd dispersed peacefully.

Public order police were keeping watch and no further incidents were reported by early afternoon, Otto said.

Eskom could not immediately be reached for comment.

Nyatsumba said unions had refused to sign a peace accord and this matter was referred to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration.

"Leaders of organised labour have to step forward and accept responsibility for the conduct of their members during a strike," he said.

3-year wage offer

Employers have tabled a three-year wage offer of between seven and eight percent for different levels of workers in the first year, and CPI-linked increases for 2015 and 2016.

Numsa wanted a one-year bargaining agreement, including a 15% wage increase, a R1000 housing allowance, and the scrapping of labour brokers.

Last Thursday Numsa deputy general secretary Karl Cloete said the union had dropped from a 15% increase demand to one of 12%.

On Thursday, however, Numsa spokesperson Castro Ngobese said the union was sticking to its 15% demand.

Seifsa spokesperson Ollie Madlala said talks with Numsa would take place later on Thursday.

Ngobese said the union would respond to Seifsa's claims of intimidation and violence later on Thursday.

On Wednesday he dismissed a report that a building belonging to a metal company in Selby industrial park, Johannesburg, had been vandalised by strikers.

"That is the worst form of propaganda," Ngobese said.

"Anyone that says that the strike was violent is promoting violence."

_________

Marikana Commission: Mr X's testimony collapses under cross-examination

Greg Nicolson , Daily Maverick, 4 July 2014

What were lawyers for the police thinking when summoning Mr X to the inquiry? Details of the miner's account of the 2012 violence collapsed under cross-examination on Thursday, casting doubt on his whole testimony. Why would the SAPS use this obviously dubious witness? Because behind his sandcastle of events lies questions about who's responsible. And it's not good for Lonmin, the police or the state. By GREG NICOLSON.

“Would you like to smile for us and show us your front teeth?” asked retired judge Ian Farlam on Thursday.

Mr X, the mineworker turned police witness who cannot be named because of threats to his life, was under cross-examination by evidence leader Geoff Budlender, who grilled him on his grisly account of the violent intent of the Marikana mineworkers in 2012, their use of muti, and claims that he was one of the strike leaders.

When led by the SAPS counsel, Mr X helped shift the blame towards the mineworkers, but under Budlender's questioning he was evasive, comical and confused about even even minor details. The star witness has likely defeated the argument he was there to prove – that the mineworkers were intent on killing just about everyone, fuelled by muti, a wage dispute and inter-union rivalry.

Mr X, who accidentally said his own name this week, was shown a number of pictures. In the first, from 13 August 2012, he identified himself among the mineworkers, wearing white overalls and what looks like boots. In the second, we saw the same man in the crowd while North West Deputy Police Commissioner William Mpembe pleads for the mineworkers to hand over their weapons. We zoomed in. The picture blurred, but Mr X's face, screened from an undisclosed location to the Commission, doesn't match the man in the picture. Farlam then asks to see if his teeth match. They don't.

Budlender said there are three reasons Mr X wasn't there on 13 August, when two cops were killed, which Mr X had said was the miners' intention all along. Firstly, he wasn't in the photo. Second, he struggled to recollect the events. Third, he still doesn't know what happened. “I was there,” said Mr X, claiming that as a Lonmin rock drill operator (RDO) he had to be there. But the footage shows only hundreds of what could be a thousand RDOs Lonmin employed.

Mr X's account of the day of 13 August doesn't match the facts. According to his statement from February 2013, he said Mpembe started a countdown but before he finished it, police started shooting. Footage shows, however, that Mpembe's countdown didn't persuade the miners to disarm and instead he agreed to escort them back to the koppie. When police fired teargas on the group, that's when the mayhem began.

Quizzed on these details, Mr X couldn't clarify the matter. He couldn't say what Mpembe counted to, nor did he know how far the mineworkers walked before the fight began. He blamed the statement's misleading comments on the police officer who first took his statement before he went into protective custody, whose first language is Shangaan, not Xhosa. But on Thursday, he still didn't know the correct version of events.

Looking distressed and confused, Mr X often made the Commission chuckle or gasp with his responses. He was shown a picture from 15 August, taken by Daily Maverick's Greg Marinovich. The elected strike committee was meeting in front of the koppie and Mr X pointed himself out (his face couldn't be seen in the photograph), meaning he was part of the core group of leaders. Yet in an image of the same scene taken by police minutes later where a man can be seen in the same clothes, blanket hung from the same shoulder, but now standing up, Mr X denied it was him. “Now I'm suffering from a headache,” he claimed, avoiding the inquisition. The man who other mineworkers believe was in the picture was said to be seated in the Commission.

“You may have been a footsoldier but you claim to be a general,” Budlender had accused. “I want to suggest that you have made a false statement that you were one of the leaders elected by the workers so as to exaggerate your importance.”

The evidence leader's claim that Mr X is lying came after he tied himself in too many knots. Five men were elected to speak to the employer, said Mr X, claiming that he was one of them. However, his own account described five men, none of whom were him. “Are you Bhele?” asked Budlender, referencing one of the men he said were elected a leader.

“No, I'm Mr X.” Mr X was none of the other men he previously said were elected in the top five. It took a good hour, but he continued to unravel his claim that he was a leader of the striking mineworkers.

There are more discrepancies. Mr X said the mineworkers resolved to kill the police because they were in the way of the R12,500 demand, but the cops had said they would arrange a meeting with management. “So the reason you give for the alleged decision to attack police makes no sense because they weren't obstructing your demands,” said Budlender.

Then there are the clothes. The first pictures in which Mr X identified himself shows him in overalls and what looks like boots. Later he's in jeans, a black top and shoes. According to his own testimony, he couldn't change clothes for seven days after taking muti. Mr X claims he was wearing the clothes under his overalls and what initially looked like boots were actually shoes with socks tucked into his overalls. He was also confused about which mines the other elected leaders came from. He couldn't even name those from his own section.

By discrediting himself as a witness, Mr X casts doubt on his whole testimony and has further injured the position of the police. In their opening presentation in November 2012, the SAPS painted a picture where they were stuck in an unusual strike, one where mineworkers were bent on violence and because they had used muti they thought they couldn't be killed if they attacked the police.

After looking at Mr X's statements, Daily Maverick's Greg Marinovich concluded that “it seems that Mr X’s testimony is one that suits the police’s version of the context of the strike. It paints the strikers as murderous and in thrall to morbid witchcraft practices – with ingredients made from body parts of those they allegedly killed on the 12th. He claims he is a key witness, and participant, to several murders, and plans to commit murder.”

At the Commission, while being led by the SAPS counsel, Mr X backed his statements by describing horrible murders, cutting people up for muti, and the miners' plans to murder almost everyone else – all while fingering the union AMCU in the process. Quite a feat.

It's a fact the miners were violent, killing non-striking workers, two security guards, and two policemen, but after Mr X's capitulation under cross-examination his inferences that they caused the violence must be viewed with extreme caution. Watching him on Thursday, one wonders whether Dali Mpofu's application that he undergo a medical examination should have been accepted. But the police put him up there, the Commission agreed, and now the SAPS's version of events looks even more doubtful than before the evidence tampering and hiding emerged.

Mr X was a diversion. Whether we believe his account or not, he provided information on specific individuals doing ghastly things, but the mineworkers he talks about never had the power to control their own environment, even while committing crimes.

Now that Mr X has been discredited, we must look to the real power brokers and those trained to protect who instead killed. Why didn't Lonmin meet with the mineworkers about their wage demands even after 10 people were killed? What influence might have ANC power brokers Cyril Ramaphosa, Nathi Mthethwa and Susan Shabangu had on the provincial police commissioner's decision to insist the strike be broken that Thursday, even when the timing for such an action was poor? Who was responsible for insisting on the police plan to disperse and disarm, which an eight-year-old could have predicted would cause deaths? And did the cops, traumatised by their fallen comrades, go to the second koppie to shoot people in cold blood?

The Commission adjourned on Thursday when Mr X faced difficult questions and suddenly announced he had a funeral to go to and mourning procedure to follow. These questions might be put to former police minister Nathi Mthethwa when the Commission resumes on 14 July. Mr X will be back after that, before Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa appears on 29 July. 

___

Farlam: Mr X testimony adjourned for family death

Gabi Falanga, M&G, 3 July 2014

·          

The Marikana Commission has once again adjourned before hearing the end of Mr X's testimony.

 

On Thursday, Mr X, who was being subjected to a difficult cross-examination by evidence leader, Geoff Budlender, told the commission he had a headache and was feeling dizzy. 

After adjourning early for lunch, Mr X’s testimony continued for just 30 minutes before he told the commission that he had found out the previous evening that a child in his family had died and was being buried on Thursday. 

“Our culture isn’t the same as white culture. Our culture when there’s a death in the family you mourn for that person. Can we please take a rest, I’m mentally exhausted,” he pleaded, before putting his head in his hands. 

After another short adjournment, Advocate Frank Mathibedi, who represents the South African Police Service, asked the commission to postpone Mr X’s testimony to June 14 as a result of the bereavement in his family. 

The commission’s chairperson, retired judge Ian Farlam, granted the adjournment, with former police minister Nathi Mthethwa scheduled to testify on June 14. Mr X’s testimony would continue after Mthethwa’s. 

Exaggerated importance
While cross-examining Mr X on Thursday, Budlender pointed to a discrepancy between Mr X’s statement and the evidence he gave at the commission. 

In his statement Mr X named five other people who were elected by the strikers on August 9 2012 to speak to Lonmin management the following day. However, in evidence given to the commission, he then testified that he was one of the five elected to represent the other strikers. 

After a lengthy backwards and forwards between Budlender and Mr X, it was still unclear whether or not Mr X was indeed one of the five. Despite naming and describing the five strikers who were elected, Mr X still insisted that he was one of the five. He claimed that some of those elected arrived late at Lonmin’s offices on August 10 and were replaced by other strikers. 

Budlender then accused him of lying, not for the first time. “I want to put it to you that your claim in your evidence to the commission that you were one of the five elected is clearly false,” he said. “It’s contradicted by your [February 2013] statement and by the evidence you gave this morning ... I want to suggest to you that you made a false statement in order to exaggerate your importance in these events. You were a foot soldier, but you want to present yourself as a general.”

A laughing Mr X maintained that he was telling the truth. 

Photo discrepancies
Budlender also argued on Thursday that Mr X was in fact not present on August 13 2012, the day that police and strikers clashed for the first time. He showed Mr X various photos taken on August 13 and 15, where he had previously identified himself for the commission. 

Budlender then proceeded to show Mr X differences in the clothing he wore in the various photos. The makarapas (strikers who had undergone rituals), of which Mr X was one, were not allowed to change their clothes after they had undergone rituals, in order to maintain the effectiveness of the muti they had used. 

Not only did Mr X’s clothes change in the different photos, but so did his face, Budlender pointed out. “I’m no expert on faces, but that face looks different from your face,” he told the witness. 

Despite these discrepancies, Mr X continually repeated that he had been there on the day.

Cyril Ramaphosa, who was on Lonmin’s board at the time of the unprotected strike, is expected to testify at the end of July.

______

Worker demands seem more persistent

Fin24, 3 Jul 2014

 

Cape Town - Nobody should be surprised that there is a major strike underway this week, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap.  He points out that this time of the year is - like it or not - regarded as our “strike season”, when those wage negotiations that have deadlocked end up with confrontation.

However, most pay talks have been quietly resolved, as they are every year.  But there does seem to be a difference this year in that workers seem more confident and determined to win their demands.  A good example is the powerful Gauteng region of the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) that has refused to budge off a 15% pay rise demand despite other regions and the union leadership being prepared to lower this to 12%.

Numsa has also renewed - almost as a matter of principle - the demand that all labour brokers be banned.  This has echoed on the platinum belt as well, but, Bell says, it is a complex issue and the unions tend not to have defined exactly what is meant by a labour broker.  

He adds that calls for companies to be more socially responsible are perhaps naive in that company directors are “also trapped within the system” and have a fiduciary duty to maximise returns to shareholders.

* Let's debate: Can SA afford these pro-tracted strikes? What is a living wage? Do you have questions for Terry or anything labour-related you'd like him to cover in his next labour wrap?

____

Informal traders to get grants

Fin24, 3 Jul 2014

 

Johannesburg - The Gauteng government plans to pilot micro-financing loans and grants to informal traders in the province, it announced on Thursday.

The province would work with municipalities and consult the informal sector to finalise an informal trading strategy, the economic cluster of MECs said in a statement.

"The persistent challenges facing the informal traders in our towns and cities remain a serious concern. We are determined to address the plight of informal traders, many of whom are women and men who are engaged in the sector as survivors and breadwinners."

Register them

Hawkers in Pretoria have complained that Tshwane metro police were harassing them and confiscating their stock.

Members of an organisation representing them, the Tshwane Barekisi Forum, have called for the resignation of Tshwane mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa.

Previously in Johannesburg, the municipality removed all street vendors, including those legally entitled to trade, as part of an operation to register them.

The province further intended to regenerate old township industrial sites to stimulate the township economy.

Economic growth

"In pursuit of this objective, we will roll out the township enterprise hubs across Gauteng's oldest townships," the MECs said.

The plan was to refurbish infrastructure in and around townships to attract private sector investment.

"We have earmarked old industrial parks in Residentia, Katlehong, Babelegi, Ekandustria and Emndeni for this intervention."

The cluster hoped the revamping of Metrorail systems in Gauteng would lead to further economic growth.

"The location of the R51bn train manufacturing plant in Ekurhuleni presents enormous opportunities for the re-industrialisation of the region... This investment will create not less than thousands of direct jobs and indirect jobs in related industries."

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‘Worker revolt’ aggravating most difficult economic time since 2009

Ntsakisi Maswanganyi , Business Day, 03 July 2014

SOUTH Africa is facing one of its most difficult times economically since the 2009 recession, which is made worse by the current wave of "worker revolt" driven by frustration over what employees perceive to be a slow pace of economic transformation.

This is according to economists at a Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) seminar on Wednesday night.

South Africa’s growth has been very poor due to local and international factors. Strikes and power supply constraints are among the factors limiting production locally, and slow growth and demand globally.

A five-month long strike that recently ended at platinum mines, and low output in manufacturing, saw the economy contract by 0.6% in the first quarter. Another wage strike by more than 200,000 National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) members in the steel manufacturing and engineering industry began this week.

Econometrix chief economist Azar Jammine said there seemed to be a "deliberate attempt" by unions to "bring the economy to its knees", and business had not yet "really woken up to" this.

Numsa’s demands were an example of revolt against the existing "capitalist order of business", which was still seen as "primarily exploitative" of workers, and derived from apartheid legacies.

He laid some of the responsibility on the slow pace of policy implementation by the government.

"The government has just not been willing to make the hard choices for fear of upsetting some of its membership," Mr Jammine said.

Renaissance Capital economist Thabi Leoka said a prolonged strike by Numsa members could be more damaging than the platinum strike given the role of manufacturing in the economy, which makes up about 15% of gross domestic product.

"This (strike) is massive and it will take down the manufacturing sector. It is very dangerous," she said.

GIBS visiting professor Adrian Saville said that South Africa was probably in a recession.

South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO Neren Rau called for an economic "Codesa" at which the government, business, and labour would discuss ways of growing the economy faster.

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Cops linked to Macia death fired

Denise Williams, Times Live, 04 July 2014

The SAPS has fired eight of the police officers implicated in the death of Mozambican taxi driver Mido Macia.

Macia died in a police cell after being dragged behind a police van in the township of Daveyton, on the East Rand, last year.

A cellphone video of the act went viral, prompting huge outrage.

National police commissioner Riah Phiyega revealed the dismissals in a presentation to a parliamentary oversight committee yesterday.

Phiyega referred questions to police spokesman Solomon Makgale, who said the men were fired earlier this week at the conclusion of "disciplinary processes". He said that, before their dismissal, they had been suspended without pay.

Makgale said: "It's finished between us and them. We don't have a relationship, so what is left now is the criminal investigation."

Makgale said Macia's arrest had not been warranted.

The men axed were constables Lungisa Chalmers Gwababa, Bongani Kolisi, Percy Jonathan Mnisi, Bongumusa Mdluli, Sipho Sidwell Ngobeni, and Mbongeleni Thamsanqa Ngema, and warrant officers Alfred Linda Sololo and Mishack Malele.

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Collapse traps at least 11 gold miners in Honduras

The New Age, 3 July 2014

A cave-in at an unlicensed gold mine in Honduras trapped at least 11 miners on Wednesday, officials said.

The workers are stuck at a depth of 80 meters (260 feet) in the southern town of El Corpus, said Oscar Triminio, a spokesman for the fire brigade in the Honduran capital.

Rescuers cannot use machinery to try to get to the miners because the earth at the mine is unstable. So crews are working with their hands, he said.

Earlier this year one person died and another was injured at a cave-in at the same mine, Triminio said.

-AFP

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2.      COSATU

Cosatu questions Victor Matfield's scrum cap

Sapa, Sowetan, 3 Jul  2014

The Congress of SA Trade Unions homed in on Springbok captain Victor Matfield's choice of scrum cap as it questioned why so few black players were in big games, Beeld reported on Thursday.

During the match between South Africa and Scotland in Port Elizabeth on Saturday, Matfield played in the cap "of the former South African riot squad", according to Cosatu.

Beeld provided a front page comparison of Matfield in his Blue Bulls camouflage scrum cap, and two white men in camouflage caps with rifles, and the question: "What on earth has Vic got to do with the SA Police?"

The SA Police was the apartheid-era police.

Cosatu said Matfield did not grasp the effect this had on black people and proposed he rather wear a cap with the country's new national symbols.

Cosatu reportedly asked Sport Minister Fikile Mbalula to intervene at the SA Rugby Union which it claimed was an "old boys club" which gave preference to white players.

Saru said it would not comment at all.

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NUM and the ANC alliance

NUM & ANC: The price of loyalty

By Natasha Marrian, July 03 2014

Fm Edition:

July 4 - 2014

THE decline of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has severely altered the internal dynamics of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and could ultimately lead to a split in the union federation.

That could profoundly affect the governing alliance of the ANC, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party (SACP).

With the NUM on the wane, its chief rival in Cosatu, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), has risen to prominence. NUM-Numsa rivalry dates back to 2004 but was largely limited to skirmishes over territory. For instance, Eskom workers who should have shifted to the NUM when it took to organising in the energy sector, stayed instead with the more militant Numsa.

The rivalry intensified in 2010. At the ANC national general council, held at the height of efforts by the "forces for change" to remove President Jacob Zuma, Numsa backed a call for the nationalisation of the mines; the NUM opposed it. Their rivalry encapsulates the ideological battle raging in Cosatu. The NUM is close to the ANC and SACP. At least three NUM general secretaries went on to become secretary-general of the ruling party — Cyril Ramaphosa, Kgalema Motlanthe (who both joined government) and Gwede Mantashe. The NUM was the alliance’s flagship union, politically influential and the key financial backer of Cosatu and the ANC. The NUM also sought to align its structures with those of the ANC.

Numsa’s "posture" toward the alliance has traditionally been one of scepticism and distance. It first called on Cosatu to split from the alliance in 1993 yet stayed in the fold, revealing recently it had donated R62m to the alliance partners since 2003. But last year Numsa astonishingly resolved not to back the ANC in the 2014 elections and called on Cosatu to exit the alliance. The NUM’s ebbing influence — in part also a reflection of a shrinking economic sector — has weakened its position in Cosatu. It’s no longer the largest affiliate nor the main contributor to the federation’s coffers.

Led by Irvin Jim, Numsa, with its 340 000 members (to the NUM’s 271 000) is quickly filling the vacuum and using its muscle to sway sister unions. It persuaded eight of Cosatu’s 21 affiliates to join its crusade for the reinstatement of Zwelinzima Vavi — suspended as Cosatu general secretary during a disciplinary inquiry some saw as a political move to neutralise Vavi for criticising Zuma’s leadership. These unions back Numsa’s call for Cosatu to sever ties with the alliance. It has pledged financial support for some of these unions.

The NUM was among the unions that pushed for Vavi’s removal. Not surprisingly former NUM president Senzeni Zokwana was rewarded with a cabinet post by Zuma after the May elections.

Among Numsa’s resolutions adopted last December was to organise across sectors. It had already begun signing up NUM mining-sector members after the 2012 Marikana massacre. Jim says the union cannot turn workers away if they want to join it. All this has placed Numsa on a collision course with the dominant, pro-ANC faction in Cosatu and it now faces possible expulsion.

At the heart of Cosatu’s — and the NUM’s — travails is the nature of its relationship with alliance partners and the goals or raison d’être of the federation. It is a battle that cuts to the heart of Cosatu’s founding principles of worker control and democratic centralism. The pro-Vavi faction believes there is as an attempt to turn the once-militant federation into a "conveyor belt" for the policies of the dominant faction in the ANC, which deploys selected union leaders upwards to parliament.

Industrial sociologist and labour analyst Gavin Hartford says Cosatu’s divisions also reflect a deeper rift between the rank and file and union leaders over the issues of worker control and democracy and how organised workers should relate to the ANC. "In essence, progressive union leaderships’ absolute loyalty to the ruling party comes with a price: sacrifice worker control and democracy and thereby the strategic independence of the labour movement, to comply with the dictates of the ruling party. Some union leaders accept this price, others do not. This choice is at the heart of the leadership divisions and the public contest for control of organised labour," he says.

The huge defection from the NUM to the militant Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (Amcu) is partly a manifestation of the division that had been brewing in unions over many years. The federation’s character was changing from representing blue-collar workers to one dominated by white-collar workers largely represented by public-sector unions. The distance between members and leaders grew, a labour elite emerged and shop-floor issues gave way to national politics.

The NUM was not the only union to face a bruising split. Transport union Satawu unravelled under the weight of corruption allegations and a splinter union, the National Transport Movement, was formed.

The battle over Cosatu’s relationship with its allies will be heavily influenced by Numsa which, if expelled from the federation, is likely to take like-minded unions with it. Numsa is positioning itself as the last true defender of the working class. It hailed the outcome of the platinum strike, while the NUM described the pay rise secured by its rival Amcu as a "hollow victory".

But the NUM backed Numsa’s "living wage" strike, this week, for a 12% increase at engineering firms . Yet Numsa announced over the weekend it was planning to hold a mining summit to discuss the challenges facing the mining sector, again stepping squarely onto the territory of its rival.

If Numsa is not expelled, it will use Cosatu’s central committee meeting later this year to push for Cosatu to quit the alliance. A weakened NUM will be less influential. Numsa is also determined to form a workers’ party, with or without Cosatu, which would of course deeply affect the alliance.

As has been said by Mantashe , NUM general secretary Frans Baleni says the "attack" on the union has a bigger target, the ANC, and that its "entry point is this strong pillar in the alliance [NUM], with the hope of weakening the alliance, broadly speaking". Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini describes the "forces" ranged against the NUM as big capital, opposition parties and foreign forces in cahoots with local unions [whose] intention is to unseat the ANC."

According to SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, the "endgame" in this "onslaught" is to roll back the advances made by the working class. He sees the NUM’s decline as a precursor to a crisis in Cosatu and part of the same plan to weaken the federation and the alliance. "Then you will just have capitalist exploitation unchecked, and if you want to rapidly enter the continent without constraints, you capture SA as your main base for capital accumulation before you get into the rest of the continent," he says.

But the NUM’s rivals inside and outside Cosatu are positioning themselves to replace the traditional voice of the SA working class, the labour federation and the ANC itself.

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3.                  South Africa

Rooi Gevaar

Ranjeni Munusamy , Daily Maverick, 4 July 2014

You can almost see the thread of Jessie Duarte’s thought pattern. The ANC deputy general secretary said this week that the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) were working together to “destabilise” the ANC government and the country. It’s the “you are either with us or against us” George W. Bush line of political logic. But Duarte might not be completely off the mark. A new Left coalition might in fact result, though this would hardly be a conspiracy. Or unexpected. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was holding a central committee meeting this week, and issues such as its declining membership, the strike in the platinum mining sector and the troubles in Cosatu were big talking points. The common feature in the speeches made at the meeting, including that of Jessie Duarte, South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande and Cosatu second deputy president Zingiswa Losi was that there are forces agitating to cause trouble.

Duarte was most direct. “AMCU and the formation of EFF show similar characteristics. The platinum belt has become counter-revolutionary. They are working together to destabilise the ANC government and the country,” she said.

Duarte also accused AMCU of promoting anti-ANC sentiment. “When you take workers out of their workplace for five months, you deplete the health reserves, you ensure that by the time they go to work they are too weak and too ill to go underground, and they might be dismissed, you ensure that there is abject poverty and hunger in those areas, and then you say Gift of the Givers must give hand-outs.

“Then you argue when the government tries to intervene, you say you don’t want the government, you want NGOs. What is it that you are fomenting, it is an anti-ANC perspective,” Duarte said.

She also drew a parallel between the NUM’s declining membership due to workers joining AMCU and metalworkers’ union Numsa, and the ANC’s fall in support in the May 7 elections due to the penetration of the EFF in township areas. The rise of AMCU and the EFF was a threat to the tripartite alliance, Duarte said.

Regarding Numsa, Duarte said the ANC was still waiting to meet the union as part of its intervention to prevent a rupture in Cosatu. Numsa is viewed as the agent provocateur responsible for the turbulence in the trade union federation. However, the ANC’s mediation has staved off a mission by other Cosatu unions, including the NUM, to have Numsa booted out of the federation.

Through her speech, Duarte was hinting at a belief in the ANC that there is some form of sinister collusion between Numsa, AMCU and the EFF to discredit and subvert the ANC government. The ANC is also of the belief that the media has colluded against it, which Nzimande was happy to elucidate on in his speech to the NUM.

Speaking about the ANC’s victory in the elections, Nzimande said: “This popular mandate was achieved under extremely difficult and challenging conditions that included the impact on our country of the current global capitalist crisis and the unremitting anti-ANC alliance hostility from most of the commercial print and electronic media, with some few exceptions. The electoral campaign also coincided with serious challenges to the unity of Cosatu, and the emergence of a right-wing, populist demagogic movement, the EFF, posing as left wing.”

Nzimande went on to say: “We must also bear in mind the fact that it has always been the intention of imperialism, monopoly capital, and the apartheid regime, to work towards driving a wedge between the national liberation movement and the progressive sections of the organised working class like Cosatu. Also, it has been the intention of these very same enemy forces to particularly drive a wedge between Cosatu and the SACP.”

The ANC and SACP leaders seem believe that Numsa could genuinely disagree with ANC policies and is entitled to go its own way, that the platinum mineworkers are genuinely fed up with their living conditions and that a rebellion was bound to happen, and that the EFF’s strong showing in the election was due to genuine disappointment with the ANC. It would appear that if you find a way to knit up your critics into a neat conspiracy, it then happily excuses you from self-analysis of your role in creating a multiple backlash.

The thing is, however, is that Numsa has openly declared its intention to have a consultative conference with all working class and left-leaning organisations as part of its mission to launch a United Front and Movement for Socialism. The Numsa leadership has also indicated on the record that the EFF would be invited to attend.

EFF leader Julius Malema has now confirmed his willingness to work with both AMCU and Numsa. Speaking at a media conference on Thursday, Malema said denied reports that his organisation was working on forming a trade union. “We are not forming a trade union… We are working with AMCU.  We are encouraging our members to join AMCU.”

He said the focus was on building and strengthening the EFF, ahead of its first anniversary. “We have an organisation to focus on, we can’t be all over the place.”

Malema also said his party had tried without success to meet with Numsa to discuss cooperating. “Numsa has a problem working with us… We have tried making advances to Numsa, but we cannot impose ourselves,” Malema was quoted as saying by Sapa.

It is understandable why the prospect of the three organisations cooperating would cause concern in the ANC. All three are extremely militant and are mobilising around discontent with the status quo. Government and the ANC have no control over these three organisations if they sew mayhem.

Through the five-month platinum strike, AMCU showed that it could push the economy to the brink by holding out in negotiations. Numsa now wants to demonstrate its strength through the strike in the metal and engineering sector. With only a few days in, this strike is already breeding fear with incidents of violence and intimidation.

The EFF has shown that after only eight months of existence, it was able to get over 1.1 million votes. It now wants to make its presence felt in Parliament and the nine provincial legislatures. In Gauteng, the ANC has already given the EFF a gap to mobilise over a non-issue. EFF members were removed from the provincial legislature for wearing red overalls bearing the party’s slogan “Asijiki”.

Malema has now vowed to make Gauteng ungovernable if the ANC continues to hound its members. “Continuation to remove [the] EFF from legislature through unruly methods will lead to instability in this province,” he said, according to Sapa. “We will fight. We have the capability to mobilise our people and fight physically.”

The one thing that the EFF, AMCU and Numsa have in common is that they know how to yank the ANC’s chains. The ANC almost always falls into the trap because instead of acting like the party in power, its default position is to behave as if it under attack and a victim of a conspiracy.

It is quite clear that the ground is shifting in the country. There are new players in the mix created by the conditions at grassroots. The only way to defuse them would be to deal with issues they are using to foster rebellion. If the ANC is able to deliver on its mandate and narrow the disconnect with its constituency, there will be no need to fear what they perceive to be an “axis of evil”. 

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Two probes to scrutinise FSB books after resignations

 Amanda Visser, Business Day, 04 July 2014

THE Financial Services Board (FSB) moved into damage-control mode on Thursday, announcing investigations into its former chief financial officer, Dawood Seedat, and Fidentia’s former curator, Dines Gihwala.

The FSB has launched an internal as well as an external audit by the office of the auditor-general to sift through its financial statements since the appointment of Mr Seedat.

It has promised a "full forensic investigation" if any irregularities are found. Any future action against Mr Seedat would depend on the outcome of the investigations.

It launched an internal audit into the Fidentia curatorship in November last year, but since Mr Seedat’s resignation has handed it over to an external, independent auditor.

The FSB on Thursday set out its plans to deal with the adverse effect on the institution’s reputation of the sudden resignation of Mr Seedat followed by allegations of corruption and bribery.

This was closely followed by the resignation of Mr Gihwala after the Western Cape High Court found him to be a "delinquent director".

Dube Tshidi, CEO of the FSB, said Mr Seedat had admitted he had done some tax consulting work for Africa Cash & Carry.

For its part, Africa Cash & Carry accused Mr Seedat of bribery. According to newspaper reports, Mr Seedat threatened to close the business down if he was not paid a substantial amount of money.

Mr Seedat denied the allegations, but tendered his resignation to the FSB to protect the integrity of the institution, Mr Tshidi said.

The FSB was considering ways in which internal controls could be tightened around its policy relating to direct and indirect interests in entities regulated by the board.

Mr Gihwala’s resignation as curator of financial services business Fidentia had raised questions about when the matter would be brought to an end — it had been dragging on since 2007, when Fidentia was placed under curatorship by the FSB.

More than R1.3bn of investment funds destined for the beneficiaries of the Living Hands Umbrella Trust and other smaller funds had been embezzled. Fidentia’s founder, J Arthur Brown, still faces the prospect of a heavier sentence in a pending appeal by the National Prosecuting Authority after being found guilty on two counts of fraud.

Mr Brown has been critical of the Fidentia curators.

FSB deputy CEO Caroline da Silva said the regulator would approach the courts for the appointment of a provisional liquidator for Fidentia.

She said R319m of the funds had been disbursed to beneficiaries.

Three litigation matters were still pending and some assets had to be disposed of, but that these were in their "end phase".

Ms da Silva said George Papadakis, who had been appointed as co-curator with Mr Gihwala, would remain as a curator.

The FSB was aware of allegations in the media relating to links between Mr Papadakis and Mr Seedat, she said, but stressed these were only allegations.

Charl Kocks, principal of Ratings Afrika, which measures corporate governance soundness, said it was important for any regulator to have the confidence of those it regulated and those it depended on to carry out its mandate.

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No transformation in construction: Nxesi

Getrude Makhafola, Business Report, 3 July 2014

Johannesburg - The country's construction sector needs massive transformation, Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi said on Thursday.

“The industry has to transform and include black professionals. Engineers, surveyors and all sorts of artisans in the sector are male and white,” he told delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers' (NUM) central executive committee meeting in Johannesburg.

“There is no transformation in that sector from where I am sitting.”

A number of industry associations in construction refused to accept collective bargaining, he said.

“NUM is the largest union in the construction sector. You need to organise and make sure social transformation takes place. You must ask yourselves how you are going to force these associations to accept collective bargaining,” Nxesi said.

Job losses in the sector needed a co-ordinated plan. The industry had the worst fatalities and injuries, he said.

“We need a social plan for the industry to mitigate job losses. As workers lose jobs, training programs in the EPWP should be in place to ensure that the EPWP absorbs these workers,” he said, referring to the expanded public works programme.

The sector education training authorities (Setas) needed to start showing good results.

Nxesi said most Congress of SA Trade Unions affiliates sat in Seta boards, but there were no returns.

“It cannot be that leaders from affiliates sit in Setas, but we do not see any results.”

Sapa

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Sanral blames Makhura for lacklustre bond auction showing

 Carol Paton, Business Day, 03 July 2014

THE South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) has blamed Gauteng Premier David Makhura for its partly failed bond auction on Wednesday, saying the lack of interest from investors was a result of his plan to establish a panel to review e-tolls.

The agency depends on monthly bond auctions to raise capital to fund operations. It has to raise between R500m and R600m monthly to be self sufficient.

At Wednesday’s auction, Sanral raised only R275m out of total bids of R465m, with the remainder being outside of the prices it accepted.

The development comes as a blow to Sanral, whose previous four auctions were twice over-subscribed and which last week saw an improvement in its ratings outlook.

"Investor confidence was evidently impacted by the pronouncements of … (Mr) Makhura, ahead of the July bond auction," the roads agency said. "We wanted to raise R500m, but only received total bids of R465m (wider than current prices) and issued R275m at mark to market prices. The lack of interest was unfortunate."

Because of past uncertainty over e-tolling, Sanral returned to the bond market only in April after a three-year break. In the interim, it had to raise short-term finance, which must also be repaid from bond auctions.

Sanral chief financial officer Inge Mulder said in an interview on Wednesday several investors had done "due diligence" prior to the bond auction. "The queries we got in the last two days were mostly about the premier’s proposal.

"That is why we think the auction was not well supported. Investors are sensitive to policy uncertainty and this was clearly communicated today, which overshadowed the positive announcement by the ratings agency, Moody’s."

Chris Hamman, the head of fixed income at Sanlam Investment Management, said Sanlam did not participate in the auction because it thought the spreads were too narrow, but did not have credit concerns over Sanral. The bonds auctioned were the HWAY suite, which are guaranteed by the Treasury.

"I don’t think Sanral will have a problem auctioning the government-guaranteed bonds. So I don’t think it is a credit issue per se.

"Many investment fund managers are on holiday and the spreads were very tight. I think more people would have participated if the spreads had been wider."

Mr Makhura’s office had not responded to a request for comment by late Wednesday.

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Immigrant backlash

Poppy Louw, Times Live,  04 July 2014

More than 900 immigrants have filed an urgent application to force the Department of Home Affairs to do its job.

They claim, in a 48-page document, that the department has failed to process and determine various applications for permits within a "reasonable or lawful" time period.

Another set of applicants, who have been granted permits, are seeking payment of repatriation deposits, which are equivalent to the price of a flight back to their home country.

According to the court papers before the Cape Town High Court, the applicants have become "increasingly frustrated" with the service rendered by the department, which, they say, has led to "serious ramifications" in light of new immigration laws.

"When [the department] fails to adjudicate permit applications timeously or lawfully, the result is that the foreign national concerned becomes an illegal foreigner, unable to work, study, access medical or banking services, and vulnerable - inter alia - to arrest, detention and deportation," the immigrants say.

The immigration laws implemented recently have caused much confusion and led to families being divided between countries.

In terms of the law, a foreigner may not apply for new visa documents from South Africa but needs to do so from his or her home country. And foreigners who did not leave South Africa before the new regulations came into force are at risk of being declared undesirable persons, for between one and five years, and being banned from the country.

Home Affairs has battled to explain the reasoning behind the law, which has led to couples being split between countries, doctors unable to work and foreigners with scarce skills being penalised.

One of the case studies that make up the urgent application is that of a Canadian family forced to return home after their two children, aged 19 months and five years, were declared undesirable.

"I'm so confused," the husband said. "My wife, a citizen, applied for birth certificates here during our stay, but was unable to retrieve them because they had told her that they were not yet ready."

Another applicant from Canada applied three times to change her temporary residence permit to a study permit after she was told that her applications had been lost.

A woman who wants to return to her husband in the UK is afraid to do so as she has been told she will be declared undesirable and face a ban, making it impossible to visit her grandchildren in future.

The court application was made on Monday and the department indicated it would fight it.

Yesterday, Home Affairs director-general Mkuseli Apleni tried to unpack the new laws for the media.

"In the past, someone could come into the country on a tourist permit and later decide to change the status of their permit to temporary residency. There have been instances where people were fraudulently in possession of South African documents. We need to find a way to avoid that," he said.

Stuart James, an immigration expert from Intergate Immigration, the organisation behind the court case, said it was receiving "literally thousands of calls and e-mails" each week from confused immigrants or prospective immigrants.

"Whatever the rules and regulations may be if they can't be implemented correctly, governed efficiently and communicated well, they will be of no benefit to South Africa," he said.

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Rand remains on back foot as Numsa strike continues

Reuters, Sabc News, 3 July 2014

The rand inched weaker against the dollar on Thursday as an on-going work-stoppage in the engineering and metal sector continued to weigh on investor sentiment.

The rand was down 0.21% to a two-week low R10.7825 to the dollar at 0705 GMT, extending its losses of around 0.75 % from Wednesday.

 The strike, in its third day, has seen over 200 000 members of the Numsa union down tools and comes on the heels of a crippling five-month platinum strike that pushed the economy into contraction in the first quarter.

Support was seen around R10.84 to the dollar, its recent low which it hit on June 17.

 "As yet, there is no threat to the range that extends to R10.84/86," John Cairns of Rand Merchant Bank said in a market note.
   
Government bonds were steady with yields on the paper maturing next year as well as on the longer 2026 paper almost unmoved at 6.740 % and 8.385 %  respectively.  

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Telkom's Wi-Fi hotspots to benefit disadvantaged citizens

SABC News, 3 July 2014

The technological advancement in South Africa in terms of the digital device has made Telkom payphones review their public phones and introduce the Wi-Fi hot spots at a radius of 10 meters.

In 1994 only 15% of South Africans had access to telephony, thus payphones were of more help to the citizens. However, due to technological advancement more and more South Africans are in possession of small and smart devices.

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Eskom makes Mpumalanga sick

Sipho Kings, M&G, 2 July 2014

·          

·         New research shows emissions from Eskom's coal-fired power stations are responsible for half the deaths related to air pollution in the province.

 

A new study by environmental justice group groundWork found that Eskom is the primary driver of deaths and health risks related to outdoor air pollution in Mpumalanga.

It drew upon official reports’ peer-reviewed literature and air pollution statistics to understand the coal industry and Eskom’s impact on health risks faced by people in Mpumalanga.

GroundWork found that “Eskom’s coal-fired electricity generation is responsible for 51% of hospital admissions and 51% of mortalities due to respiratory illnesses caused by outdoor air pollution”. It also found that 54% of deaths from air pollution-related cardiovascular diseases could be attributed to Eskom. 

The research concluded that the parastatal was solely responsible for 82% of the sulphur dioxide and and 73% of the nitrogen oxide released across the Highveld Priority Area, which covers much of the province. This is an area that the environment department declared as very polluted in 2007, and therefore needed special attention to reduce the air pollution levels. Professor Rajen Naidoo, an occupational health physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said this primarily caused respiratory-related illness. It also drove cardiovascular problems, cancers and interrupted the development of the foetus. 

In an open letter to the parastatal, groundWork said: ” Eskom’s own documentation states unequivocally that Eskom’s polluting power stations are killing people.”

In 2007, the area was declared a priority area by the environmental affairs department, thanks to the poor air quality. It is home to 12 coal-fired power stations and hundreds of coal mines that export their best quality coal, supplying Eskom with the lower-grade coal. 

At the heart of the region is eMalahleni (place of coal). It has been the focus of much research, with one European Union team finding it had one of the worst air qualities in the world. This was because of the level of heavy metals in the air, the research showed. 

Thomas Mnguni, a community activist in Mpumalanga who helped with the research, said: “The air we breathe is not safe for human health.” Residents of the province were therefore being promised that their needs were being prioritised, while the reality was that industries were being put first, he said.

Coal power stations have to adhere to air quality standards, but the report said that these standards are weaker than the guidelines set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This concern has been echoed by several environmental rights organisations. 

Companies could therefore, legally, emit more than was deemed safe for human health. If the WHO standards had been in place for the last five years, up to 165 fewer people would have died, the report said. These limits are being lowered due to new air quality legislation.

Huge health cost of pollution

Similar research for non-governmental organisation Greenpeace on Mpumalanga’s coal-fired power stations said the cumulative health costs in the next decade from their continuing operation would be R230-billion. It also said up to 2 700 people a year died because of the pollution from the coal-fired stations’ emissions. Eskom has publicly stated that the costs of ensuring its fleet met new standards would be a minimum of R200-billion. 

Bobby Peek, the director of groundWork, said: “It’s a common reality that the young suffer, and the aged suffer. We are creating a sick population in Mpumalanga.” With young people’s development being hampered, the future population was also going to be affected, he said.

Eskom had previously not released documents about the health impact of its operations, and only did so after a Promotion of Access to Information Act request by the Centre for Environmental Rights.

It released two studies, on the impact of its stations in Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The former said: “current Eskom power stations were cumulatively calculated to be responsible for 17 non-accidental mortalities per year and 661 respiratory hospital admissions”. The latter found that the current Matimba station and the forthcoming Medupi station would kill nearly three people a year.

The groups are releasing their research to oppose Eskom’s request to the environmental affairs department to have rolling postponements on its plants’ compliance with new air quality standards. These includes its new stations which have not yet been finished. It cited the current power crisis and the cost of upgrading the stations as mitigating reasons. “It is not practically feasible or beneficial to South Africa to fully comply with the minimal emission standards,” it said.

The environment department has not ruled on the applications and will not comment on the ongoing process. But it has returned to Eskom to ask for more information, including on the health effects of its stations. The studies the power company was forced to release were not included in the applications.

Eskom does not answer questions about the health impacts of its stations, and rather points to the possibilities of reducing deaths in households if greater electrification can occur. Several studies have found that indoor air pollution – from burning coal and wood – impacts people’s health worth. 

A 2004 report for a government development cluster found that this was responsible for 69% of health problems caused by air pollution, and two-thirds of all deaths of pollution-related deaths. Around 300 people a year died because of the burning of fossil fuels, with 5% as a result of coal-fired power stations, it said. 

South Africa’s Constitution guarantees people the right to an environment “which is not harmful to their health or well-being”. The onus is on the state to ensure that this right is upheld. 

When Mail & Guardian visited the town of Kriel, surrounded by power stations, the common complaint from people was that they had coughs and chest problems. The conditions had seemingly become ubiquitous and people blamed the two adjacent power stations and the coal mines that supplied them. 

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Arms deal 'critics' face new challenges at commission hearings

Sarah Evans, M&G, 3 July 2014

·          

·         In the second phase of the arms procurement commission, the so-called critics of the arms deal may be perceived as complainants in the matter.

 

NEWS ANALYSIS

During phase two of the arms procurement commission’s (APC’s) public hearings, which will begin on July 21, who makes the allegations will prove to be just as important as the allegations themselves.

Intentionally or not, by starting phase two of the inquiry with evidence by the so-called “critics” of the arms deal, it sets them up as complainants in the matter. It then leaves two former government officials to respond to these allegations, thus implying that the critics are the inventors of every allegation of fraud and corruption.

Phase two will deal with the fraud and corruption allegations that continue to plague the R70-billion arms deal, 15 years after it was signed.

Phase one, which deals with the rationale and affordability of the deal, will end as soon as former president Thabo Mbeki testifies. No date has been announced for his evidence.

Information obtained by the Mail & Guardian, activists and whistleblowers over the 15-year period includes leaked details from other – now closed – investigations by British, German and South African authorities. The information revealed that at one time, authorities believed that about R1-billion in bribes had been paid to secure the arms deal.

This week, the phase two witness list was released to the public. It kicks off with a list of “whistleblowers”, or “critics”, as commission chairperson, Judge Willie Seriti is wont to call them.

This includes the likes of Patricia De Lille, Andrew Feinstein, Paul Holden, Hennie Van Vuuren, Terry Crawford-Browne, Richard Young and Raenette Taljaard.

After the critics, Fana Hlongwane, former adviser to the late defence minister Joe Modise, and Shamin “Chippy” Shaik, former governmental acquisitions chief, will appear. The two appear to be the only witnesses on the list for the purposes of answering allegations against them.

Both were fingered as central to the bribe allegations – although both have denied the charges. But they are certainly not the only people alleged to have been central to impropriety in the deal: Shaik’s brother, Schabir, was convicted of corruption for securing a bribe for President Jacob Zuma in relation to the deal. Tony Yengeni was convicted of fraud for receiving a discount on a luxury vehicle from an arms deal bidder.

Schabir Shaik, Yengeni, and Zuma, are just three characters whose names are glaringly absent from the phase two list. Hlongwane and Shaik will be followed by Johan Du Plooy, the sole Hawks investigator on the last two legs of the arms deal investigation which were closed in 2010, and the man who penned a 2010 memo motivating for the investigation’s end, Hans Meiring.

Importantly, the arms companies themselves are not currently on the witness list. The commission’s spokesperson, William Baloyi, said he could not respond to questions about why this was so, as the commissioners were “not available” this week.

Baloyi confirmed that some winning bidders had made submissions to the commission. Additionally, he said the witness list was “not exhaustive”, so the companies could be called later. It is, however, concerning that they have not been subpoenaed.

For all the commission’s promises to hold an exhaustive inquiry, its phase two witness list betrays it. But the lists’ compilation is not its fatal flaw: its design, is.

Phase one saw allegations found in the 2001 Joint Investigative Team draft report, and the draft auditor general’s report into the arms deal, put to witnesses as if they were allegations made by the critics.

In fact, these allegations are merely repeated, sometimes revealed, in the critics’ books. But the fact remains: the source documentation is available, and the commission has powers of compulsion, which it can use to obtain it.

And in commissions of inquiry, the burden of evidence is not on the interested parties.

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4.    Alliance

Land rights tampering ‘not an ANC issue’

 Paul Vecchiatto,Business Day,  03 July 2014

RURAL Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti has given the clearest indication yet that the government will not tamper with the constitutional provisions of fair and equitable compensation for properties earmarked for land reform.

In heated public debates over the past two years, critics of the government’s drive to speed up land and restitutional reform have frequently resorted to the bogeyman of expropriation without compensation to underscore their opposition to it.

Fears had been expressed by opposition parties such as the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Freedom Front Plus, and by agricultural organisations such as Agri SA, that the abandonment of the willing buyer, willing seller principle amounted to expropriation by the state and would destroy commercial agriculture and endanger South Africa’s food security.

Mr Nkwinti was answering a question from DA MP Thomas Walters, who asked: "Will the minister directly answer if he intends to change section 25 of the constitution that protects individual property rights?"

Mr Nkwinti responded: "That issue was dealt with at the 2012 conference. It is not a question."

He was referring to the December 2012 conference in Mangaung of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) that endorsed devising a new land reform policy.

Mr Walters responded that he wanted a copy of Mr Nkwinti’s answer from the official parliamentary record to ensure it was properly recorded.

Later, Mr Walters told Business Day that he was pleased with Mr Nkwinti’s response, but it meant that his party would have to rethink the way it opposed the government’s land reform policy.

"So far we have been opposing it on constitutional grounds, with the main aim of protecting the constitution.

"However, we do oppose the government’s land reform policy as we don’t think it will work, and now we can concentrate on opposing it," he said.

The government has abandoned the willing seller, willing buyer principle that has been the main policy focus since 1994 to reform South Africa’s land ownership patterns as it says this has not produced the results needed to redistribute land to the previously disadvantaged.

Mr Nkwinti has proposed a new land reform policy that would give farm workers a 50% share in the land they have worked, based on their years of service, and that would set up a central trust to manage the monies gathered from buying the portions of land.

"We will buy the land …. and that is why the office of the valuer-general has been set up," Mr Nkwinti said.

"We don’t just have to use market mechanisms."

Mr Nkwinti’s answers were also aimed at countering the objections of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to the government’s land reform policy.

That party offered the ANC "a gift" of its MPs’ votes to change section 25 of the constitution in order to get the two-thirds majority needed to do so.

"That policy will not work," EFF MP Andile Mngxitama said.

"This policy is bad in all possible ways. There is no protection for farm workers, of whom a million have been evicted from farms since 1994.

"What is the target we are working towards to turn around the situation where 40,000 white people own the agricultural land? I say we have a crisis on our hands," Mr Mngxitama said.

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5.    International

AU summit conclusions: Number Ones look out for number one, again

Simon Allison , Daily Maverick, 4 July 2014

The 23rd Ordinary Summit of the African Union ended last week in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea – and it was very ordinary indeed. SIMON ALLISON reports on yet another continental talk shop where our leaders looked out for themselves first, and the rest of us second.

In Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea’s archetypal African dictatorship, Africa’s leaders gathered to put our continent to rights. In many ways, the location was fitting: The island capital and the purpose-built, enormously expensive conference venue where the 23rd Ordinary Summit of the African Union was held are deliberately isolated from the grinding poverty which characterises this oil-rich state. Likewise, Africa’s leaders seemed isolated from the continent’s real problems, focusing instead on saving their own skin, and keeping themselves in power.

In particular, there were three decisions that rankled.

First was the generous reception accorded to new Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi. This is the man, remember, who as army chief overthrew Egypt’s elected government in June 2013. This is the man who ordered the massacre of more than 900 Muslim Brotherhood supporters in August 2013, as they were protesting his seizure of power; and who has arrested thousands more, often on the most spurious of charges. This is the man who sentenced journalists to long jail terms for the ‘crime’ of simply doing their job.

This is also the man described by African Union President Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as a brother. “We warmly welcome the delegation of Egypt, our dear brothers and sisters, back home,” said the AU Commission chairperson. Egypt had been suspended from the AU following Sisi’s coup, but has now been reinstated following the largely symbolic elections which confirmed Sisi as president. Speak for yourself, NDZ: he’s no brother of mine.

Second was the passage, without serious opposition, of the innocuous-sounding Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. The protocol aims to set up a new African court to try serious international crimes (like war crimes and genocide), but hidden in the legalese of the amendments is one very disturbing clause. This will provide immunity to all sitting African heads of state, as well as senior government officials – effectively inoculating governments from prosecution. Never mind that many African leaders have in the past been implicated in serious atrocities and human rights violations (not least the aforementioned Egyptian President).

“At a time when the African continent is struggling to ensure that there is accountability for serious human rights violations and abuses, it is impossible to justify this decision which undermines the integrity of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights, even before it becomes operational,” said Netsanet Belay, Amnesty International’s Africa Director for Research and Advocacy. We can’t disagree.

The third problematic decision was also contained within this protocol. In early drafts, put together with help from international justice experts and African civil society, the protocol contained a clause excluded peaceful protests – the Arab Spring kind, the kind that results in the ousting of a government – from the general provision that criminalises unconstitutional changes of government. It was designed to make sure that people were not punished for rising up against oppressive regimes. This, however, was too much of a threat for too many of the leaders assembled in Malabo, and the clause was scrapped.

While none of these developments are particularly encouraging, it wasn’t all bad.

For South Africa in particular, the summit was a resounding diplomatic success. South African diplomats have been lobbying hard for the creation of an African military response force, with international relations minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane doing her quiet diplomacy thing in Mauritania, Tanzania and Uganda in support of the project. The idea is that the next time there is an urgent need for a military intervention on the continent, there will be African troops on standby to do the dirty work.

“This is how you give practical meaning to this thing of African solutions for African problems,” said international relations spokesman Clayson Monyela. “Until Africa sets up and activates this African capacity to respond immediately when the need arises, we will never as Africans be able to deal with our own problems.”

South Africa proposed the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises, a roughly 5,000-strong force with troops from 13 countries who have already indicated their willingness to participate. If all goes according to plan, this will be in place by October, and will eventually morph into the African Standby Force – a more substantial, and more permanent body.

The AU summit enthusiastically endorsed the new force, but hurdles remain – most significant being who is going to pay for the thing? These are details that will be worked out later, by a special committee of participating army chiefs, said Monyela. This sounds like diplomat-speak for ‘right now, we have no idea’. Monyela did say that the bulk of the funding should come from within Africa. “Africans must put their money where their mouth is, they must be the ones to lead,” he said.

Other significant decisions at the summit included the establishment of an African Monetary Fund to help shape macro-economic policy on the continent. This, however, like so many of the other decisions and protocols and policy positions, is a good idea in theory – but we’ll believe it’s happening when we see it in action.

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SA government condemns Egyptian media suppression

Andisiwe Makinana, M&G, 3 July 2014

·          

·         In a departure from its usual 'quiet diplomacy', the South African government has condemned the increased suppression of media freedom in Egypt.

 

The South African government has condemned what it calls increased suppression of media freedom and the freedom of expression in Egypt.

This is a considerable departure by South Africa, which has previously been criticised for its quiet diplomacy regarding human rights abuses in other African countries.

This week, Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Luwellyn Landers spoke to Parliament journalists about Egypt, saying government welcomed and respected the decision by the African Union’s Peace and Security Council to lift the suspension of Egypt in the AU’s activities.  

Landers said the country was ready to assist the government and people of Egypt where required as they sought to rebuild their country “in accordance with the popular aspirations of the Egyptian people following the recent election”.

Government also noted the progress that Egypt has made in the formal restoration of constitutional order; but wished to express its deep concern over the increased suppression of media freedom and freedom of expression, which contravenes international human rights standards, said Landers.

He said that such suppression is a contravention of the universal declaration of human rights, which upholds the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to impart information and ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers.

“We will continue engaging with the authorities in that country through available diplomatic channels on this and other matters,” said Landers.

On June 23, three Al Jazeera journalists were jailed for seven years by an Egyptian judge “for aiding a terrorist organisation”. Egypt rejected widespread condemnation as “interference in its internal affairs”.   

The three journalists, who all denied the charge of working with the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, included Australian Peter Greste and Canadian-Egyptian national Mohamed Fahmy, the Cairo bureau chief of Al Jazeera English.   

Silent on Uganda
The South African government was criticised earlier this year when it refused to condemn or express a stance about Uganda’s anti-homosexual law.

Former home affairs minister Naledi Pandor told journalists that “no special comment was needed” on the Ugandan law criminalising homosexuality.

Answering questions from reporters on government’s work in Parliament in February, just after Uganda President Yoweri Museveni signed into law a bill that made homosexual acts punishable by life in prison, Pandor said: “Countries pass many bills and we don’t really comment on them, so I don’t know why you need a special comment by the government on this.”

She said Uganda’s new laws wouldn’t impact South Africa’s stance on the issue.

At the time, the SA Human Rights Commission called for the country’s government to condemn the law.

“The commission believes that our government should make its rejection of Uganda’s draconian law clear and visible,” spokesperson Isaac Mangena said in February.

“[We should] join those who respect the rights and freedoms of every person to call for the repeal of this and all similar legislation and to follow good human rights practices in line with its commitments under international and regional laws.”

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Zimbabwe announces new debt management measures

Shingai Nyoka,SABC News, 3 July 2014

Zimbabwe's Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, has announced new debt management measures aimed at coaxing international finance institutions to extend debt relief to the country.

On Thursday, Chinamasa said that Zimbabwe owes $9.9 billion (US dollars) in domestic and foreign debt, with most of its public debt to world's largest economies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

The World Bank suspended its lending program when the country went into arrears in 2000.

Chinamasa says the country owes China, Kuwait and South Africa $692 million and the largest debt is $666 million, which is owed to the People’s Republic of China.

Part of Zimbabwe’s new constitutional requirement for transparency in public borrowing.

Public and publicly guaranteed external debt stands at just under $7 billion.

Chinamasa states he needs more money in order to build capacity. 

“I have not capacity to pay the arrears. I have not capacity to pay the principal debt. What I want is new money to build capacity especially to the productive sector to broaden the revenue base so that the country has the capacity through more inflows to allow Zimbabwe to honour its international and domestic obligations.”  

The debt dates back to before independence; most of it from the 1980s infrastructural development, including government guaranteed private sector debt.

Zimbabwe has announced new measures to claw its way out of the situation, starting with a central monitoring statutory Debt Management Office, as Chinamasa elaborates.

“Any public enterprise - this office will have its database and that means that we have to monitor the local authority…we should not have a single situation where everyone is signing debt instruments all over and we only know about it when they are signed."

Zimbabwe is under an IMF staff monitoring programme to access debt relief.  

The programme has recommended improved debt management, reviews of empowerment policy and mining laws and drastic cuts to the bloated civil service.

Chinamasa says Zimbabwe is still years away from accessing debt relief.  

_________________________________________________       

6.    Comment

Visualising the end of inequality – a new path to negotiation

Jay Naidoo, Daily Maverick, 4 July 2014

Do we live in a world where powerful men in government, powerful men in business and powerful men in army uniforms conspire to smash popular dissent to the growing inequality?

When the Forbes magazine, not the representative of the world's poor, quotes an Oxfam report, released at the WEF Davos meeting this year, that raises the obscenity of inequality - then it is time the world’s rich and powerful stand up and answer some serious questions.

Is this just a cyclical crisis or is it a systemic one? Are the following statistics driving the crises we face today, from economic to ecological, from financial to food and burgeoning youth unemployment and to the many resource conflicts and corruption scandals that plague our world?

• Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.
• The wealth of the top one percent – the richest people in the world – amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.
• The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.
• Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.
• The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.

There is a growing consensus that the concentration of wealth in the world in the hands of fewer and fewer people is untenable. Thomas Piketty, the world-renowned economist, in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, calls it the second Gilded Age—defined by the incredible rise of the 'one percent'.

Where does the remaining 99% feature in this new age?

I am struck by the ferocious reaction to the Numsa strike. It is described as irresponsible after the economy contracted 0.6% in the first quarter after it was alleged that it was caused by a five-month long platinum miners’ strike. Forgotten is that collective bargaining, which includes the right to strike for a living wage, is enshrined in the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) constitution and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In South Africa it is in the Constitution and has been a cornerstone of the institution of democracy.

Forgotten is the latest employment data, which indicates an unemployment rate of 25.2% in terms of the narrow definition and 35.1% if the broad definition is used. So is the fact that youth unemployment in the 18-35 range is today over 60%. So how has the ratio of dependents to a single breadwinner changed since 1994? I am sure that a single worker is supporting many more dependents than in the Eighties.

Forgotten is the fact that many of our public health facilities are in a state of collapse, with civil society organisations like the TAC reporting in provinces like the Free State that the crisis means some facilities have no equipment and supplies to conduct life-saving tests and monitoring of conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease; stock-outs and shortages of drugs for many chronic conditions such as TB, HIV, diabetes and epilepsy are the order of the day.

The same applies to many of our township and rural schools. The collapse of public services in many areas means that the extended families of workers incur more expenses going to private health facilities or sending their children to former model C schools in cities.

I can empathise when the Numsa president, Andrew Chirwa, says that “Numsa had an obligation to ensure a better standard of living for its members. We have no intention to send South Africa into a recession… but workers are permanently living in a recession even today.”

Similarly, a demand to Eskom for a salary increase of 12% should be seen in a context where there is great speculation on how the budget for the Medupi power station has burgeoned from R52 billion in January 2007 to an estimated R145 billion with an overall delay of 48 months today.

How have the companies such as Parsons Brinckerhoff, providing engineering and project management support; Hitachi, supplying the boilers; Alstom, providing the steam turbines; construction companies Murray and Roberts, Basil Read and Aveng; ThyssenKrupp Materials, handling contractors of the coal stockpile yard, benefited?

Can we have a public audit of all these companies, including those whom they have paid, and the names of the shareholders? Many want to know how public money is spent and whether part of that could have gone into improving the workers' wages and working conditions.

Workers in SA live in townships like Bekkersdal or Alexandria, in the heart of the richest real estate in Africa. I have been there. It will break your heart: the poverty, the overcrowding, the battle for survival. These residents feel left behind by democracy, surrounded by piles of garbage, exploding slums and dysfunctional schools and clinics.

Families of the poor don’t want charity. They do not want a scenario of 1 in 3 South Africans living on a social grant. They want the dignity of their labour. Their desperation, as they fail to meet the obligations of a breadwinner, drives wage pressure and is reflected in high levels of alcohol, drug abuse (which leads to high levels of interpersonal violence), the spike in youth delinquency, amongst other indicators.

We have to redefine our growth path, our governance and our democracy. True democracy must be built through open societies that embrace the rule of law and where public institutions protect the interests of citizens. Our struggle for freedom was a struggle to have a voice. If avenues to free and open dialogue and meaningful participation are closed off and people lose trust in public institutions, then collective bargaining will become politicised.

That’s what happened in the past. I see it happening again. The strikes and protests we see sweeping South Africa reveal a fault line in our society – between a small insider elite and the majority. Our new battle is against inequality, lest we forget the fact that the Gini Coefficient (a measure of inequality) reports the stark statistic that SA is today the one of the most unequal countries on Earth.

This is the time for a new dialogue in South Africa. A roadmap back to the contract we made with our people in 1994 to “deliver a better life” to all our people, based on our Constitutional commitment to human dignity and justice.

There are tough choices we need to make, before it is too late. 

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Amcu’s brand of unionism rests on wise and wily moves

Carol Paton, Business Day, 4 July 2014

THE dramatic arrival of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) on the platinum belt in January 2012 gave rise to much speculation about whether such a populist and fast-growing organisation could take root or would go the way of earlier wildcat breakaways and fail after wildly overpromising.

What we now know is that Amcu is here to stay. Despite its unconventional bargaining strategy, its relatively weak organisational capacity and its home-grown style of politics, Amcu has come out of the five-month platinum strike looking good. The expectation now should be that this union will continue to grow and spread its brand of unionism further into mining and construction.

There has been lots of debate over who "won" the strike. In the big picture, the wise answer is no one. With huge losses in both wages and production, the strong likelihood of fewer jobs in the future and the core social and economic problems unchanged, the wage agreement is, as labour analyst Gavin Hartford described it, "a Band-Aid on a gaping wound". But in the much smaller picture of individual workers’ lives, the victory is both tangible and unprecedented.

When workers receive their first pay cheque at the end of this month, the lowest-paid will jump from a base salary of R5,500 to R7,500 a month. For all workers in the A and B bands — this includes unskilled and all semiskilled machine operators such as rock-drillers — the agreement brings a R1,000 monthly increase for three consecutive years. As the settlement is backdated to July 1 last year, the first pay cheque will include the first two tranches. After another year, salaries will rise by R1,000 again.

This is an unprecedented victory. Even though workers lost 45% of their annual wages and it will take years before they break even from the strike, few see in such terms the wages forgone, focusing rather on what they will gain in the future. As Amcu president Joseph Mathunjwa explained on TV this week: "When you add the billions, yes, it is a loss. But the indicators of the business are different to the indicators of the workers."

In the aftermath of the strike, Lonmin’s Ben Magara made the point that fewer jobs in the future will mean that fewer men will earn wages, which in the end will be a cumulative loss for poor labour-sending families and communities both now and in the future.

So although it is obvious that at a macro level, poor families and youth without job prospects will be harmed most by a shrinking corps of better-paid mine workers, this is not the key concern of workers who see the strike as "a worthwhile sacrifice" that brought an unprecedented rise in wages.

The difference in perception matters both from the perspective of the parties to the dispute, but also from that of the rest of us in forming a view about Amcu and its future prospects. From the point of view of workers then, the outcome of the Rustenburg strike will be likely to build Amcu’s strength and popularity. So now that Amcu looks like it is here to stay, what is it that drives this union and its leader?

The first question many have asked about Amcu is whether it is really apolitical.

Mathunjwa always describes the union in these terms and said after the strike that this would not change. He never endorses support for any political party and, even at the height of the strike, told workers to vote for whichever party they wanted "but not one that would forget about them tomorrow".

At the memorial service to commemorate the first anniversary of the massacre at Marikana, all political parties were given an equal five-minute time slot and the speaking order was decided by the parties.

The Economic Freedom Fighters, which forged close ties with the mine workers in August 2012, and the United Democratic Movement, which has historical ties with some of the Eastern Cape migrants, often share platforms with Amcu, but this a choice of community organisers rather than Amcu. Amcu has also welcomed the technical advice and solidarity of ultraleft individuals and groups — the so-called "foreign threat" — which have been materially supportive of its strike action. However, trade unions are naturally befriended by left-wing activists and this should not be taken to mean an ideological meeting of minds.

But although Amcu remains wary about aligning with any political group, the message that it is fighting against the "slave wages" of the working class is a very political one. Its point is that it sees its role as being in the workplace, beyond which its members can engage in political activity as individuals. This is an astute decision — as political affiliations can be divisive, it has made Amcu stronger.

The second question is whether Amcu is democratic. During the strike, Amcu leaders were fastidious in taking decisions back to workers for their endorsement. It was only when talks had reached the very end of the line that the leaders very subtly encouraged a settlement, never recommending it from the podium but allowing worker leaders to speak from the floor.

Elections were also held for branch and regional leaders and shop stewards as the union gained the majority in platinum belt workplaces. But when last it held a national congress or when the next one will be is not information that is readily available. The union’s website, which seldom works, doesn’t provide a copy of the union constitution or any other important congress report. Questions sent to Mathunjwa on this as well as on the union’s financial status have gone unanswered in the past.

That said, the Department of Labour considers Amcu to be in compliance with its own constitution, which must mean that elections are held and audited accounts submitted.

An important question is whether the further growth of Amcu will be accompanied by more violence. The rise of Amcu on the platinum belt saw violence against local National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leaders, including murders and the destruction of property. Five people died during the strike. But the reality is that violence occurs during most strikes in South Africa and is also common in situations of interunion rivalry. Should Amcu move into the gold mines of Welkom or the Vaal, for instance (it already has a majority in Carletonville), violent contestation against the NUM can be expected.

Will Amcu play by the rules in the future? There is every indication that Amcu intends to follow the rules of collective bargaining and will not expose workers to unprotected action. But while it will abide by the rules, it is unafraid to reject the conventions of, for instance, linking wage demands to inflation. In the platinum strike, that convention went out of the window, on the insistence of workers, who wanted R12,500. New workers joining Amcu can be expected to insist their wage demands be fought harder than before.

Finally, what is it that drives Mathunjwa? During the strike, it was not uncommon to hear stakeholders and observers putting the whole thing down to an egocentric power play by one individual. There is no doubt that Mathunjwa calls the shots in Amcu. Compared with Congress of South African Trade Unions affiliates, in which regional leaders and officials have some autonomy, power in Amcu is centralised. But that doesn’t mean Mathunjwa doesn’t act with circumspection and caution, carefully consulting his office bearers and members.

He has turned out to be more wily and wise than expected, and not likely to make the elementary mistake of allowing his newfound power to slip through his fingers.

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Hlaudi is turning SA politics into a bad reality show

The Times Editorial , 04 July 2014

Hlaudi Motsoeneng has done it again, and he will continue to put his foot in his mouth as long as he presides as the head honcho of the public broadcaster.

Speaking at the annual Joburg Radio Days conference at Wits University, SABC acting chief operating officer Motsoeneng said the media should be more tightly regulated, even proposing that journalists should get licences. He apparently claimed that journalists only reported on corruption because black people govern the country.

This from a man who the public protector found had lied about his qualifications.

We fully agree with the opposition that Motsoeneng believes his duty is not to serve the public, but to protect the ruling party.

Motsoeneng forgets that governments come and go.

The National Party, and apartheid, disappeared - and so too, in time, will his ANC leaders.

Motsoeneng's role is to objectively inform the public. We do not need a state censor deciding what news we can or cannot hear.

It is people like him who are taking this country backwards by thinking the ANC needs protection from its own citizens.

The ANC is a big party - it can defend itself.

It is disappointing to constantly read and hear negative things about Motsoeneng.

We hope he understands that journalists will always expose wrongdoing in society, and that politicians are accountable to the citizens.

Why should we not report about corrupt individuals?

We will only remain a vibrant democracy if there is vibrant debate based on the free flow of information, and the people are not silenced or cowed.

The SABC has a mandate to inform, educate and entertain the public. It does not exist to protect the state at all costs.

If we allow the likes of Motsoeneng to prevail, how can we claim today's democracy is different from when the SABC was the National Party's lapdog?

The time has come for the SABC board to review Motsoeneng's contract.

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Realignment of SA political landscape in full swing

 Natasha Marrian, Business Day, 04 July 2014

IN AN interview this week, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille predicted that President Jacob Zuma would not stand for re-election as African National Congress (ANC) president in 2017.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

The constitution stipulates that the maximum term served by a president is two terms, which Zuma would have concluded by then. Standing for a third term as ANC president would be unthinkable, given the manner in which Zuma rose to the helm of the ruling party in the first place. The ANC has a standing resolution that states that the president of the party will be the president of the country, which takes Zuma out of the running, although it does not prevent him from attempting to influence who his successor should be.

That Cyril Ramaphosa will stand and be contested is also part of the internal democratic processes of the ANC, although it is quite possible that the contest for the position of deputy president in the upcoming ANC electoral race would be more highly charged than that of president.

Zille also again referred to a realignment of South African politics. Reflecting on the general election in May, now that the dust has settled, there are signs that this realignment of politics is already underway. Smaller parties such as the Pan Africanist Congress were virtually obliterated from Parliament.

New entrant Agang SA’s implosion continues. It is unlikely to have any showing in the 2016 local government elections, with moves afoot to suspend party leader Mamphela Ramphele.

Her kiss of death seemed to have come from Zille herself, during that ill-fated announcement of a union between Agang and the DA ahead of the polls.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) are loud and boisterous and constantly in the news for their antics in Parliament.

It’s a pity the media spectacle over an accusation against the ANC during the debate on Zuma’s state of the nation address masked some critical comments made by EFF MP Andile Mngxitama. He made a compelling offer to the ANC: handing it a 70% majority in Parliament as a "gift" to bring about the economic freedom on which the EFF’s manifesto is anchored. "EFF is offering this house its percentage to get the two-thirds to amend the constitution to realise radical change through land expropriation without compensation," Mngxitama said. "Let’s not fear, let’s recreate a new future for our country and our children and their children."

The EFF, however, is already showing signs of internal fracturing, particularly in the province in which it obtained the bulk of its votes — Gauteng. If the manner in which its leader, Julius Malema, handled ANC Youth League conferences during his time at its helm is anything to go by, the party’s first elective conference in December is unlikely to pass without wounded members parting ways with the EFF.

Of course, there are also internal dynamics in the DA. The party has largely been immune to deep, fractious leadership battles. Its leadership contests have largely insulated it from large-scale dissent until now.

The party holds an internal election early next year, which should be a defining congress for it. It is unclear whether Zille will remain at the helm, and even if she does opts to stay on, there is talk of a possible challenger.

There are grumblings in the party about perceptions that the newly elected parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane may succeed Zille — with some warning that the DA risks splitting if a personality as "divisive" as the wouldn’t-be Gauteng premier takes over. It’s clear that many in the party feel that Zille has passed her sell-by date.

But whether the group opposed to Zille will risk challenging her will emerge over the coming months. To her credit, Zille has hugely swelled the party’s electoral support and membership.

The ANC is accused of being anti-business by the DA and of colluding with business by the left, which is to be expected for a multi-class organisation. But this tension is now textured by the ructions from within the governing tripartite alliance itself. The strife is playing itself out in the Congress of South African Trade Unions after the federation’s largest affiliate, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), took controversial resolutions.

From now until 2017, many factors may dramatically alter the trajectory of the ANC and even the DA, not least among them the possible formation of a worker party or movement for socialism by Numsa.

• Marrian is political editor.

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Norman Mampane (Communications Officer)

Congress of South African Trade Unions

110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Street

Braamfontein

2017

 

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South Africa

 

Tel: +27 11 339-4911 or Direct 010 219-1342

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