Workers strike at Medupi and Kusile power stations.
Four years ago, Hitachi Power Africa, which counts the ANC's Chancellor's House and Makotulo Investments & Services as its black empowerment partners won a whopping R38.5 billion tender to built boiler makers for both new coal-fired Medupi and Kusile power stations.
Chancellor House and Makotulo Investments are minority shareholders valued at 25% and 5% respectively. Most of us know what the Chancellor House is but I have tried in vain to get information on Makotulo Investment Company. I tried Google but every search returns few results which are only linked to Hitachi Power Africa regarding this deal only. Nothing more. So I quit the search and concluded that is a token BEE company since it doesn't even have a website.
Back then, in a usual seduction of big business, Hitachi's Chief Executive Johannes Musel said, "Our main focus is the successful execution of the projects and the fulfillment of the ASGISA contract obligations. These obligations call for 60% local content, preferential procurement, skills development and investment in South Africa. These contracts will benefit local industry through know-how transfer and skills enhancement in a highly specialized engineering field."
I only want to deal with this ‘transfer and skills enhancement in a highly specialized engineering field to local industry' aspect only because it is at the heart of the recent workers demonstration which brought operations to halt at both stations last week Tuesday. Workers decried Hitachi's preference for foreign workers in their place, mainly Asians. This happens under the watch of Chancellor House and Makotulo which I think, by virtue of their comradeship, should have made sure from the beginning that such shenanigans had no room to manoeuvre.
That's if both have a thorough understanding of the tendencies of Asian orientated companies. They should have for, not so long ago, a certain Chinese Company contracted to build 4-G Network for Cell C was smuggling workers into this country in a place where they should hire local people.
Last year (September 2010), the Southern African Clothing & Textile Workers' Union (SACTWU), in protest, gave Chinese Chamber of Commerce the ‘Worst Employer Award', a broken brick, symbolizing employers who break down, not build, decent work in the clothing industry. Standard Bank hiked transaction fees and shed about thousands of its employees as a result of Chinese takeover.
These examples are just for a shortlist, they do not amount to the totality of the looting-type investment that the Asian tigers, especially the Chinese have embarked on in our country and Africa at large.
Their tendency is to go for reckless profiteering and impunity for labour. Asian tigers, to say the least, owe their momentary industrial boom to this disrespect of labour and thus, of human rights. As they find new colonies in Africa they want to impose their local practice with any shrewdness they can employ, for that's their key route to capitalization.
Many other African countries are suffering much more than us, all in the pursuit of a superficial solidarity for a global shift of power from more arrogant to lesser arrogant colonizers. However, as far as I know, Capitalism has no lesser devils; but of course, they come in different costumes, all exploiting the circumstance of the moment. It's only up to the leadership of the people, governing in the interest of the nation at large, to protect the country and its people from irresponsible investors.
Back to Hitachi, are they really qualified to claim, as they do now, that we do not have those basic skills such as welders given their 2007 statements? What has been the role of Chancellor's House and Makotulo Investments in guarding the interest of its people confronted by naked business rapaciousness?
They should have dismissed this silly tactic in Malema ‘revolutionary' style, in fact, they should have said to Hitachi- "Don't come here with those Chinese tendencies, this is a ‘revolutionary' country, here, is either you live up to your promises or you jump". Now that would have indeed been revolutionary. Thus far, their failing to either condemn or prevent this catastrophe has been really ‘anti-revolutionary'.
But hey, don't hold your breath, Asian tigers are embraced as friends of Africa. Whether this is by lobbying in high places or by demagoguery on the part of our leadership as they seek a new milker in opposition to the West, remains a question mark to me. But I remain certain that in a Uni-polar world we live, multi-polarity is only a virtue and quite a distant dream from now. The best we should rather do is to prioritize the meeting the basic needs of the people
Asaph Madimetja Chuene is a founder of an upcoming Establishment for Political Redress (EPR)
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