NUMSA response to the Amabhungane and GroundUp article
4 March 2021
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has noted the article published by James Stent in GroundUp and the article written by Micah Reddy of Amabhungane. The articles are making reference to court documents which are being used as part of the application for provisional curatorship of 3Sixty Life. 3Sixty Life has been placed under provisional curatorship by the Prudential Authority since 21 December 2021 but the process has not been finalised. An application will be heard in April to determine whether it goes into a state of permanent curatorship.
It is unfortunate that both Stent and Reddy rushed to write and publish the article, and jumped the gun in the most spurious of all manners. They have deliberately created the impression that the process has been finalized. This is an ongoing matter and as recently as yesterday a finding was made by the High Court dismissing the application to remove the interim curator Yashoda Ram.
If GroundUp and Amabhungane want us to believe that their reporting is balanced and objective, then they should have also included the fact that a preliminary report published by Yashoda Ram the interim curator, suggests that the Prudential Authority may have “acted irrationally” when it placed 3Sixty Life under provisional curatorship. This has been reported in the media and is easy to find if one were simply to do a Google search. They deliberately did not mention this. Was it an honest mistake or a factional attempt to cause panic amongst NUMSA members and unfairly discredit the union leadership, with the elective congress around the corner? Time will indeed tell.
We also reject the political insinuation that comrade Irvin Jim was elected to the position of NUMSA General Secretary because of his relationship with the CEO of the NUMSA Investment Company (NIC) Mr. Khandani Msibi. This is a claim which both journalists are making. How insulting to NUMSA members who consciously participated in democratic processes to elect the leadership. NUMSA is world renowned for internal democracy and robust debate within the structures of the union. And every elected leader has earned his or her position. But we are not surprised. Black people are often undermined and portrayed as mindless by right wingers, and this is another in a long series of systematic attacks against the union and its leadership. This claim is absurd in the extreme because Mr. Msibi was appointed after the NUMSA general secretary comrade Irvin Jim was elected in 2008. The pair have deliberately manipulated the facts in order to drive this false narrative.