NO AMOUNT OF BLACKMAIL SHALL STOP THE NUM FROM GROWING

It is slowly becoming a culture and fashionable for the Daily Maverick to make head-line news in its reporting of any thing that negatively report about the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Such behaviour has nothing to do about informing the public but is driven by the sole goal of profit maximisation. On February 1, 2013, the Daily Maverick ran a head-line story that "Mineworkers: NUM offering disaffected members cash, permanent jobs to rejoin" (see here). 

This inaccurate reporting disregards the march that was organised by Impala workers to the NUM Rustenburg offices to apologise for leaving the NUM and further rejoin it. If we had progressive and balanced journalism in our country, the head-lines about this significant milestone in Union politics should have captured newspaper Head-lines. This posture therefore leaves me with no choice but to simple characterise the Daily Maverick as an anti-worker and reactionary newspaper that does not deserve to be bought by workers.

Let me remind the Daily Maverick bosses that, the NUM was not built by News Head-Lines but workers themselves. Its 30 years of existence in the struggle against exploitation of workers and for national liberation is a significant achievement that cannot be easily erased by collusion of imperialist powers.

I can only describe the lack of reporting of Impala workers' march to re-join the NUM as yet another desperate attempt by liberal and right wing newspapers like The Daily Maverick to de-legitimise the will of the workers. A strong NUM is a threat to neo-liberal and right wing interest and brings hope to the workers in particular and the working class in general. NUM must continue to build up on its achievements to take us closer to our vision a better and classless South Africa.

Benson Ngqentsu

Cape Town, Khayelitsha

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