EFF statement on the ANC’s misguided and unwarranted pleat to mining capital to reconsider retrenchments

28 July 2015

The EFF note the misguided and unwarranted plea by the ANC to mining capital to reconsider retrenchment. We want to give them free advice and education, mining capital is not interest in job creation or sustainable development of South Africa as a whole. Despite the plea by the ANC, mining capital will go ahead and retrench workers.

We wish to remind the ANC and South Africans, what the EFF has always said that, mining capital in particular Multinational Corporations such as Lonmin and Anglo America, are not partners in development. All mining capital is interested in is profit maximization and the ANC, in particular the Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa who has colluded with the likes of Glencore to accumulate his wealth and participated in killing of Marikana miners, will realize in the coming months that it is sleeping and dining with the enemy at the expense of ordinary people.

It is evident mining capital is only willing to invest and operate in South Africa on a condition that the ANC preserve and provide the same terms and conditions that they were afforded by the Apartheid Nationalist government. The ANC has willingly played a significant role to ensure a continuous disenfranchised blacks, oblige mine workers to abandon their families to leave in squalors conditions for trifles wage, by continuation of steady supply of cheap labour. As it was the case under Apartheid government, miners continue to work long hours, which often result in frequent serious injuries, overcrowded, filthy, and inhumane living conditions.

How can the ANC expect mining capital to be interested in job creation and sustainable development, when they are the most threatening operations to the environment? Air and water pollution as a result of abandoned mines, toxic waste and mine drainage has lead to deforestation and loss of biodiversity, an irreversible damage to the environment.

How can the ANC expect mining capital to be interest in job creation and sustainable development, when it is the mining capital that does not take care of its labour but leave them to die without access to proper healthcare? Only 1.5 percent of mineworkers certified as eligible for compensation for occupational illness through the Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act of 1973 actually receive the full compensation. The rest languish in dilapidated run down and incapacitated public health at time with no access to healthcare at all

How can the ANC expect the mining capital to be interested in job creating and sustainable development, when they contribute the least to tax revenue but leave the state to foot the bill on healthcare provision for occupational illness, infrastructure damages etc.? According to the latest most reliable data, in 2012 mining capital contributed a mere 2 percent or R13 billion of more than R800 billion total revenue.

Between 2000 and 2009, mining capital in South Africa enjoyed a significant growth and high profits due to commodity boom as a result of high demand, but unemployment rate in South Africa averaged 25.3 percent from 2000 until 2015, reaching an all time high of 31 percent in the first quarter of 2003. When the industry was doing well, mining capital did not contribute to job creation or improve wages, instead they filled their pockets with profits.

All mining companies are involved in illicit financial flows, a biggest threat to South Africa fiscus sustainability. The very same Lonmin that is now threatening retrenchment, was found to have avoided more than R1.2 billion in taxes, something that if SARS investigate, they will find that Lonmin abused transfer pricing to shift profits to its subsidiary in Bermuda. It is estimated that South Africa lose more than R350 billion through illicit financial flow, and mining companies are the biggest culprits of these criminal acts.

Unless the state is in strategic control and ownership of mines, but leave it to mining capital, who evidently are not interest in job creation and sustainable development but profit maximization, the ANC government will know in the coming months that they have been dining with the enemy all along at the expense of ordinary members. This was not going to be the case if the state was in strategic controls and ownership of mines.

Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, July 28 2015