THE MISGUIDED MILITANCY OF SOUTH AFRICAN TRADE UNIONS
The South African labour field is currently facing a very serious challenge. There is a very worrying trend that is manifesting itself; a Lonmin mineworker was shot dead at a shebeen (tavern) and all of a sudden this "bar-brawl" is becoming a serious national and international issue, and the whole country is being made to suffer.
It transpires the person who was shot at a tavern was actually a high-ranking member of the new trade union AMCU; and AMCU has been quick to accuse the rival trade union NUM for this tavern killing. AMCU members immediately opted to shut down the mine; demanding that Lonmin management must close down the NUM offices, because the latter is no longer "the majority union" at Lonmin.
The AMCU members vowed that they will not allow anyone to work at the mine until their demands are met. Consequently, the share price of Lonmin has gone down by more than seven percent; and the South African currency, the Rand, depreciated to its four year lows at R10.27 per USA dollar.
AMCU was the new trade union that flouted all the Labour Relations Act (LRA) provisions last year, 2012, when they instigated violent protests that culminated in the deaths of over 44 people in Marikana. Rather than learning from Marikana tragedy , AMCU is now using last year's deaths as its platform for more rhetoric to urge people to go out on wildcat strikes.
It has been quite clear that some political formations and political opportunists have seen the Marikana deaths as a God-sent gift they must fully exploit to score many cheap political points against the ANC ruling party. This can be supported by the fact that some political parties were invited to speak at the AMCU Workers Day rally where the ANC became the only target of criticism by the invited political speakers; and such speakers hardly said anything about the real labour challenges of South Africa.