South Africa's accident-plagued Rustenburg Platinum Mines had a brief wildcat strike by 17,000 miners today - demanding a probe into the mysterious disappearance of two miners who went underground in 1991 and 2002 - and never returned.
Two leading trade unions describe the mine's dangerous working conditions as 'being in a raging safety crisis'. Platinum miners Qikelela Nontanaza and Thomas Mashibwe disappeared below ground in 1991 and 2002 respectively, both at the Frank Shaft - and still remain unaccounted for.
There were no mud-slides nor any kind of seismic events which could have accounted for their disappearance on those days.
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The country supplies about 80% of the world's platinum. However the industry is also increasingly plagued by a large number of international crime-syndicates who are paying large, organised groups of armed rogue-miners to steal ore from the mineshafts below and melting the mineral down in backyard smelters.
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The
Institute of Security Studies found in its recent study about the piracy problems below ground that hundreds of tonnes, "very large volumes of gold and platinum group metals were being stolen annually from mines and refineries by these gangs.'
Many company miners thus increasingly fear going below ground -- as these heavily-armed 'feral mining gangs' often remain below for months on end, aided and abetted by company insiders, thus making mining precious minerals in South Africa even more dangerous than it already was without this added threat. Often, the rogue mining gangs blast away the ore from the rock faces without any regard nor knowledge of mining safety. Many are former miners from neighbouring Lesotho and Mozambique, with detailed knowledge of the mines they used to work in. South African policemen have great difficulty in finding these rogue miners in the dark, dangerous mineshafts - but they do arrest some every month.
"Raging safety crisis at AngloPlatinum"
In 2006 this mine suffered 12 fatalities, and in 2007, sixteen miners lost their lives there - prompting Solidarity Trade Union and the National Union for Mineworkers, who together represent all the miners in the country, to call for a massive expensive overhaul of AngloPlat's safety procedures. However in 2008, another eighteen workers died in accidents.
Solidarity noted that some 11% of the country's 140 mining deaths in 2008 occurred at Anglo Platinum mines. "This is great cause for concern, " said union spokesman Jaco Kleynhans.
“Mine management can no longer just look on while people die, and must therefore immediately look into the worrying safety conditions at Anglo Platinum.They must take decisive action to manage this raging safety crisis,” he insisted.
South Africa has an increasingly poor mine safety record, with nearly 140 workers dying in mines last year - compared to 221 in 2007 and 200 in 2006. The entire mining industry is already very restless: it also faces a huge number of retrenchments this year, with gold- and platinum-mines both showing reductions in their production from August last year - even though the gold- and platinum-prices still show a steady rise in the marketplace.
Not enough electricity to run the mines:
Much of this drop in production and also the frequent accidents, also are due to the South African state-run electricity utility, ESKOM, 's inability to guarantee a steady supply of electricity to the industry. ESKOM demanded that the mines cut their electricity use down by 10% last year - forcing the closure of less energy-efficient mineshafts. Some of last year's accidents at the mines occurred when miners suddenly found themselves without electricity while below ground due to the company's policy of 'rolling blackouts'to reduce the load on its aging grid.
Platinum mines have also been affected by this mysterious drop in minerals-production in South Africa -- although not as badly as the gold mines: the Aquarius Platinum Everest mine in Mpumalanga retrenched 1,912 miners this month. Solidarity Trade Union lists of retrenchments:
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The country's largest trade union, the 300,000 member National Union of Mineworkers, organised today's protest. They demand an independent investigator to probe the two miners' disappearance.
Local branch secretary Lizwe Kwezi said the CCTV footage showed that the two men had entered the elevators taking them belowground at Frank Shaft - but never came back up again. "We want the mine to assist and ensure that the families of these comrades find closure. These people went underground, all records including CCTV footage show that they went underground but never returned."
The workers are delivering their petition to Rustenburg Platinum Mines - a subsidiary of Anglo-Platinum and equal shareholding with the black-economic-empowerment company Bafokeng holdings .
Platinum costs $67 per tonne to mill - and sells for $19million...
This one mine produced about 665,400 ounces of refined platinum in 2007 - which costs the mine R532 ($67) per tonne milled that year.
Refined platinum is worth $500 to $600 per ounce on the market -- depending on its purity. Thus one tonne (32,000 ounces) of milled platinum sells from $19m per tonne upwards. Platinum is used in a wide range of industrial products as well as electronics and jewellery.
South Africa's wealth has been built on the country's vast resources - nearly 90% of the platinum metals on Earth, 80% of the manganese, 73% of the chrome, 45% of the vanadium and 41% of the gold. Only crude oil and bauxite are not found here.
The NUM spokesman said that he ''strongly condemns the lack of training and the failure to follow safety procedures at Angloplat. It is a sorry state of affairs that miners do dangerous work and get paid peanuts while in actual fact dangerous work like mining should be well remunerated” said NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni.
“We will therefore not compromise on anything in terms of our negotiations this year as miners cannot continue to risk their lives for a pittance” he said. “Angloplats must as a matter of urgency revisits its safety systems to save lives. This is just not acceptable, it is reaching alarming proportions”
The workers also are 'felt let down by the State's judicial system he noted: "No employer was ever hauled before a court of law in the circumstances which people lose their lives,' said Zokwana.
Meanwhile, the search for another miner who disappeared belowground at the Goldfields‘s Driefontein mine near Carletonville also continues.
