MissBhakajuju

R900 OR Go back to E.C.......... This is it !!!!

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sabza007

Government must act now,let Labour laws come into effect. No one is above the law.

1. This wildcat is protected legally in any form.

2. Gathering act laws must come into effect.

3. Carrying dangerous weapons is prohibited and laws must be forcefully applied.

We can not just wait and look our country's economy being crippled by people who have unfair demands, killing non striking workers and so on.

Vavi asked a question in one radio interview this morning. If all these miners can be fired, will AMCU or julius Malema attend to their needs taking into consideration that this strike is not protected legally? The comapny needs to make profits at the end of the day.
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sabza007

On 1., I meant this trike is not protected legally in any form.
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sowet123

Lonmin is offering to adjust the rate of entry-level [workers] from R4,600 towards R5,500, an increase of about R900.
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The strikers want 12500 for entry level drillers? Once they are done with the strike I’ll leave my job for a driller position in the mine.
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lindsay

@sowet123

i was waiting for that too if they get that much increase i'm quitting and go for mining
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MommaC

sowet123

Entry level anything. Now even the guys who sweep the yard are insisting on R12,500. It is just beyond crazy.
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ktzo

Let the truth be told - Do you know that Makhumalo earns more than this miners for doing nothing. I support this miners 12,5 or nothing for every1 including the mine bosses. Let the mines close. Anyone who say the rock drillers didnt go to school must know Zuma is the world most illiterate president of all times. Viva miners, lets go to war.....
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Stimela

Good!
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Stimela

gyus please read this article www.marikana-truth.com
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sh!tFaceSamsung

@sowet123 : folks i told u last time the degree or diploma u have is just a piece of paper u may frame it if u want : start to look job particularly in mining sector won't regret it :
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cornelius

Well they can't stop the strike now, the genius Malema told them they must strike until they get 12500, and Baleni resigns. Juju knew neither is going to happen, and all that will happen is that they all get fired. He also knows the mines might have to close for a while - is he hoping to buy a stake ?
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skhokho21

Lindsay & Sowet123, are you people clerks or some sh.t, are you trying to tell me you get paid less than 20k/month atleast, than you will go & work in a mine 100km under ground for like 2/3 of my tax.
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lekalatp

Malema knew the truth......Stimela I was gonna say people must read the article at www.marikana-truth.com

the miners can't just back off from their original demand and NUM is falling them big time. diphiri di ya tswa. sometimes we just comment from the distance without knowing the truth and we think that these people are crazy. read the article and comment after that.
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TygerEyes

Marikana Massacre: All this to protect an Oligarch?
Posted on September 5, 2012 by Arthur Mackay
Amidst all the confusion after the shooting of 44 protesting miners at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine in South Africa, we should not lose sight of the astonishingly simple underlying issues.

We are told the workers are demanding that their wage be raised to R12,500 per month (about $1,500) but the workers claim their salary is already at this level. They say they are sub-contracted by a company owned by billionaire South African oligarch Cyril Ramaphosa. He only pays them R5,400 or less and pockets the rest paid out by Lonmin.

If this is so then agreeing to the workers’ demands would cost Lonmin nothing and the whole dispute is between the workers and Cyril Ramaphosa. Instead of saying this however, Lonmin has placed itself between the two and taken responsibility for negotiating a pay rise which no one has asked for. Doing this, Lonmin is placing Cyril Ramaphosa’s private interests above those of its common stockholders and is neglecting its fiduciary duties. It is also leaving itself open to litigation.

Cyril Ramaphosa in fact owns 9% of Lonmin but was paid out $304m in cash by the company in 2010 in a deal backed ultimately by Xstrata. By comparison common shareholders have received only $60m in dividends in the last two years and have incurred over $2.5bn of paper losses. What the workers are requesting is that Ramaphosa share with them about $18m which he is taking from their wages.

When Cyril Ramaphosa bought 50.03% of Lonmin’s Black Economic Empowerment partner Incwala Resources in 2010, Lonmin put up the $304m in cash which he needed. Lonmin funded this with a share issue to which, according to Lonmin, Xstrata was the key subscriber. Since then a further $51m of credit has been extended to Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa’s company also provides all of Lonmin’s welfare and training services and for this he may have been paid at least $50m in 2011 alone. Based on the worker’s demands and their living conditions, we can guess at how much of this reached its stated purpose. Companies linked to Ramaphosa were also paid “advance dividends” by Lonmin of $20m in the last two years.

All-in Lonmin seems to have paid Ramaphosa and his related companies well over $400m since he bought into the company. This is about 25% of Lonmin’s current market value and is a very large amount for a man who was supposed to be doing the paying when he bought his stake.

And this is not all.

The Marikana conflict is portrayed as a dispute between two unions, the hegemonic NUM and a small new union, the AMCU. But the NUM has been Cyril Ramaphosa’s vehicle since he founded it in 1982. He was its Secretary General until 1998, the year he went into private business to become a billionaire. This has led to claims that the ANC has instituted a form of modern day slave labour. The workers’ employer and their union are effectively the same person. Is it surprising that the workers worry that their union is not wholeheartedly defending their legal rights?

All this casts the Marikana conflict in a very different light to what we have heard so far.

The dirt-poor Marikana workers, many from Lesotho, living in slums, wearing rags, are asking for an extra $750 per month from one of the most powerful figures in the ANC and one of the richest men in the world, and they are openly calling him an exploiter.

Such a debacle, which calls into question not only Lonmin, Xstrata and Ramaphosa but also the whole ANC hierarchy, the reality of the “New South Africa” and the credibility of the ANC’s many foreign supporters, not least those in the United States, helps to explain the speed and the savage brutality of the reaction.

On 16th August, 6 days into the strike, the police opened fire injuring 112 and killing 34.

Local witnesses claim the workers were not charging at the police but were fleeing from them as tear gas was thrown at them by another police detachment. Autopsy reports apparently confirm many were shot in the back.

At the time Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa, was in Mozambique at an SADC meeting. He returned to South Africa but only one day later. He visited Marikana briefly but stayed away from the main area. A full five days passed and only then did he return and visit the crime scene. On the day of the attack Ian Farmer, the CEO of Lonmin, was diagnosed with a “serious illness” and still has not returned to work.

A few days later the 270 men who were arrested were charged with committing murder. They allege that they were stripped in their cells and beaten with sticks. Once an international outcry began and it became apparent that the publicity of a trial could be counterproductive, they were quickly released.

Even with the above illumination, some crucial questions still remain.

How could Cyril Ramaphosa exercise such influence over Lonmin’s Executive Board to be able to effectively bend it, and potentially the Board of Xstrata too, to do his bidding? And what truth could the South African government have been so desperate to hide that it was judged better to risk everything and open fire on its own people, rather than let it see the light?

The answer lies at the heart of the bitter fallacy of the South African commodities boom and the emerging markets paradigm which we have lived in the last 15 years. The sad truth is that nothing has changed, or, more accurately, nothing has improved.

In the past there was one oligarch and one South African mining company. They officially opposed the apartheid regime and were liberal but conveniently continued to export gold and diamonds from South Africa up to and beyond 1994.

Today there are five to ten oligarchs. They are black and they are African. They too oppose apartheid and they too are exporting all of South Africa’s gold and diamonds at the present time. The reason Cyril Ramaphosa could ransack Lonmin in the way he has is because he effectively is Lonmin. Lonmin exists in many ways to serve his interests and its foreign shareholders would do well to understand this. The whole debate about nationalisation is therefore completely moot. South Africa’s mines have already been nationalised and given over to a ruthless tyranny, signed, sealed and delivered by the many cheerleaders of the ANC overseas.

So what will happen next? In fact the next Marikana has already occurred. Tear gas was fired and four workers were shot two days ago on a gold property near Johannesburg controlled by another oligarch, Tokyo Sexwale. The strategy of the ANC’s opposition, which is correct given the extent of the disenfranchisement since 1994, will be to now target every oligarch. It will be demanded that they return much of what was taken. But this will never be done voluntarily and so this conflict, just like the apartheid struggle, will go on for many years.

Will this really be the lasting legacy of the post-apartheid era? Is this what Nelson Mandela’s years in prison, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s ringing endorsements, Bob Geldof’s concerts and Bono’s songs were meant to bring to us? Will they all now leave the world in darkness, with a set of fearful problems for a future generation to sort out? We will have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

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TygerEyes

http://www.marikana-truth.com/
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sowet123

@are you people clerks or some sh.t, are you trying to tell me you get paid less than 20k/month atleast, than you will go & work in a mine 100km under ground for like 2/3 of my tax.
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Junior professionals with Degrees are earning less than 20K per month,
Do you want to tell me that u entry level salary was more than 20K?

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HORATIO7

R900 increase, ohh hell No. those big bosses they are getting Millions for just sitting in boardroom doing nothing & yet the people who are doing the job are not well looked after. tsek

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BRA-MAFUTHA

What the f#ck R900 this is an insult to the mine workers they must strike until they get what they deserve R12500 or more
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BlackLucky

What is the use of commenting in here if your comments get removed? Fok sowetan
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BRA-MAFUTHA

BlackLucky
**********
Sowetan and their webmaster are full of sh!t
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Papage

Go thatha bann, R900? that is an insult, maybe shut the mine up for sometime
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MommaC

TygerEyes

If the stupid man can't even get right how many miners were shot, then his entire blab is suspect. It is all third hand skinner and zero facts. Bring us something that has real hard facts in it, not some moegoe who can't even count to 34
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cyxx

On a serious note I think the increment is too much for rock drillers but however there needs to be an substantial increase. I also feel that the miners should get more benefits, e.g, subsidised housing and schooling for their children.

We also have to remember that miners in Canada earn much more doing the same job for the same company. How do you justify that. We are still being used as slaves right here in Africa and so I think the miners have a serious point but I blame our leadership for not having the balls to challenge the way things are done.
Robert Mugabe is the only leader who challenges these imbalances and guess what... His people suffer.

My point is that it's high time the actual miners are given an opportunity to own a share of the copany they work for.

It's rediculous to have one man who is so wealthy and many men so poor.
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BRA-MAFUTHA

R12500 and more nothing else!
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MommaC

cyxx

the rock drillers get much more than this
All mine employees get either housing or a housing allowance at the moment.
Canada doesn't have anything called a 'rock driller', Their mines are mechanised and the people who do the drilling also do the blasting. That is why their mines run on about a third of the workforce that ours do. Our government has convinced the mining houses not to go the mechanised route because it would mean a huge increase in unemployment figures.
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cyxx

Momma C

Thanks for the insight. My apologies for getting the facts wrong.
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RobinH

I don't in any way support the demand for 12,500, but with respect, Lonmin, an offer of R900 is absurd.
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MommaC

cyxx

Our media has not been very good at giving a whole picture of what is happening. For a long time they kept insisting that the rock drillers (the most dangerous and laborious jobs in the whole mine) were only getting R4,500. It took them ages to figure out that they get more than double that amount in basic and a whole lot of bonuses on top of it.

A good friend is an explosions expert in mining, so I got most of my info from him.
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|Sinudeity|

RobinH - R900 x 40,000 x 12 = R432,000,000

Meaning half of their profits (Assuming R1,000,000,000) are now going into paying salary increases. Momma Cyndi will fact check me on this.
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MommaC

Operational profits for last year were about US$160 million (less for this year due to price fluctuations)
At a thumbsuck exchange rate of R8 to the dollar that would be R1.28 billion
They have 28,000 to 30,000 employees (dependant on how many shafts are operational).
That is why the idea of a R8,000 a month increase for them all was beyond laughable. They would have come up over a billion short on the wage bill.

Mining is DAMN expensive work
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cyxx

Momma C

That's interesting now. things are not as bad as I thought for the miners. They earn a lot more than many educated people in other countries.
They should ask for stuff like educational bursaries to improve their job prospects and earn more money.
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MommaC

cyxx

I can't say what Lonmin has done but most of the mines have facilities where the miners can further their education within the mining industry. Most of the rock drillers go for machine maintenance courses as the job pays better but isn't as back breaking. The mineral licences also come with the need for mines to invest in schooling and other community upliftment programmes. If you google any of the mines you should get to see what their social input is for the different mines.
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cyxx

Momma C

Thanks. Will do.
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