Briefing on the report The Bermuda connection: profit shifting, inequality and unaffordability at Lonmin 1999–2012

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Kally Forrest, and to Brian Ashley, Samantha Ashman, Jonathan Bloch, Matthew Chaskalson, Craig McKune, Tom Lines, Thantaswa Lupuwana, Tamara Paremoer, Jeff Rudin and David van Wyk.

Note on contributor

Dick Forslund is senior economist at Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town since 2010. He is engaged in popular political economy education, research and public debates on economic policy and labour market issues in South Africa. He holds a PhD(Econ) in Business Administration and a BSc in Economics from Stockholm University School of Business.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. These issues formulated for Phase 2: Underlying Causes of the Marikana Commission were forwarded to me by the senior commission researcher for Phase 2.

2. The full report (Forslund 2015) is available at the AIDC website (http://www.aidc.org.za).

3. The registration number provided in Lonmin (2013, 65) ‘1969/00015/10' is wrong: the correct number is 1969/000015/10.

4. The information is provided by WINDEED for Lonmin Management Services, 1947/024975/07. WINDEED takes its data from CIPC. As this dissolved company obviously was a subsidiary and not an ‘external company', one should be able to find AFSs for before 2005 in a file with this number at CIPC.

5. We know from a note in Mr Scott's 29 September testimony that LMS does have AFSs. He notes in his tables of payments and incomes FY2012 that ‘AFS not yet finalised/signed’.

6. We do not know how the US$-denominated 2011 AFS, gone missing at CIPC, books the sales commissions.

7. In the view of this author, the Commission's final report on the discussions between Lonmin's Mike da Costa and a delegation of RDOs in June 2012 on the R12,500 demand gives a biased picture of how the workers argued (Marikana Commission of Inquiry (2015, 50–52), both when compared to the cross-examination of da Costa (Marikana Commission of Inquiry (2014d, 30066–30068), and even more when compared to da Costa's internal report about the discussion with the workers to Lonmin's Executive Committee. That report is discussed in Chapter 2 of the full-length report published by AIDC (Forslund 2015).