‘Igneous’ means fire from below: the tumultuous history of the National Union of Mineworkers on the South African platinum mines

Abstract

From the time Impala dismissed its entire workforce in 1986 up to and well beyond the Marikana massacre, the National Union of Mineworkers has struggled to organise the platinum mines of the Bushveld Igneous Complex. This article focuses on two case studies that highlight the fundamental importance of informal networks for organising mine workers. While the union now seems seriously at risk, it has never had an easy time in Rustenburg. Worker committees are not a new phenomenon there. Nor is insurgency. Mineworkers in South Africa, like mineworkers worldwide, have never been passive recipients of direction from above.

[« Igneous » signifie feu souterrain : l’histoire tumultueuse de l’association nationale des mineurs sur les mines de platine sud-africaines.] A partir du moment où Impala a commencé à licencier toute sa force de travail en 1986 jusqu’au massacre de Marikana et bien après, l’Association nationale de mineurs a lutté pour gérer les mines de platine du Complexe Bushveld Igneous. Cet article se concentre sur deux études de cas qui mettent en lumière l’importance fondamentale de réseaux informels pour organiser les mineurs. Alors que l’association semble maintenant sérieusement sur la sellette, son action n’a jamais été tâche facile à Rustenburg. Les comités de travailleurs ne sont pas un phénomène nouveau là-bas. Les révoltes non plus. Les mineurs d’Afrique du Sud, comme tous les mineurs du monde, n’ont jamais été des destinataires passifs de directives qui viennent d’en haut.

Keywords:

• platinum mining
• informal worker organisation
• NUM history
• worker violence

Mots-clés:

• exploitation minière de platine 
• histoire de la NUM 
• violence des ouvriers

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF), grant number 78662.

Note on contributor

T. Dunbar Moodie is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, and also Honorary Research Associate at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is author of two books, The rise of Afrikanerdom and Going for gold and numerous articles in scholarly journals.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Induna literally means ‘headman'. The ‘induna system’ refers to the historically typical organisation of mine compounds in which groups were housed separately according to ‘tribes’, each headed by an induna, supported by ‘tribal’ police. For a brief detailed discussion, see Moodie (1994, 78–85).

2 For an account of the NUM as an insurgent union, see Crush (1989) and Moodie (2010). For further reflections on both the power and the perils of insurgent social movement unionism, see Moodie (2012).

3 For further development of my theoretical position in this regard, see Moodie (2002).

4 The Wiehahn Commission, which reported on mining in 1980, was established to reform South African industrial relations in response to the rise of independent black trade unions in the 1970s. For an accessible account of its deliberations, including Steenkamp's sterling contribution, see Giliomee (2012, 152–160).

5 My account of internal politics at Impala relies heavily on Naas Steenkamp's own personal archive (henceforth TIS archive), to which he generously granted me access. See for events at Impala Refineries, Annexure A to Steenkamp's memo regarding ‘Gencor's Image and IR Practices’, 10 March 1986.

6 The best brief account of the complicated patterns of mineral property rights on land, especially in the Bantustans, is Capps (2010). He points up very clearly the politico-legal contradictions between what he calls the ‘state’ and the ‘tribal’ trusteeship of mineralised land in the chiefdoms around Rustenburg. His prime example is the case of the Bafokeng. The historic evolution and contradictions of this property regime are also discussed in the contribution of Capps and Mnwana in this special issue.

7 For events at Impala Platinum in the early 1990s, I rely heavily on an article by Snuki Zikalala (1992), ‘Impala Platinum: No Easy Road to Collective Bargaining’, South African Labour Bulletin (11/3, January 1986). The other in-depth account, although it is restricted to Bafokeng North mine, is the report of the ‘Commission of Enquiry into Events at the Bafokeng North Mine during March 1992'. I was given access to this report by Clive Thompson, who was one of the commissioners, but I follow Vic Allen in citing it as the Pretorius Report (1992), named after Paul Pretorius, who was the chair. The other commissioner was Edwin Molahlehi.

8 Sipho Shabangu told Zikalala (1992, 28) that, at Wildebeestfontein North, he had ‘already formed a committee of five in the hostels. We moved from one plant to the other organizing workers. There was absolute secrecy about our work.' Shabangu was eventually to become a major NUM figure at Impala.

9 Quotations about marshals are taken from Pretorius (1992, 32–33).

10 ‘Doos’ is an Afrikaans slang word referring to the female genitalia; ‘dagga’, of course, is the South African version of marijuana.

11 The account here is based on Zikalala's article in the SA Labour Bulletin (1992, 32–33). Quotations are taken from this piece.

12 RPM had originally fallen under the small mining house, Johannesburg Consolidated Investments (JCI). Under control of Anglo American, in 1995, JCI was closed down and RPM reverted to Anglo American under its new name.

13 In 1997, the NUM commissioned the Network of Independent Monitors (NIM) to investigate these events. While the report is rather poorly written and not properly paginated, the appendices and supporting documents provide invaluable information on these events.