The country’s citizens have again had their collective tolerance and quotient for despair and torment severely tested in a short space of time. The tragic aftermath of death and destruction caused by the devastating floods in the eThekweni region on 12 April resulted in 435 lives lost, most of whom were poor dwellers of informal settlements and rural areas. This natural calamity was further compounded by the government’s effete, desultory, and incoherent response at all levels, where relief has arrived more in the form of empty platitudes rather than real material assistance. A few weeks later on 29 April, the fourth report of the ZondoCommission on state capture was released, thereby completing the dystopian picture of the country’s descent into industrial-scale corruption, grand larceny, and unconscionable looting under the ANC as the ruling party. 

As if things could not get any worse, on 1 May—Labour or Workers Day, which is a sacrosanct moment in the lives of workers globally but celebrated as a public holiday in South Africa—the country was treated to the unedifying and embarrassing spectacle of the President of the Republic, Cyril Ramaphosa, beating a hasty retreat from the Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg as he was heckled by protesting and boisterous members of the most important COSATU affiliate, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The stadium has a capacity of 44 500 but according to media reports, there were less than 2 000 workers in attendance. Not only did the President have to abandon his speech to empty seats at this highly symbolic event after striking members stormed the stage in anger but to add insult to injury, he had to be escorted out of the stadium under police guard, along with Blade Nzimande and Zingiswa Losi, representing the SACP and COSATU, respectively.

The NUM members are employed by the Sibanye-Stillwater gold mine in Rustenburg together with members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). At the core of their gravamen is that their demand for a wage increase of R1000 over three years has not been treated with the sympathy and urgency it deserves vis-à-vis the mine’s offer of R850. To put matters into perspective, there are several matters arising which are material to the workers’ demands and concerns. 

Consider firstly, that Neal Froneman, the CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater, earned a whoppingR300 million in 2021 in salary benefits, bonuses, and company share schemes; this represents an increase of 447% from the R67 million he earned in 2020! Yet he and his management team are unwilling to countenance an extra R150 a year to meet the R1000 benchmark demanded by workers. It is therefore executives like Froneman who represent the archetype of unmitigated capitalist avarice and exploitation with which the South African mining history has long been associated; and this in the face of untold misery and daily hardship which mineworkers have to endure and who, after all, generate the windfall profits for the mine owners and shareholders. 

Then consider the history of the President. Not only was he a founding member of COSATU but he was the driving force behind the establishment of NUM in 1982, precisely at a time when black workers had no union rights across the racially defined employment hierarchy in the mining industry. However, this legacy of struggle and commitment on behalf of workers has been irrevocably tarnished by the President’s subsequent trajectory in business, let alone having a front seat throughout the sordid period of state capture when he served as Deputy President under Jacob Zuma. Of particular concern is the massive wealth that he accumulated as a leading member of the country’s nouveau riche and the ostentatious lifestyle that came with this status, including him bidding R19.5 million for a pedigreed buffalo at an auction. His personal wealth, which he started accumulating as executive chairman and founder of the Shanduka Group, is estimated at R6.4 billion. This includes, inter alia, the capital gains and profits from his ownership of a 20-year master franchise of 145 Mcdonald's restaurants across South Africa acquired in 2011.

However, it is the Marikana massacre of 15 August 2012 that will forever be an indelible stain on the President’s personal and political profile. Miners went on strike against Lonmin platinum mine at its Marikana holdings in the North-West province, on whose board of directors Ramaphosa served at the time. He is reputed to have labelled the conduct of the strike as being “dastardly criminal” and urged that “concomitant action” be taken against the striking miners. Although he subsequently apologised and regretted his role, we now know that such “concomitant action” resulted in the death of 34 miners at the hands of the SA Police Service, thereby constituting the most egregious and deadly use of force against unarmed civilians since the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 and the Soweto uprising in 1976.

Uncaring Sibanye-Stillwater management with Neal Froneman as its callous masthead and an unsupportive ANC-COSATU-SACP alliance with the President as its derisive symbol thus converging to expose the deeply felt frustrations that afflict union members across the mining belt of the North-West. The disruption of Ramaphosa’s speech at the Royal Bafokeng stadium on 1 May, while ostensibly about wages, must be read not only as a profound expression of the loss of workers’ confidence in the efficacy of the alliance in protecting their fundamental interests. It is also a referendum on their disillusionment with and hostility towards the billionaire President of the Republic who for them is directly and indirectly implicated in a status quo that foments their existential misery.