Driven by the plight of 5 300 miners
Solidarity warrior took up workers’ battle against Aurora’s mining elite – and won
IT WAS the bleak, dejected faces of the mineworkers and their families that struck Gideon du Plessis as he stood up at the soccer field to address them. He could tell they had had nobody to fight for them.
It was April 2009 and the workers – who had not received their full salaries for months – had gathered at the then Pamodzi Gold-owned President Steyn mine, which had gone into provisional liquidation.
Du Plessis, the general secretary of Solidarity, joined the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to speak to the workers through a PA system.
“There were hundreds of people: workers, their families and friends, their children… this whole crowd, black and white,” remembers Du Plessis, a tall, angular-built man.
“I felt these people needed to depend on someone, because they didn’t have the means, ability or know-how to fight for themselves. I told myself this must be my mission, that I must fight it to the end – that this was my opportunity to fight against injustice and to make a difference.”
But things would only get worse for the mineworkers after the politically-connected Aurora Empowerment Systems took over the Grootvlei and Pamodzi mines, eventually looting its mining assets worth R1.7 billion and not paying their 5 300 workers their salaries or benefits.
What followed was a sixyear protracted legal battle against Pamodzi and Aurora, largely spearheaded by Du Plessis, to get justice for the mineworkers – around 180 are Solidarity members – left destitute after the collapse of the mining operations.
“I had asked some of the other unions that were involved to help, but they said they weren’t getting subscriptions any more. This was one of the cases I felt that… we have so many Solidarity members who are privileged and we need to service them, but these people need us the most. They are so desperate and their situation is extreme.”
Last week, Aurora director Khulubuse Zuma, a nephew of President Jacob Zuma, agreed to pay R23 million in damages to the Pamodzi and Aurora liquidators.
In May, the Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal application by the directors, which includes president Nelson Mandela’s grandson Zondwa Mandela‚ Thulani Ngubane and Khulubuse Zuma‚ as well as Solly and Fazel Bhana, instructing them to immediately pay damages and the salaries of the workers, or face sequestration.
For Du Plessis, it means the end of the Aurora saga is finally here, a case marked by the directors “evading” justice and frustrating the courts. He modestly remarks that the “unsung hero” of the case is John Walker, the attorney for the liquidators of Pamodzi and Aurora.
“He was the driving force behind it all,” he says.
“Both of us were working together the whole time driving this litigation and legal process. We’d touch base daily. I’d use the media, he’d use the courts and basically that is how we got this result.
“These workers have walked a long, terrible road that started with Pamodzi and ended with Aurora.”
Walker says that, like Du Plessis, he was driven by the injustice meted out to the workers. “My big concern when I got this case was firstly the continued way of doing business by this elite and the way the infrastructure of the mines was being broken down.
“I don’t care what your surname is – you will be brought to book,” he adds.
Joseph Montisetsi, the deputy president of NUM, salutes Du Plessis too. “There are 2 000 former Aurora employees who still remain without work,” he says.