Hope springs anew for a devastated community
DISTRESSED villages squeezed between the Rustenburg mines that have for so long been on the Anglo American chopping block have been thrown a lifeline by Sibanye Gold’s pledge to resuscitate the ailing assets.
This week, the two mining houses announced a deal that will see Sibanye Gold take ownership of the mines, raising hopes of job opportunities for workers displaced by Anglo American Platinum’s divestment of the mines.
Jackson Mngoma, who makes a living as a barber at the gates of Amplats’s Khomanani 1 Shaft, is worried that he will not be able to get by anymore.
“I used to make a decent income here. People used to queue here until it’s dark to get their hair cut.
“People are all gone. A day passes without a single client. I sometimes struggle to get something to eat. It used to be like a town here,” he said.
About a year ago, the shaft’s entrance used to be a hive of activity, with close to 2 000 people, minibus taxis and informal traders jostling about.
Now the mood is forlorn and there is barely anyone around; since the closure of the shaft, informal traders have moved to other operating mines.
Mngoma recently got company in the form of a former rockdrill operator at Amplats, Bulelani Filiba, who comes to the shaft’s gate in search of any job prospects.
“I always come here because we heard the mine could be opening soon,” he said.
“I am desperate for a job. I have nothing to eat. I also come because I have nothing to do.
“Being here will enable me to get to see what is going on. We have heard that the mine is going to reopen. So it will be good to be nearby.
“I have tried to get jobs in other places, but they are hard to come by. Now I don’t have the bus fare to get moving around,” Filiba said.
South Africa has the highest unemployment rate — 25% — of all the countries tracked by Bloomberg. The unemployment rate in NorthWest is even higher than the national average, at 25.2% in the second quarter.
Mngoma and Filiba live in Zakhele informal settlement, a huge complex of corrugatediron shacks between Anglo American’s Khomanani 1 and Siza shafts.
They insisted that the Busi- ness Times team went to see conditions at the settlement.
At Zakhele, scores of men were sitting in groups with despair on their faces as they recounted their plight caused by “phungula” (a Zulu word for cutting back) and “waya waya” (slang for a severance package).
Their only means of survival now are social grants received by women, some sent from as far away as the Eastern Cape, and piecework in other parts of Rustenburg.
James Sithole, a former contract employee who now runs a spaza shop, said that when the mine was operational, he used to make between R2 500 and R3 000 a day.
“All that is gone now. We would sometimes give credit knowing they will be paying on the 25th of every month.
“Now all that is gone. We now wait for the first of the month, when women get their social grants.
“These days, even making R100 a day is difficult. It used to be customer after customer every day here, but look for your- self. The situation is very bad,” he said.
The National Treasury estimates that the number of South Africans on social welfare will reach 17.5 million by 2018, a 35% increase from 2009.
Sithole said there was fresh hope that the mines would reopen.
“We have been given dates, but nothing has happened. Some people have gone back home and are saying they will come back once things get better. For us, we are just sitting here because there is nothing we can do,” he said.
Mthandeni Sokoy, from Tsolo in the Eastern Cape, said he came to the area in the hope of getting a job on the mines, like many other men in the Eastern Cape.
“When I got here, things were not what I thought they are. The only jobs I have been able to get were piece jobs in construction in Rustenburg.
“But these days they are dry. I survive through a friend who buys me food. And my mom, who earns a pension back home, sends me some when she receives hers. It’s hard to believe news about the mine reopening,” he said.