Marikana: Investec urged to review Lonmin stake and press for better pay
A BRITISH group calling itself the Marikana Miners Solidarity Campaign (UK) has called on Investec Asset Management to review its alleged involvement in Lonmin.
The group claims Investec holds a 5.61 percent shareholding in Lonmin, and wants the specialist banking and wealth management outfit to use its influence to push the mining giant to compensate the victims of the 2012 Marikana massacre.
Group spokesman Andy Higginbottom said it also wanted Investec to use its shareholding to force Lonmin to pay its workers the R12 500 a month wage that was demanded during the strike.
“We demand that Investec publicly states its commitment and use its shareholder voting rights to ensure that Lonmin pay the mineworkers a living wage, which according to repeated public demonstrations by the workers themselves and their unions Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is R12 500 per month (and) implement the promises on housing, minimally that were made to the World Bank, whereas only three of the promised 5 500 houses dwellings have actually been built,” Higginbottom said.
Investec spokesman Manqoba Cele was not immediately able to comment.
The support for Marikina miners comes in a dramatic week in which lobby groups escalated their support for the 34 mineworkers killed in the platinum belt exactly three years ago, Amcu and the NUM dug in their heels on the negotiations in the gold sector and threatened a strike after rejecting the Chamber of Mines’ final wage offer, and the church weighed in on the stalemate between the two unions and the chamber.
On Friday, the Right2Know (R2K) campaign demanded justice for the victims and called for the immediate suspension and prosecution of all the police implicated in the massacre, including police commissioner Riah Phiyega.
Police delays
“On July 7, R2K and the Marikana Support Campaign used the Promotion of Access to Information Act to ask the police to show what, if anything, had been done to investigate or take action against police members who fired their weapons at Marikana on August 16, 2012,” R2K spokeswoman Busi Mtabane said.
“(The) SAPS has asked to be given another 30 days to respond, that is until September 6. We will continue to demand answers to these questions,” she added.
And in an unprecedented move this week, the Justice and Peace Commission for the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) spoke out against plans by mining companies to retrench thousands of mine workers, arguing that the slide in commodity prices and rising costs should be balanced with workers’ rights.
SACBC chairman Bishop Abel Gabuza said as religious leaders, they were saddened by the suffering that the proposed job cuts would cause.
“The mining houses seem to seek a social compact that emphasises the sharing of pain when commodity prices fall. We need a social compact that also emphasises sharing of accumulated wealth,” he said.