Miner: Lonmin should have acted sooner
2013-03-12 18:36
Rustenburg - Lonmin Platinum Mine could have prevented
the 16 August Marikana shooting had it acted sooner, a miner told the Farlam
Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday.
"If your child is hungry and wants food, you take
cognisance that the child is hungry. You don't put the dogs on the child for
being hungry," miner Mzoxolo Magidiwana said in Rustenburg, through an
interpreter.
He told the commission that if Lonmin had told striking
mineworkers how much it could afford to pay them, the police would not have
shot at strikers on 16 August last year.
Commission chairperson, retired judge Ian Farlam, asked
for clarity on what Magidiwana meant when he said the employer should have
acted sooner.
He replied that action should have been taken before
workers decided to go to the hill near Lonmin's Marikana mine on 11 August.
Magidiwana was being cross-examined by Terry Motau SC,
for Lonmin.
He said Lonmin did not mention that it could not pay mineworkers
the R12 500 monthly wage they were demanding.
Motau told the commission Lonmin management had already
responded to the demand by workers, despite Magidiwana claiming he had heard
nothing.
The miner said Lonmin should have talked to strikers.
Motau responded: "Lonmin knew that the 3000 strikers
were armed with dangerous weapons... Is it not unreasonable to expect Lonmin to
go and negotiate on the koppie [hill] under those conditions?"
Magidiwana said Lonmin management should have negotiated
with workers from the beginning of their industrial action.
They had gone on strike demanding R12 500 a month, but
actually wanted "no less than R10 000 after deductions".
"I would have been happy to receive R20 000, but the
strike was, according to me, to receive something in excess of R10 000."
The initial strike
Asked about the difference in the salaries of rock drill
operators, who initially went on strike, and other mineworkers who later
joined, Magidiwana said they earned the same amounts.
He said underground work was difficult and warranted the
increase.
The commission is probing the deaths of 44 people during
an unprotected strike at Lonmin's platinum mine in Marikana.
On 16 August, 34 striking mineworkers were shot dead and
78 were injured when the police opened fire while trying to disperse a group
gathered on a hill near the mine.
Ten people, including two police officers and two
security guards, were killed near the mine in the preceding week.
On Tuesday morning, Karel Tip SC, for the National Union
of Mineworkers (NUM), completed his cross-examination of Magidiwana.
- SAPA
