Sibanye-Stillwater, one of the world’s leading producers of platinum, has embarked on a variety of socioeconomic development projects at its operations around Marikana, where 44 people were killed 10 years ago, in an effort aimed at changing the narrative around the massacre.
“What we are trying to do as Sibanye is to try and impact the narrative positively,” Sibanye-Stillwater head of sustainability Themba Nkosi said. “Marikana was tragic. We want to create a new narrative around Marikana, mindful that we will never erase what happened.”
On August 16 2012, police officers gunned down 34 protesting Lonmin mineworkers who were demanding better wages and living conditions. Another 10 people, including security guards, were killed in the preceding week.
In 2018, the government offered families of the slain Marikana mineworkers a R100m settlement for loss of support and emotional shock. In 2019, Lonmin was acquired by Sibanye in a multibillion-rand transaction, and in the process inherited the company’s baggage.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was a non-executive director of Lonmin at the time, described the protests as “dastardly criminal” in an email to colleague Albert Jamieson dated August 15 2012. Ramaphosa, who became president in February 2018, has been widely criticised for having called for “concomitant action” to be taken against the mineworkers, with many opposition political parties, including the EFF, putting the Marikana massacre squarely on Ramaphosa’s doorstep.
In a move aimed at showing progress in addressing socioeconomic challenges around its Marikana operations since taking over Lonmin in 2019, Sibanye-Stillwater invited journalists to a media tour on Thursday.
After acquiring Lonmin, Sibanye set up the 1608 Memorial Trust, which supports 139 beneficiaries — those who were and continue to be affected by the Marikana massacre.
The beneficiaries, who have received contributions totalling R64.5m from the trust to date, come from SA, Lesotho and Eswatini. Of the 16 widows’ homes the trust wants to build, eight have been finalised while the rest are being built in the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, the North West, the Northern Cape and Lesotho.
Thabisile Phumo, Sibanye executive vice-president for stakeholder relations, said the group is providing legal support for widows who have not received any compensation from the state with a view to pursuing compensation.
Sibanye employs 84,981 people, including contractors, at its SA and US operations. Of these, 24,444 employees and contractors are employed at the Marikana operation.
Training and development
Phumo said women represent 43% of Marikana operation’s recruits and 26% of staff promoted. About 11% of Sibanye’s R6.4bn discretionary procurement spend was sourced from businesses owned by women, “many of which have benefited from the training and enterprise and supplier development funding”.
She said 20 small, medium and macro enterprises were selected to be part of the incubation development process in 2022, while 136 business opportunities had been granted to local suppliers since January 2021.
As part of its social and labour plans, Sibanye has 22 projects in the education sector, 13 in health, six in welfare, 10 in economic development, four in roads and four in social infrastructure.
Between 2006 to 2018, Lonmin converted 128 single-sex blocks into family units at a cost of R382m; it also donated 50ha of land valued at R80m to the Rustenburg local municipality, enabling “the construction of 2,658 accommodation units by government for employees and local community members”.
From 2015 to 2018, Lonmin — which has paid out billions of rand in living-out allowances over the years — delivered 1,240 modern infill apartments, or 44 blocks, at a cost of R455.9m and in 2019 the company formed a partnership with the Housing Development Agency to jointly implement defined housing initiatives in the Marikana and surrounding areas “in full alignment with the local municipalities and the province”.
The Leokeng Secondary School, which cost Sibanye R36m, started operating in January. The school has 374 grade 8 and 9 pupils.
The Majakaneng Clinic, which Sibanye extended at a cost of about R7m, has three professional nurses, two counsellors and eight community healthcare workers, and sees about 190 patients a day.
Jeff Mphahlele, general secretary of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), the majority union in the platinum sector, told Business Day that Sibanye is “rushing everything without consulting the union”.
“We have also held a meeting with our comrades and they complained to us that they are not kept up to speed regarding some of the socioeconomic projects that Sibanye has embarked on,” Mphahlele said.
He accused Sibanye of treating some of the projects as a tick-box exercise so as to appear that they have covered enough ground as the 10th anniversary looms on the calendar.
“What they are doing is to rush this 10th year anniversary thing to say: ‘Look, this is what we have done’. They are not doing enough, they are rushing [these projects] and there is a lot of confusion there.”
He said Amcu will hold a meeting with the Sibanye management this week to ask: “What is it that you are doing?”
In June, Sibanye signed a multiyear pay hike deal with Amcu and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) that will result in the lowest-paid employees receiving an increase of R1,000 in year one (amounting to 7.7%); R900 in year two (6.5%); and R750 in year three (5.2%). The Reserve Bank forecasts headline inflation rate of 5.9% for 2022.
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