About 30,000 foreign migrant workers are expected to have left the mining industry through natural attrition by 2030, leaving just 5,000.
This would bring the industry in line with the government’s objectives in the draft national labour migration policy, which proposes to introduce quotas for foreign workers. The draft policy, which was released for public comment recently by the department of employment & labour, was formulated in the context of growing hostility to foreign nationals, who have increasingly been blamed for SA’s 35% unemployment rate.
The mining industry employs more than 450,000 workers, of which 35,000 are migrants from neighbouring countries. These are among the industry’s more skilled and experienced workers. The number of migrant workers has decreased sharply from 140,000 in 2010, but so has the total number of workers employed in the industry.
Nikisi Lesufi, Minerals Council SA senior executive for environment, health and legacies, told MPs on the mineral resources & energy committee on Friday that the mining industry does not have an active programme to recruit foreign workers, who are a legacy issue for the mines.
“We have agreed with our members that we should be looking at a phasing-out strategy where if there is natural attrition we replace them with local labour.
“Most of the foreign labour will be retiring in the next five to 10 years and by 2030 we might only have about 5,000 foreign employees who will also be phased out by natural attrition through age and retirement.”
The committee meeting was held to discuss the effect of the high court judgment of September 2021, which ruled that the Mining Charter does not have the status of a law but is only a policy and is not binding.
The council’s senior executive for public affairs and transformation, Tebello Chabana, insisted that the judgment has not affected the industry’s commitment to transformation, because it has always undertaken transformation on the basis that it is policy not law.
The data shows that the industry is reaching its transformation targets. He called for the establishment by the department of mineral resources & energy of a transformation council representing the government, employers, labour and community representatives to discuss transformation on a quarterly basis in a structured manner and on the basis of the facts. “That is the only way that other stakeholders are going to have insight into what is happening in mining and be able to influence it.”
Chabana bemoaned the lack of a template or scorecard in the Mining Charter to measure and record the transformation achievements of the industry. Without a scorecard, the industry’s achievements against the charter objectives cannot be verified by verification agencies.
Council spokesperson Allan Seccombe said the council has been asking the department of mineral resources & energy for these templates since the third Mining Charter was gazetted in late 2018. Without them there is no single, formal set of transformation data, posing a huge problem for the industry when it is asked about transformation. He noted the first two charters had a scorecard to measure compliance but the third one did not.
“Mining companies are submitting their transformation and charter performance annually” but there is no single scorecard approved by the regulator or department, he said.
“It makes measurement incredibly difficult.”
NUM president Joseph Montisetse slammed the charter as a “toothless” instrument that should be incorporated into law and have punitive sanctions for non-compliance.
Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union head of organisational development Krister Janse van Rensburg also believes the charter lacks teeth and should be made law.
Meanwhile, in his speech to commemorate Human Rights Day in Koster in the North West on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa highlighted the importance of foreign mineworkers in SA.
Ramaphosa, the first general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), said: “South Africans should not allow themselves to be at war with those who come from other countries, because ‘that is un-South African’. We have always had people from other countries.
“The mining industry, as we know it, was developed and built not only by South Africans but also by workers from other countries such as Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia and Eswatini. They all participated.”
With Andisiwe Makinana
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.