THE National Union of Mine-workers (NUM) was shocked by Anglo American Platinum’s decision to sell its most labour-intensive South African mines, but Dick Forslund, the economist who advised the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) during its devastating platinum strike, seems unmoved.
“We say good riddance. This is one of the Anglo American subsidiaries that have caused a lot of damage to the South African economy,” says Forslund, an economist and researcher at the Alternative Information and Development Centre.
The NUM said after the announcement by Amplats CEO Chris Griffith this week that it feared 20 000 jobs would be lost. Analysts believe the Amplats decision is the inevitable consequence of the five-month strike.
Forslund, 60, a hardcore socialist from Sweden, rejects the possibility that his advice may have prolonged the strike and put these jobs on the line.
Anyway, he says, Griffith “was planning this long before the strike”.
This is what Griffith implied when he said the decision to walk away from its deepest and most labour-intensive mines had nothing to do with the strike, even if the results announced this week left no doubt about its hugely damaging impact on Amplats.
“He would say that,” says Old Mutual Investment Group mining analyst Sharief Pansarey. “He doesn’t want to be seen as selling the mines because of the labour issue. He would have unions and the government on his back.”
When Griffith announced last year that Amplats would close several shafts and retrench miners, he was savagely attacked by then-mineral resources minister Susan Shabangu and forced into a humiliating retraction.
Forslund insists he was “rather a moderating factor in the negotiations” and “did not have an extremist position at all”. Nevertheless, he says he is “sympathetic” to the extremist views of the Workers and Socialist Party, of which a leading figure is his compatriot, Liv Shange, and to the views of Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters.
To the extent that Amcu’s position was at all extreme, which he denies, it was the result of pressure from its members rather than its economic advisers or leadership. “The workers were far to the left of the leadership,” he says.
He blames Amplats for creating and prolonging the labour instability that has racked the platinum belt since January.
“There is a notion that [Amcu leader Joseph] Mathunjwa and the union were forcing the workers to strike. As I saw it, a vast majority were in favour.”
He denies that intimidation may have had something to do with this, or that secret balloting, which he opposes, would have made any difference.
“There is no secret balloting among the employers either,” he says, with the kind of tenuous logic that has become a hallmark of the extreme left in South Africa.
Forslund says that Amplats’s position was “intransigent” throughout the negotiations. Amplats is under an obligation to its parent, Anglo American, to achieve a 15% return on capital employed. This explains its intransigence, he says.
“If [Anglo American CEO] Mark Cutifani was promising this to shareholders, then Griffith couldn’t have signed a wage agreement that is historically high. That would have been impossible.
“In my appreciation, Lonmin and Implats were prepared to sign in April, so I hold Amplats responsible for the duration of the strike.”
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