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Mining Conflict and Opposition

Lonmin miners return after violent strike – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – August 22, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Employees are trickling back to work under heavy security at South Africa’s Marikana platinum mine, where clashes with police left 34 dead and more than twice as many injured last week amid strife between striking workers and Lonmin PLC, the world’s third-largest platinum miner.

The London-based company said a third of Marikana’s 28,000-strong work force reported for duty on Tuesday, allowing a partial resumption of some operations but no return to production, and warned it may not meet debt covenants as a result of losses.

Tensions have built for months between platinum miners and workers in South Africa, where politics – at the union, local and national level – mix with high unemployment, sinking metals prices and booming costs to create a tinderbox for labour unrest.

“I think everyone is on tenterhooks in the platinum area,” said Bruce Dickinson, a partner with Webber Wentzel law firm in Johannesburg who specializes in the mining. “I don’t think people are viewing this as isolated; where it hasn’t hit yet, people are waiting to see if it does,” he said from Johannesburg.

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Ousted South African leader blames government for miners’ deaths – by Michelle Faul (Associated Press/Toronto Star – August 19, 2012)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

JOHANNESBURG—Miners and their families welcomed expelled politician Julius Malema on Saturday as he told the thousands who gathered at the site where 34 miners were killed this week that South African police had no right to fire the live bullets that killed them.

Malema, the former youth leader of the governing African National Congress, arrived as family members continued to hunt for loved ones missing since Thursday’s shootings. Women said they did not know if their husbands and sons were among the dead, or among the 78 wounded or some 256 arrested by police on charges from public violence to murder.

“They had no right to shoot,” Malema said, even if the miners had opened fire first. Malema is the first politician to address the miners at the site during a more than week-long saga in which 10 people were killed before Thursday’s shootings — including two police officers butchered to death and two mine security guards whom strikers burned alive in their vehicle. He said he had come because the government had turned its back on the strikers.

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Indian village fears being swallowed by underground coal fires – by Mark Magnier (Los Angeles Times/Toronto Star – August 18, 2012)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

JHARIA, India — For nearly a century now, fires have burned beneath the ground where Mohammad Riyaz Ansari stands. At night, ghostly blue flares shoot from glowing rocks, like a terrible hell on Earth.

The 55-year-old mechanic and his neighbours here, deep in eastern India’s coal country, live above underground coal fires that are eating away at their land, India’s precious natural resources and, say some, government credibility.

As the ground subsides, thousands of houses, including Ansari’s, have sagged, collapsed or fallen into chasms over the years, including 250 destroyed over two hours in 1995.

In this eerie landscape — the plumes of flame igniting periodically as combustible gas escapes from the subterranean fires — locals speak of neighbours swallowed in their sleep. In 2006, for instance, 14-year-old Mira Kumari vanished while cooking when her house fell 15 metres underground. Her body was never recovered.

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South Africa’s union war for platinum and how the miners got it wrong – by Ed Stoddard (Mineweb.com – August 20, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

Industry insiders, companies and unions know the sector has some very tough decisions to make, but it’s not just platinum that is at risk.

LYDENBURG, South Africa (Reuters) –  South Africa’s platinum promise of prosperity has turned into a heap of broken dreams for Vusimuzi Mathosi, one of 2,000 workers laid off by Aquarius Platinum at its Everest Mine.
 
“This place can only be sustained with platinum. What can we do now?,” he told Reuters near the one-room box he and his family call home in a dilapidated township on the outskirts of Lydenburg, 300 km (180 miles) east of Johannesburg.
 
He belongs to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), whose b loody turf war for members with the dominant National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was the backdrop to Thursday’s killing of 34 striking platinum miners by police at the Marikana mine.

When Aquarius, the world’s 4th largest producer of the precious metal, closed production at Everest, it cited worsening industrial relations stemming from the AMCU/NUM battle which has turned workers into warriors across the platinum sector.

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A potential powder keg for miners and investors as police kill 34 striking workers [South Africa] – by Danny Deadlock (Stockhouse.com – August 17, 2012)

http://www.stockhouse.com/index.aspx
 
Institutional and retail investors are (wisely) avoiding many countries because of political risk – including risk of resource nationalization and heavy-handed taxation. But what happened in Marikana, South Africa this week is an entirely different ball game.

As you likely saw in the media, 34 people were killed when police opened fire on 3000 striking platinum mine workers who failed to leave. Many were carrying machetes or sticks and apparently the police felt threatened. Someone made the decision to open fire with automatic weapons and in doing so, they have potentially created problems for the entire mining industry of Africa.
 
This may be hard to relate to if you live in the city or have never dealt with the unionized mining industry, but around the world mine workers share a common bond. During the 1990’s, I worked in the Canadian mining industry and even the difference between mountain mine workers and prairie mine workers can be dramatically different. But when the smoke settles, they will fight tooth and nail to support their fellow union workers.
 
During mine disasters or funerals, mine unions will typically send representatives and this was evident during the highly-televised underground mine disaster in Chile (Aug 2010). Mine workers from around the world flew in to help and lend moral support.

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South Africa mine shooting leaves 34 dead and a nation reeling – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – August 18, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

One of the bloodiest police shootings since the days of apartheid has killed 34 miners and injured 78 at a South African platinum mine, leaving the nation in crisis and searching its soul over the rising levels of violent protest and police brutality.

South African President Jacob Zuma cut short a foreign tour, abandoning a regional summit in Mozambique to rush to the mine site. Politicians condemned the shooting, while the South African media called it a massacre and analysts accused the police of an excessive response to the striking mineworkers.

Mr. Zuma later announced that he will set up a commission of inquiry into the shootings at the Lonmin mine near Rustenburg. He said the entire country was “saddened and dismayed” by the “shocking” deaths. “The inquiry will enable us to get to the real cause of the incident,” he said.

The police opened fire with automatic rifles and pistols on Thursday when confronted by an advancing mob of mineworkers. Early reports suggested that as many as 18 people were killed, but on Friday the police announced that 34 were killed, 78 injured and 259 were arrested.

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Young and dying: the scandal of artisanal mining [in Africa] – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – August 18, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

With his Hulk cartoon T-shirt and his solemn face, Stephane Kapenda looks even younger and smaller than his 12 years. He knows he shouldn’t be here. But for years he has hauled tainted soil from this toxic waste pit into dirty pools of water so that he can search for bits of copper.

“It’s bad,” he says quietly. “I would like to leave it and go to school.” Asked what is the worst thing about the work, he thinks for a moment and then whispers: “The sickness.”

Twice, the effects of heavy-metal contamination have been so severe that he needed hospital treatment. Yet he keeps at it, alongside his siblings, to scrounge a tiny income for his parents – impoverished farmers who could not otherwise survive.

About 200 to 300 children toil daily in this vast open pit, a bleak wasteland outside a copper and zinc mine at Kipushi in the southeastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, near the Zambian border.

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Potential impact of SA mine violence on platinum – and perhaps on gold too – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – August 17, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

The massacre at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine has huge implications for the country’s struggling platinum mining sector. Could it spread to the gold mines too?

LONDON (Mineweb) –  Nearly 50 years ago when I worked there on the mines, Rustenburg in South Africa used to be a relatively sleepy small town some 160 km from Johannesburg where big city dwellers would repair for a quiet weekend  at tourist resort Retief’s Kloof and farmers grew oranges, despite it being the site of Rustenburg Platinum Mines (then run by JCI) then and now still the world’s largest platinum mine.

Nowadays, with the expansion of the platinum sector, first with Impala and then with Lonrho (now Lonmin), Aquarius and others, the sleepy town has changed out of all recognition as the platinum mining industry expanded, and expanded.  Anglo American, which was a major shareholder in JCI, effectively decimated the latter company and absorbed Rustenburg Platinum into Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) and the town became even more the centre of the world for platinum mining and for exploration on the Bushveld Complex Western limb, which accounts for most of South Africa’s platinum output.
 
Nowadays the orange groves have virtually all disappeared and it is doubtful if many tourists from Jo’burg would consider the relatively short drive to the Rustenburg town for a weekend’s relaxation – at least not in the town itself – although the surrounding area – particularly the Magaliesburg and the Bushveld – remains a most attractive destination. 

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A country fractures: from the mines, a killing field in South Africa – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – August 17, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

JOHANNESBURG — The wild volley of gunfire erupted for less than three minutes. When it was over, at least seven bodies – and perhaps as many as 18 – lay in pools of blood on a dusty South African hilltop.It took just a brief burst of gunfire to expose all of the worst ills of post-apartheid South Africa: a volatile cocktail of poverty, labour militancy, police brutality, industrial decline and an increasingly angry and radicalized population.

The deadly clash between police and striking workers on Thursday was the latest chapter in a saga of mounting violence in South Africa’s mining sector – historically the biggest employer in the country, but now in serious decline.

The assault by enraged mineworkers, which sparked the final volley of gunfire, should have been no surprise to the police. It followed a week of bloodshed at the Marikana platinum mine, about 70 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg, owned by London-based Lonmin.

Up to 3,000 police, backed by helicopters and armoured vehicles, have been facing off against about 3,000 striking workers, many of whom were carrying machetes, iron rods and wooden sticks.

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For Barrick, Tanzanian mines lose their lustre – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – August 17, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

JOHANNESBURG — Barrick Gold Corp.’s mining operations in Africa have been a publicity nightmare for the company for years, but until now the company had always seemed confident that the mines were profitable enough to withstand the damage to its reputation.

With a steady drumbeat of violent clashes and civilian deaths in recent years, the company’s North Mara gold mine in Tanzania has been one of the most controversial Barrick mines in the world.

Protesters and activists in Canada and Tanzania have accused Barrick of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses at its African mines. Last year alone, at least five villagers were shot dead at North Mara when they invaded the site to steal waste rock.

A report by a respected Tanzanian group, the Legal and Human Rights Centre, concluded that 19 villagers were killed by police and security guards at North Mara from the beginning of 2009 to the middle of 2010. (Barrick says it disagrees with this estimate but won’t provide its own estimate.)

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Lonmin Mine Death Toll Reaches 34 as Police Kill Strikers – by Matthew Hill and Robert Brand (Bloomberg Business Week -August 17, 2012)

http://www.businessweek.com/

South African police killed 34 striking workers at Lonmin Plc (LMI)’s Marikana platinum-mining complex yesterday, the worst death toll in police action since the end of apartheid in 1994.

In addition to the dead 78 people were injured and 259 arrested, Riah Phiyega, the country’s police commissioner, told reporters at the mine today. Six firearms were recovered from protesters including one that had belonged to a police officer murdered in earlier violence at the mine this week, she said.

Violence erupted yesterday after police used tear gas and live ammunition to disperse thousands of workers gathered on a hilltop near the mine. Clashes between rival labor unions at the mine led to a six-day standoff with police in which 10 people had already died, including two officers. Police say they acted in self-defense yesterday after coming under attack from the workers armed with spears, machetes and pistols.

“There was absolutely nothing else police could have done,” Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said in an interview with Johannesburg’s 702 Talk Radio. “People should not ignore the laws of the land.”

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South Africa police open fire at striking mine workers – by Jon Gambrell (Associated Press/Globe and Mail – August 17, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

JOHANNESBURG — South African police opened fire Thursday on a crowd of striking miners that charged a line of officers trying to disperse them, killing some and wounding others in one of the worst shootings by authorities since the end of the apartheid era.

Police declined to offer casualty figures after the shooting at the Lonmin PLC mine near Marikana, a dusty town about 70 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg. However, the main South African news agency, SAPA, has reported that 18 people have been killed. Police ministry spokesman Zweli Mnisi acknowledged late Thursday some of the miners there had died as more police and soldiers surrounded the hostels and shacks near Lonmin’s shuttered platinum mine.

The shooting happened Thursday afternoon after police failed to get the striking miners to hand over machetes, clubs and other weapons. Some miners did leave, though others carrying weapons began war chants and soon started marching toward the township near the mine, said Molaole Montsho, a journalist with the South African Press Association who was at the scene.

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Mining, repression and the rhetoric of democracy and the rule of law in Guatemala – by Grahame Russell (Rabble.ca – August 13, 2012)

http://rabble.ca/

Increasingly, over the past few years, information has been published about serious human rights violations and health and environmental harms being caused in Guatemala by (mainly) Canadian mining company operations: Goldcorp Inc, Radius Gold, Tahoe Resources, Hudbay Minerals, Skye Resources, etc.
 
It is not possible to understand how these violations and harms occur, and will continue to occur, without understanding the political context. In short, global mining companies profit financially and benefit directly from the fundamental lack of democracy and the rule of law in Guatemala, both historically and on-going today. (This is true, in varying degrees, about global businesses and investors operating in many countries around the world.)
 
Rhetoric aside about respecting the sovereign democratic will of the duly elected officials of Guatemala, about abiding by the laws and regulations that govern the country and the mining industry, impunity and corruption are the norm in Guatemala. The wealthy elites in Guatemala, including international companies and investors, act with a huge amount of impunity and have almost complete immunity from legal or political accountability.

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Asbestos’s future in Quebec election crosshairs – CBC News Montreal (August 12, 2012)

http://www.cbc.ca/montreal/

Quebec’s party leaders tossed around the delicate subject of the province’s still operating asbestos industry on Saturday as they outlined platforms on health and the environment. François Legault, the Coalition Avenir Québec leader, said he would ban exports of asbestos from Quebec, one of a series of environmental initiatives the party laid out.
 
“Exporting a toxic product is morally and scientifically indefensible,” Legault said. “Quebec has to come to terms with an industry that’s stuck in the past.”
 
Legault said a CAQ government would honour the province’s $58-million loan to the Jeffrey asbestos mine in the Eastern Townships, which is set to reopen after it shut down last year in financial distress. But he would work with the company — the last remaining producer of asbestos in Canada — to switch to other lines of business.
 
As recently as 2010, Canada was producing 150,000 tonnes of asbestos annually, all of it in Quebec, and exporting 90 per cent — worth about $90 million — to developing countries. More than 50 countries ban the mining and use of asbestos, but Canada, traditionally a major exporter, has successfully lobbied in the past to keep it off a UN list of hazardous substances.

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Charest government may have miscalculated announcement to reopen Jeffrey Asbestos Mine with a $58-million loan – by Michelle Lalonde, (Montreal Gazette – July 30, 2012)

http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html

GAZETTE Environment Reporter

QUEBEC – If the Charest government was hoping to avoid criticism by quietly announcing the relaunch of Quebec’s controversial asbestos industry on the Friday before a holiday weekend, it might have miscalculated.
 
In the month following the June 29 announcement that Quebec would loan $58 million to help reopen and expand the Jeffrey Mine in the town of Asbestos, newspapers across Quebec and Canada have run editorials and columns condemning the decision. The wisdom of staking public money on this project has come under question, and last week an international scientific organization of epidemiologists joined the call for a global ban on asbestos.
 
In April 2011, the Liberal government had promised to provide a guarantee on a $58-million loan to the project’s proponents — Westmount businessman Baljit Chadha and Jeffrey Mine president Bernard Coulombe — if and when they could come up with $25 million in private investments to enable the reopening of the mine.
 
The government is now providing a direct loan rather than a guarantee, and critics charge that’s because no financial institution would loan the money, even with a government guarantee.

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