Introduction
The South African platinum belt was hit by an unprecedented, rolling strike wave in 2012. Initiated at Impala Platinum, this impacted Lonmin, then Anglo Platinum and persisted into 2013, involving over 100,000 workers. The strikes shared many characteristics, including the demand for a decent wage, rejection of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM – which at the time was the dominant union in the sector), similar repertoires of violence, and claims in the way dissent was collectively organised. The strike wave peaked on 16 August 2012 when the South African Police Service opened fire on strikers and killed 34 workers at Lonmin's operation in Marikana. Ultimately, this strike claimed over 50 lives in violent clashes. Although these strikes were similar in character there are variations in their origin and implications (see Sinwell in this issue).
The strike wave raised questions about the integrity of the post-apartheid industrial relations system and a political order underpinned by a corporatist social contract. In South Africa, the adoption of corporatist structures constituted part of the social pact that shaped the democratic transition. The adoption of a corporatist social pact was preceded by heated debates between a number of South African scholars (Maree 1993; Van der Walt 1997; Webster 1995) that echoed those in the international literature.
One position in the wider debate is represented by Leo Panitch (1977), who has argued that corporatism is detrimental to working-class interests since it disconnects unions from their members on the shop floor and traps them in bureaucratic institutions. Proponents of a corporatist deal, however, hold that it produces genuine benefits for the working class. Crouch (1993), for instance, made a case for corporatism in situations where labour is strong, the state does not have coercive power and owners of capital are relatively weak.
This debate took a similar trajectory in South Africa. Webster and von Holdt (cited by Van der Walt 1997) argued that corporatism would culminate in radical reform of social democracy. Van der Walt (1997), drawing on Panitch, was sceptical of benefits for the working class. He argued that the social pact would undermine worker power by bureaucratising unions.
This article returns to this debate and unpacks important relevant issues in the platinum strike wave of 2012–2013. It explores, for example, why the institutionalisation of industrial relations failed to manufacture employee consent. It also shows how the state has related to different class interests in the post-apartheid dispensation. It is based on empirical evidence drawn from participant observation of events at the Impala Platinum mining company.
In advanced capitalist economies, this conflict between labour and capital is sought to be managed through institutionalisation of industrial relations. This entails designing institutions that manage industrial conflict and avoid coercion. Such structures outline the rules of the game and shape interactions between parties in an employment relationship. They are based on the principle of voluntarism, social dialogue and collective bargaining that constitute the social contract.
Such a contract draws on pluralistic industrial relations perspectives based on mutual accommodation and compromise by parties in industrial relations with competing interests. The process of institutionalisation manufactures employer hegemony and worker consent simultaneously (Burawoy 1979). This article explores why institutionalisation of the South African platinum mines failed to manufacture consent and culminated in a rolling strike wave.
Overview
The article draws on evidence from the experience of Impala Platinum in Rustenburg. It uses material from an ethnographic study and triangulation of interviews, observation and documentary evidence. Participants interviewed include workers, management and union officials. Impala is the second biggest platinum mining company in the world and is a subsidiary of the Implats group of companies. It has 15 shafts located within a 20 kilometre radius on land leased from the Royal Bafokeng traditional authority which, before 1994, was part of the Bophuthatswana Bantustan. It accounts for 30% of South Africa's platinum production. The company employed a total of 49,290 workers in 2012 of which 36,045 were engaged directly and 15,245 through third parties (subcontractors and labour brokers) (Impala 2012).
Trade unions for black workers were not recognised during the greater part of the apartheid era. Labour relations were bifurcated along racial lines. Black and white workers were organised into different trade unions where black unions existed at all. Black trade unions operated outside formal institutions of industrial relations and did not enjoy institutional protection and recognition as white trade unions did.
The NUM was the first independent union to gain support and recognition at Impala Platinum after a contentious and protracted struggle with the employer in collaboration with the Bophuthatswana Bantustan regime (Allen 2003). ANC (African National Congress) political leaders and trade union activists adopted industrial action and strikes as part of the strategy to exert pressure on the Bantustan and apartheid regimes. This culminated in informal recognition of the NUM before the end of 1992 (Zikalala 1992), following a change in management strategy1 from non-hegemonic industrial relations based on coercion to a hegemonic regime based on consent. By 1992, Impala management had shifted from racial despotism to accommodation of black trade unions after realising that the democratisation of the workplace and broader society was inevitable given the broader political context at the time.
After 1994, this process of institutionalisation constituted part of a broader corporatist system designed to contain the militancy of black trade unions. The Labour Relations Act, Number 66 of 1995 embraced collective bargaining at different levels. In addition, it regulated trade unions and prescribed a sophisticated dispute resolution system. The right to strike is guaranteed in the constitution. A review of industrial relations conflict suggests that this system was generally effective in institutionalising and containing industrial conflict in the first decade after the democratic transition (von Holdt 2013). The NUM at Impala Platinum mines (which by 2000 became the biggest branch of the union) evolved into an efficient instrument of institutionalisation of industrial relations. It was the first to have full-time shop stewards at a cost to the employer (Allen 2003).
The 2012 Impala Platinum strike was initiated by rock drill operators (RDOs), who are some of those at the bottom of the underground hierarchy. They were disillusioned by a ‘unilateral’ decision to award skilled certified miners a retention allowance. They responded by organising independent workers' committees embedded in informal networks. This contestation escalated and culminated in militant strike action characterised by use of muti 2 and sangoma,3 fanakalo and various repertoires of violence. This forged new forms of collective solidarity to overcome the dilemmas associated with institutionalisation (Chinguno 2013).
Ultimately, the strike embraced the majority of the shop-floor workers. The informal workers' committees, disenchanted by the NUM, eventually invited the Association of Mining and Construction Union (AMCU) to be their voice in the formal labour relations system. This gave workers the right to engage in ‘protected’ strikes, hence avoiding mass dismissal. AMCU subsequently became the majority trade union at Impala. Workers thus forged and sustained solidarity against the dominant system of collective bargaining, but at the same time were obliged to make use of it. Trying to avoid past pitfalls, the independent committees remained active overtly and covertly within and outside the new union. They thus endeavoured to revolve in and out of the institutions of industrial relations.
Theoretical perspectives
Conflict in industrial relations represents a manifestation of the inherent contestation for control that characterises the relationship between labour and capital. In industrial relations theory, institutionalisation is the ideal form of managing industrial conflict such as strike violence. We have already noted how institutionalisation of industrial relations constitutes part of the broader corporatists’ social contract. This assigns a key role to the development of highly formalised institutions with the capacity to regulate and manage conflict (Korpi and Shalev 1979). The aim is to attain and/or restore order and create legitimacy without the use of coercion (Howell 2005).
Trade unions are the vehicle of this collective bargaining process. However, in Marxian theory they occupy a contradictory position. They represent workers’ collective voice and instruments of resistance and yet they are also vehicles of institutionalisation. They challenge employer hegemony on one hand but at the same time can defend it. The process of collective bargaining produces agreements and procedures that become the rules of the game. The trade union thus switches its role to that of a policeman to maintain order and discipline the rank and file (Fantasia 1989). The main objective of the union from the onset is to advance the interests of workers. While this may be attained through participation in the institutionalised industrial relations system, there is always a risk that rules may become ends in themselves with the union becoming an instrument of discipline integrated into the structures of the corporation (Hyman 1989).
Institutionalisation rationalises contestation by creating a system that allows a measure of mutual decision making. It turns the trade union into a partner in joint regulation of the production process through negotiation. The union thus becomes a partner in sharing control of the labour process. Institutionalisation of industrial conflict may thus be seen as a limited form of challenge to managerial control.
A critique of this model is that the acceptance of the union in decision making and sharing control of the labour process does not make it an equal partner in the relationship. The union remains a subordinate partner in the production process (Mills and Schneider 1948). Institutionalisation thus consolidates the structure of managerial control. It does not displace it with industrial democracy. Management remains in charge and workers are obliged to obey (Hyman 1989).
The power of trade unions and their survival in South Africa was initially however never drawn from institutional security. The only means of establishing a relationship with an employer and to attain recognition for black trade unions before the attainment of democracy was through leading militant worker struggles outside formal institutions. Institutionalisation of industrial relations, when it came, was thus tied to the bureaucratisation of the union (Fantasia and Voss 2004) and growing social distance from active worker resistance. The union became too dependent on formal procedures of the industrial relations system. Institutional security for the union displaces the need to continuously organise on the shop floor (Purcell 1993). Ultimately, the process integrates the union into the overall corporate structure (Fantasia 1989). The union thus drifts closer to management and state elites and becomes integrated into the national elite class (Buhlungu 2010; Fantasia 1989).
The making: institutionalisation of the unions
In the broader historical context, the NUM emerged in 1982 from black workers' collective struggles and at the onset did not enjoy nor was it assured of institutional protection. It displaced the despotic induna 4 system with a democratic shop-steward system based on shop-floor worker control. However, at Impala Platinum apartheid and the Bantustan regimes made it very difficult for black workers to organise into independent trade unions before 1992. Industrial relations were managed through a coercive system.
There were two main forces that propelled the recognition of the NUM at Impala Platinum after 1992. We have noted the shift in management strategy from non-hegemonic to hegemonic industrial relations based on manufacturing of consent. This was enhanced by the broader national struggle for democratic transition that adopted a social movement model as a form of resistance against apartheid. As a result, political activists became catalysts behind the emergence of the NUM at Impala Platinum. Many of the early organisers of the NUM at Impala Platinum were at the same time ANC activists.
By 2000, industrial relations at Impala Platinum were well developed and highly institutionalised, in line with the post-apartheid labour relations regime. Workers enjoyed the right to freedom of association and trade union collective bargaining relationships as prescribed in the Labour Relations Act and Constitution. The NUM became the vehicle of industrial relations with popular legitimacy. It established a bargaining relationship with Impala management in terms of Section 18 of the Labour Relations Act of 1995. This requires a union to have sufficient membership before it may be recognised. The law does not prescribe a minimum threshold. Nevertheless, through practice, 30% had been accepted as sufficient for union recognition. Recognition comes with rights such as access to the workplace, the conduct of meetings and a check-off system. Furthermore, a union that attains a threshold of 50% plus one may become entitled to enhanced rights by virtue of having majority representation. These rights include the appointment of union officials, time off for union officials and access to some classified information. Furthermore, competing unions are barred from access. This almost resembles a closed-shop agreement.
The adoption of recognition agreements is linked to trade unions' experience during apartheid. After the democratic transition, this principle was incorporated into the new industrial relations framework. It was expected that the Congress of South African Trade Unions would support this as it is in line with its founding principle of ‘one union one industry one country one federation’. This was designed to promote strong trade unions and thus a stable industrial relations regime. Furthermore, the promotion of mega unions purportedly enhanced worker collective solidarity and leverage both at the negotiation table and in the broader political sphere.
The NUM consolidated its position at Impala Platinum and evolved into a sophisticated industrial relations bureaucracy. It entered into an agreement on 23 July 1997 with Impala Platinum that elevated its recognition agreement status by including a threshold clause of 35% for ordinary recognition within each of the bargaining units. This new agreement created three bargaining units for unskilled workers, artisans and miners and for the senior staff. This had a negative impact on some of the former white unions that failed to meet the minimum threshold.
Ten years later, the NUM further consolidated its dominance after negotiating a new recognition agreement (signed on 28 March 2007). This increased the minimum threshold to 50% plus one for a union to be granted organisational rights within any of the three bargaining units. At the time, this served the interests of both the union and the employer. For the union, this hedged off competition whilst for the employer, dealing with one big union simplified labour relations and sustained industrial relations stability. As a result, the NUM at Impala was caught up in hierarchal structures that over time discouraged engagement with the rank and file.
Unlike the gold sector in South Africa, collective bargaining in the platinum sector is decentralised and based at the individual mining house level. It was, nevertheless, well developed before the onset of the 2012–2013 strike wave. The NUM had evolved to become the most dominant union in the platinum sector and the biggest in the country. At all three top platinum mining houses, it enjoyed on average a majority of 70% at its peak. Moreover, its influence extended well beyond the realm of industrial relations into the broader socio-economic and political arena in line with its founding ethics of social movement unionism and the role that it had played during the struggle for democracy.
The institutionalisation of industrial relations at Impala Platinum was designed to limit management's arbitrary control of the production process. The NUM and Impala Platinum negotiated the appointment of full-time shop stewards and other union officials. The union structure had four levels from the top: house coordinator, branch and shaft committees and the shop stewards. These positions are contradictory as they are designed to represent the interests of the employer and employees contemporaneously. Five representatives constitute the shaft and branch committees: a chairperson, secretary, vice chairperson, vice secretary and treasurer. This makes up the union negotiating team at the respective levels. Wages and substantive conditions of employment are negotiated at the three bargaining forums. Only recognised trade unions participated in the collective bargaining forum and other statutory and non-statutory forums. The recognition agreement prescribed the procedures for dispute resolution, election of shafts stewards, house coordinator and other shop-floor representatives. In addition, the bargaining forum had power to appoint sub-forums to dispense statutory and other obligations.
At the big mining houses, the shaft and branch committee members are usually full-time union officials and this is provided for in most of the recognition agreements. Union officials and shop stewards are entitled to benefits prescribed in the recognition agreement. For example, the employer provided office space, telephone, computers, office furniture, Internet and email, and other facilities to the union shaft and branch committees and others. At the hostels, union committees assume the responsibility of allocating company accommodation and general grievance handling. The recognised and majority union may have a separate agreement on the remuneration of union officials. At Impala Platinum, shop stewards assume the highest pay grade level for the job category they represent. The adoption of this agreement resulted in the upgrading of some of the union representatives after union election and this contributed to alienating the union from its members.
Interviews with the workers raised allegations of corruption against shop stewards and union officials. This includes corruption over access to jobs and allocation of company housing. In the early years of the NUM, leaders were usually elected from among ordinary workers who challenged managerial control and risked repression and persecution by management and the state. This has now shifted. Being in a union position became a platform for elevation into political or managerial hierarchy. Many senior human resources management officials at Impala Platinum are former NUM shop stewards and union officials.
As the union became consolidated, better-educated union leaders were elected. The institutionalisation of industrial relations at Impala Platinum thus culminated in a shift in the profile of the union leadership. At Impala Platinum, for example, most of the shop stewards and union officials did not revert to previous positions after their terms expired. Most were elevated within the union, management or the political hierarchy. In addition, the recognition agreement protected employer discretion for the deployment of former union leaders. Shop stewards, unlike the ordinary workers, have access to training and development programmes that enhance their education and skills. This partly explains why they usually got promoted ahead of other workers. This raises questions about class formation and the impact this has on trade union solidarity (Beresford 2012).
The institutionalisation of the union at Impala Platinum created a paradox (Buhlungu 2010). The NUM became a centre of power within the industrial relations system. However, it became more dependent on the formal procedural requirements of a bureaucratised system. It was gradually incorporated into the company's bureaucracy as part of the establishment. This transformed it into a top-down structure disconnected from the rank and file. NUM unionism at Impala Platinum gradually shifted from shop-floor participative unionism to what may be viewed as professional and managerial unionism. Its source of power shifted from the shop floor to institutions supported by the state and employer. For example, the number of shop-floor meetings and consultations declined and as a result undermined internal democracy.
The NUM was thus trapped in the corporate bureaucracy. Workers responded through insurgent unionism and strike action against the NUM and Impala Platinum. This insurgency by workers was initially led by the RDOs who organised independent committees outside the institutions of industrial relations. This implied rejection of the social contract and represented a means of articulating a new form of order. Political democratisation did not overthrow internal hierarchy/stratification amongst workers. Worker collective solidarities were increasingly tied to specific job categories and manifested a growing social distance between the union and its members. Ultimately, the union had been co-opted by management. This marked the collapse of the class compromise that underpinned post-apartheid industrial relations.
The institutionalisation of industrial relations at Impala Platinum, however, was not entirely negative for workers and the union. The institutionalisation of industrial conflict constructed a platform for making mutual decisions on the production process. This enhanced the workers' voice. However, it finally culminated in the professionalisation of worker representatives. Interviews with some of the managers at Impala Platinum indicated that the NUM shop-floor representatives were better acquainted with the labour relations system than some of the managers. This partly explains why they were often eventually co-opted into management.
The unmaking and remaking: the 2012 Impala Platinum strike
The context of the 2012 strike at Impala Platinum is tied to an earlier dispute in 2010 between Impala Platinum and certified miners5 at the mine. The certified miners claimed that their remuneration lagged behind average market rates. Lack of centralised collective bargaining in the sector had created pay disparities. Platinum mining houses competed for skills on the basis of the highest bidder. It should be noted that the NUM had in the past persistently sought centralised collective bargaining in the platinum sector but this was firmly rejected by the employers.
By 2010 the certified miners were organising collectively through their informal occupational networks. This was after they realised the NUM was reluctant to pursue wage raises for any specific job category. Seeking to avoid divisions among workers, the NUM tended to insist on a uniform percentage wage increase for all job categories. It had in fact turned down a 2011 proposal by management to grant the rock drillers a retention allowance that would have applied to their job category only. This action was consistent with the NUM's conception of the broader collective interest of all the workers.
To pursue their particular interests, however, certified miners at Impala set up an informal committee6 that convened a series of meetings, monthly and ad hoc, at the hostel ‘Number 6’ hall. This was meant to map the way forward and to maintain occupational solidarity. In an attempt to avoid disruption of production, some line managers engaged the informal committees and initiated negotiations outside formal collective bargaining structures. According to management, they were facing a 25% turnover of skilled miners, with a completely untenable effect on production. Other mining houses were poaching skilled miners and RDOs from Impala, which was perceived to offer the best training and development programme in the industry but lagged on remuneration.
Informal resistance by miners went beyond meetings with the line management, however. In the labour process in South African hard rock mining, certified miners are in charge of blasting and occupational health and safety (OHS) at the rock face, so they were able strategically to manipulate their structural power. They proceeded to condemn workplaces that they identified as not meeting minimum OHS standards prescribed in the Mining and Health Safety Act of 1986. This negatively affected production and profitability. At the end of 2011 most workers missed their production bonus targets as a result of unprecedented Section 54 stoppages.7 This use of OHS norms constituted a form of resistance.
Under production pressure, Impala Platinum management proposed to the NUM that they review conditions of service for certified miners outside the recognised collective bargaining system. They proposed an 18% retention allowance. The NUM did not oppose this initially. The retention allowance was implemented in November 2011. At the end-of-year shutdown, many workers (including migrants) went home as usual but very unhappy since, because of the Section 54 stoppages, they had failed to qualify for the usual holiday productivity bonus. On their return at the beginning of January 2012, they were surprised to discover that the certified miners had been awarded a retention allowance. RDOs at shaft number 14 staged an impromptu job action demanding similar treatment to the miners. In doing so, they challenged the dominant Paterson grading system, which evaluates jobs primarily on the basis of decisions performed and thus rates RDOs at the lower end of the scale despite their tacit skills and dangerous work. RDO insurgency in this case challenged both management and the union.
At the onset, organisation of the strike was chaotic. As a result, collective action was abandoned temporarily for three days to give time for consolidation of action across the whole operation. The strike resumed on 17 January 2012 with RDOs at shaft 14 presenting a handwritten petition direct to the line management demanding a retention allowance. Three days later, on 20 January 2014, they downed tools.
The strike was organised outside the union and the industrial relations system by independent committees initiated by RDOs. They depended on very strong underground social networks. As with the certified miners, solidarity was forged on the basis of occupational identity. The strike spread fast across Impala Platinum operations. The RDOs were adamant that the NUM not be involved in their negotiations. They sought to engage their employer directly outside the collective bargaining structures. The NUM branch structures made several attempts to capture the strike so as to subject it to the institutionalised industrial framework. This was vehemently resisted. In a number of incidents, workers assaulted NUM branch officials. The RDOs claimed that the NUM had shifted from its principles as an agent of collective resistance and was now an instrument of employer control.
Impala Platinum management refused to engage the RDOs directly but referred them to the NUM as the recognised union. This was because, in terms of the Labour Relations Act, the strike was unprocedural and therefore the workers were subject to potential dismissal.
Management applied for a court interdict that sanctioned mass dismissals of the workers after three days. All 5000 RDOs on strike were thus summarily dismissed and those living in company hostels were subsequently evicted. Such apartheid methods proved ineffectual in breaking the strike, however, since the majority of mineworkers had moved into informal settlements8 which sprouted across the platinum belt. The employers have no control in these spaces. In 2012 only 5000 out of 46,000 workers at Impala Platinum lived in hostels. This divided workers along the lines of those who lived in hostels, and in informal and formal settlements. The independent workers' committees that emerged and led the strike were embedded in informal networks in the informal settlements whilst the NUM did still have some leverage in the hostels. Settlement patterns also reinforced class divisions. In terms of the mining spatial geography, the informal settlements represent space for subalterns whilst the formal suburbs were populated by the elite. Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu (2011) have reviewed how the demise of the hostels undermined the union organising base.
The shift by most workers from the hostels into informal settlements forged a new space of worker resistance. Strikes during the apartheid regime could be broken by mass dismissals and the subsequent eviction of all the strikers from the hostels. This consolidated employer power and control, although it also had a negative effect on production, since, for several months, new employees seldom matched the old rate of production. The new spatial geography that has emerged across the platinum belt, characterised by proliferation of informal settlements, has shifted the power leverage to the workers. Informal settlements in the platinum belt are usually adjacent to mine shafts and other workplaces. Workers are thus able to prevent their jobs being taken by scabs during strikes through both overt and covert use of coercion. Informal settlements are thus not only arenas of disorder. They also represent worker power and a permanent picket line.
The articulation of solidarity by the RDOs at the onset was based on their job identity. Nevertheless, they soon realised the limitations of excluding other workers. As a result, they had to draw on forms of solidarity across job categories. They thus went on a massive campaign to convince other workers to join the strike action. They organised an initial mass meeting to consolidate their position and to forge consensus and solidarity. At the meeting, the informal workers' committees were reconstituted to embrace other workers although RDOs remained the main leaders in general.
Furthermore, demands were reconfigured and framed into a wage claim of R9000 per month for RDOs, from just below R6000. On the first day of the strike, some workers were blocked from boarding buses to their work stations. The strike gained momentum and many other workers joined in solidarity. Yet, in the name of solidarity, the NUM declined a separate agreement for RDOs.
The contours of division and solidarity
An effective strike action depends on worker collective solidarity. However, divisions characterised this strike despite some strong forms of solidarity amongst the workers.
The miners had initially organised on the basis of occupational solidarity as skilled workers. Historically, it was not new for miners to organise separately from other underground mineworkers. However, in the past the certified miner's job was a preserve for whites. Hence, they organised separately as white skilled mineworkers. This of course did not undermine black workers' collective solidarity. After the democratic transition, the job was deracialised and the majority of certified miners are now blacks. The unintended consequence of such upward mobility is that this severely undermines black workers’ collective solidarity.
Workers in this strike were divided into two groups: one, led by RDOs, supported the strike action whilst the other was opposed to it and was linked to the NUM. The former group eventually aligned to AMCU during the course of the strike. At the onset, however, AMCU had no footprint at Impala Platinum. It was co-opted in the midst of the contestation and subsequently became the majority union across the platinum belt. The strike was also characterised by a spate of assassinations that targeted key figures along the occupational divide.
At times, even when addressing the same gathering, opposing groups used different languages. The group that was pro-strike exclusively used fanagalo, the mine pidgin, whilst that opposed used English and Tswana. This choice of language often reinforced class divisions. The use of English in this context was associated with the elite. As highlighted by one of the workers, ‘English is a language of the “mutton eaters” (perceived to be a diet for the elite) and fanagalo for subalterns,’ who presumably eat beef.
Moreover, while the mining industry is highly gendered and dominated by men, legislation since 2004 has required mining houses to have a 15% threshold for women. The few women in mining are mainly recruited from the local communities and, unlike the men, are less likely to be migrants. Impala Platinum has adopted a recruitment policy that sources women workers from a radius of 60 kilometres from its operations. In practice, overall, it gives preference to the Bafokeng ethnic group.
Women bring to mining new dynamics and reconfigure the contestation between capital and labour. For example, there are no women living in hostels. Moreover, very few women workers live in the informal settlements and they are generally better educated than men. These differences reflect how female workers related to and organised resistance. For example, some of the workers claimed that women were against the strike as it was not sanctioned by the NUM, whom they supported. Most of the women viewed the NUM as a champion that had opened doors that had been closed to them. This created conflict between women workers and those who led the strike. Women were accused of being strike breakers and conniving with management and the NUM in breaking the strike. Participant observation suggested that most women did not take part in mass meetings during the strike. Since a strike is often framed as war between labour and capital, the limited participation of women in this strike was also tied to cultural values and beliefs. In most societies women stay off the combat zone. Moreover, this strike was initiated by RDOs, who are exclusively men and thus women were excluded from the outset.9
Before the democratic transition, the majority of mineworkers were employed directly through the principal employer. However, the transition and initiation of neoliberal policies have been characterised by a rise in flexible employment. This has been concurrent with the exponential rise of platinum mining in South Africa. A high proportion of the workers in the platinum sector are externalised. In the platinum belt for example, over one third of the workforce is employed through third parties, i.e. labour brokers, subcontractors etc., at radically lower wages (Bezuidenhout 2008).10 Impala Platinum has a total of 46,000 workers and 13,000 of them are externalised. The workers thus have different experiences and conceptions of the meaning of work and subjectivities. This had an effect on the way they responded to employer control and how they forged resistance and collective solidarity. The workers are thus divided along the contract of employment. However, this strike forcefully brought together all workers irrespective of the type of contract.
The strike was directed at Impala Platinum, the principal employer, and technically did not extend to its labour brokers and subcontractors. However, the reality was that all the workers including subcontractors and labour brokers were expected to support the strike unconditionally in a show of solidarity. The solidarity was not reciprocal, however. In strikes directed at the subcontractors and/or labour brokers, the workers of the principal employer usually do not get involved or directly support the strike. This highlights a crisis in collective worker solidarity.
Forging collective solidarity and violent solidarity
A number of strategies were adopted to attain and maintain collective solidarity in this strike. Mass meetings constitute part of the general strike action repertoire. During this strike they were conducted every morning at 7 am or on an ad hoc basis. The informal committees that were leading the strike addressed these meetings. This happened concurrently at Impala Platinum North and South branches. The first mass meeting was important as it presented a platform for workers to formulate their grievances and define the course of action. Thereafter, mass meetings served as platforms for workers to attain consensus and to make collective decisions. Although the main language used at the mass meeting was fanagalo, the informal committee invited representatives of all the ethnic groups to briefly address the mass meeting in their own language. This was recognition of the reality that the workers were divided along ethnic lines. It was an attempt to forge and consolidate collective solidarity across such divides.
The crisis presented by the mass dismissal of RDOs occasioned several different responses. One response related directly to the strikers' rural habitus. The workers consulted a sangoma from Eastern Cape to perform some rituals. The sangoma and his muti played a significant role in mobilising resistance and making sense of the crisis. The sangoma gave striking workers hope that they would eventually emerge victorious. This forged collective solidarity and sustained the struggle.
The strike was also characterised by various genres of violence. Some of workers on strike teamed up in roving gangs that attacked scabs/strike breakers in the early hours in the morning. At least 70 workers were assaulted and hospitalised. Most of them were on their way to work. Sub-contractors were not on strike but were expected to support it. Thus, on 16 February 2012, a subcontracted worker from the North branch was stripped naked at the hostel 8 bus terminus pickup point on his way to work and assaulted by fellow workers. He subsequently died in an ambulance on the way to hospital. Violence escalated following this killing. On 20 February, a group of about 150 strikers attacked scabs at hostel 6. The attackers were cordoned off by the South African Police Service before they got access to the hostel perimeter fence and were directed to retreat. When they forged ahead the police opened fire, which killed one of the workers and injured seven others who were hospitalised. Police claimed they had had to use live ammunition because some of the workers were armed.
On 24 February, a worker from Zimbabwe who lived in Number 9 informal settlement and worked for a contractor at shaft 5 was assaulted and killed near the hostel 8 bus pickup point. Fellow workers organised into gangs hunting down scabs killed him. They blocked all access and roads to the shafts and other work stations. Ultimately, three further victims alleged to be amagundwane (scabs) were killed.
This in a way represents a form of violent picketing and raises questions on how the workers constructed solidarity. Fantasia (1989) reviews how worker solidarity operates outside the industrial relations system. He argues that it represents an active expression of worker collectivity and a means for subordinates to usurp the power of the dominant. He argues that such solidarity will emerge only if workers or employers bypass routine channels so that workers are forced to seek or to rely on their own resources. A strike is one of the most overt means of expressing collective solidarity. Neoliberalism, however, creates fragmented work that severely undermines collective solidarity.
Solidarity based on a job category in this case undermined broader worker collective solidarity across occupational divides. This undermined the grounds for the forging of common interests. In the face of such challenges, the workers in this strike forged solidarity through other means. Violence was used in this strike as a means of forging worker solidarity and to enforce compliance. This is conceptualised as a ‘violent solidarity’. In a context characterised by work fragmentation, precariousness and variations in subjectivity, violence may be one of the means that bring together the fragmented workers.
Later developments after this strike suggest that although AMCU became the majority union at Impala Platinum, it did not instantly gain control of the shop floor. Independent worker committees retained power and leverage covertly even after AMCU had gained popular majority status. This underscored the precarious status of AMCU as a trade union. It had limited capacity to compromise in collective bargaining because of its rather fragile relationship with the independent workers' committees. The committees were designed to claim and retain power, control and the organisation at the shop floor and avoid pitfalls from past experience. The committees thus had a precarious relationship with the formal institutions of the industrial relations system. On an ad hoc basis they switched in and out of the formal system. After the strike, labour relations in the platinum belt remained precarious and contentious. However, whilst the independent committees represented a breakdown in institutionalisation of industrial relations, the shift to AMCU implied re-institutionalisation.
Conclusion
This case study suggests that an industrial relations framework grounded on institutionalisation of industrial conflict does not guarantee stable industrial relations. It shows how the union over time failed to manufacture hegemony and worker consent. The worker responses manifested as insurgent unionism. The strike thus reflects a breakdown in the institutionalisation of industrial relations. Institutionalisation, in this case, resulted in the embourgeoisement of the union leadership. The union thus lost popular legitimacy and class compromise collapsed. The ensuing crisis in worker collective solidarity caused a backlash, and violence around the edges of solidarity displaced consent as an instrument of both control and resistance. In a context of threatened solidarity, violence became a means to restore, maintain and/or contest order. Moreover, violence in this context also became a means of forging collective solidarity which is often threatened by fragmentation of work. This is conceptualised here as ‘a violent solidarity’.
This article has argued that the 2012–2013 platinum belt strike wave, which culminated in the Marikana massacre, does not represent a turning point in South African industrial relations. Instead it was a manifestation of the precarious nature of institutionalisation in the post-apartheid industrial order. Industrial relations are not fixed but generate new forms of conflict and solidarity. Moreover, the South African social pact seems to crystallise a particular balance of organisational and institutional power that may be configured into various forms. Ultimately, if this balance dissipates or is not sustained, this generates a backlash. A shift reflects variation in the balance of power.
The evidence presented raises questions on why the growing influence of the NUM in the workplace and beyond did not translate into more progressive (pro-worker) bargaining results. Critiques of the corporatist social contract discussed earlier address this. Corporatism comes with a cost when it undermines union internal democracy and alienates it from the shop floor. The crisis of the NUM presented in this case study highlights a more general crisis in South Africa of the corporatist social contract which constitutes the basis of post-apartheid socio-economic and political order.