BY GREG ROSENBERG
AND JOHN HAWKINS
Hundreds of thousands of workers across South Africa joined demonstrations during a national day of mourning May 17 to commemorate the May 10 disaster at Anglo-American Corp.'s Vaal Reefs mine near Orkney, in which 105 gold miners were killed. Working people held mass rallies in eight regions of South Africa, and workers joined actions and prayer meetings for two hours at midday in factories from the Atlantic coast to the Indian Ocean. "The mining industry shut down," said Gregory Mcatsherwa, a spokesperson for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in a telephone interview.

"This was a turning point in the transformation of South Africa - and it was written in the blood of the workers," said Pat Matosa in a telephone interview May 17. Matosa, a former miner, is provincial chairperson of the African National Congress and a member of the cabinet in the Orange Free State. He had addressed a rally of some 35,000 people - black and white - earlier that day in the mining center of Welkom.

"The commemorations took place all over the country," said Matosa, including that evening in the black townships surrounding nearby Bloemfontein. "The leadership of the ANC and the democratic movement now must build on the momentum to get more concessions from the other side. This was a terrible tragedy. But it has introduced a huge space to fight for change. In the past few days, thousands of workers have been demanding management take steps to ensure safety. The mood in Welkom was angry. The general feeling was that there was an element of company negligence."

Some 80,000 miners, relatives of the victims, and others packed the Oppenheimer stadium at the Vaal Reefs mine memorial meeting. "COSATU is committed to building the economy, but we cannot build the economy at the cost of human lives," said Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) president John Gomomo.

"You don't need to go to the witch doctor to find out why this accident happened," said NUM president James Motlatsi. "It is racism."

The Vaal Reefs disaster was the worst in nearly a decade. South African president Nelson Mandela declared a national day of mourning. "The loss of an estimated 100 lives is deeply shocking to our whole nation," Mandela said in a statement issued May 12. "I urge all South Africans to mark this day with the dignity which would do honor to those who lost their lives."

At the demand of the ANC, NUM, and COSATU, the government rapidly announced the formation of a national commission of inquiry to investigate the disaster.

Mandela urged employers to allow workers to participate in commemorations across the country and to make contributions to a national relief fund. He toured the disaster site May 15, and told 5,000 miners there that the ANC was donating $ 28,000 to the relief fund, and that the South African government would contribute $1.3 million. Anglo-American subsequently announced it would contribute several million dollars to the fund.

At Orkney, Mandela urged employers to allow workers to participate in memorial rallies and workplace commemorations. "This perception [that white employers don't care about the lives of black workers] is not going to be removed by word of mouth, but by what the country as a whole - and the white minority in particular - do on occasions like this."

The accident occurred as workers were descending the 7,000-foot No. 2 shaft on their way to work the night shift May 10. More than a mile down the shaft, a 12-ton locomotive and a mine car fell down the shaft, cutting the hoist cables, and causing the cage to fall more than 1,500 feet to the mine floor. Moments later the train crashed down on top of the two-story cage, compressing it to about one third its original size. The driver of the locomotive leapt from the vehicle seconds before it plunged down the shaft.

Anglo-American is the biggest - and wealthiest - mining company in South Africa. In 1980 30 miners were killed in a lift cage accident at the same gold mining complex, which announced profits of $845 million in 1994.

Dick Fisher, regional general manager of Vaal Reefs Mine, surmised that the accident had been caused by the failure of safety devices designed to prevent such shaft accidents. "It appears that the loco went through various safety devices and jumped a rail which changed its direction and it then fell down the shaft."

Motlatsi, who went to the accident site 112 miles southwest of Johannesburg the morning of May 11, presented a different picture. "Nothing like that can be anything more than negligence," Motlatsi said. "The safety mechanisms were not in place." Motlatsi described the disaster as the worst he had ever seen. "Pieces of flesh were scattered all over as the two-floor mining carriage was crushed into a one- floor tin box." Placing the blame for the accident squarely on Anglo-American, Motlatsi demanded that the company compensate workers and their families.

"More than 100 people, breadwinners and who have families cannot be seen anymore. This is a great tragedy," said Motlatsi.

'There was no safety at all'
"There was no safety at all on that train," said Benedict Thaba, NUM chairperson at the West Driefontein mine near Carletonville. Reached at his workplace on May 18, Thaba told the Militant, "The gate of that shaft was open. Many miners feel there was something intentional about this. Everyone is waiting for the outcome of the inquiry." Thaba reported that thousands of miners from West Driefontein, which shut down for the day, made the trip to nearby Randfontein for the memorial rally.

The Vaal Reefs disaster comes just weeks after the Leon Commission issued a report calling for the drastic overhaul of mining legislation in South Africa. Convened in response to demands from the NUM, the commission conducted an inquiry last year into safety and health conditions in the country's coal and mineral mines. This was the first such inquiry in more than 30 years.

The Leon Commission has recommended government action to draft a new set of laws regulating mining. In a 191-page report issued at the end of March the commission acknowledged the validity of the NUM's demands for immediate remedial action to reduce death, injury, and disease in the mining industry.

'We are really angry'
"This time, we are really angry," said Mapalo Tsatsimpe, NUM coordinator for the Carletonville region, in a telephone interview. "We say management must implement all the recommendations of the Leon Commission. No worker should work in a dangerous environment - a worker has a right to refuse it."

In a May 11 statement, Mandela declared that "the government commits itself to speedily finalize the recommendations on mine health and safety submitted by the Leon Commission." After a May 15 deadline for final submissions, said Mandela, the Cabinet and parliament will act on it "as a matter of urgency."

Tsatsimpe reported that up to 60,000 workers rallied at Randfontein, traveling from mines owned by Anglo-American, Gold Fields of South Africa, and Rand Corp. - many of them on buses donated to the union for free by bus companies.

In Durban, the largest city in KwaZulu-Natal province, some 1,000 people attended a midday rally commemorating the disaster. The union movement's main emphasis, said COSATU regional secretary Paulos Ngcobo in a telephone interview, was on workplace demonstrations. "In the factories and workplaces in this province, initial estimates indicate that 200,000 workers joined demonstrations in front of management offices and prayer meetings," Ngcobo reported.

Lena Ntuli, a shop steward for the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa at the Caterpillar, Inc. plant in Johannesburg, reported that all members of the union held a commemoration at midday.

"The main demand to emerge from the Welkom rally was for full-time safety stewards," Matosa reported. Currently, the owners of various mines refuse to allow full-time union safety representatives underground. "Management has been very difficult on this question," he said.

"As an organization that was put into power by the majority of the working people - particularly African workers - the ANC will fight for safety through new legislation," Matosa emphasized. But he added, "Mine management is not prepared to restructure mines to where there is complete empowerment of workers in the mines. We need fundamental transformation, but there will be resistance."

"Tragic as this incident may be," said a COSATU statement, "it should be viewed not only as a national disaster, but as a reminder of how cheap the lives of workers are in this country.- We should bring an end to the fear that workers have every day as they go underground or to any other workplace that their lives count less, that profits are the primary concern."

All the victims in the May 10 tragedy were black workers from Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, and South Africa. More than 69,000 miners, mostly black, have been killed and more than a million injured in South African mines between 1911 and 1994.

The government of Lesotho also agreed to declare a national day of mourning May 17. "Thirty thousand people attended the rally at National Stadium in the capital," said Candi Ratabane Ramainoane in an interview from Maseru. Ramainoane, the former Maseru mayor and now publisher of Moafrica newspaper, reported the main speakers were from the NUM, Anglo-American, and the government of Lesotho. "This was a very unique meeting for Lesotho. Many of our people work in the South African mines," he said. "The NUM speaker was the one who stirred the crowd. He pointed out that our people are still dying because of management negligence, and that the union will make sure the commission of inquiry does its job and that the families will be compensated."

The NUM is preparing for negotiations with the South African mining companies later this year. High on the union's list of demands, published in a document entitled, "Addressing the legacy of apartheid," are improved safety and health conditions, along with affirmative action for black miners to allow them to move into higher-paying, more highly skilled jobs, and housing for black miners who, under apartheid, were barred from living in white towns near the mines.

John Hawkins is a member of United Mine Workers of America Local 1867.  
 
 
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