Marikana: a story about unresponsive leadership
2012-09-20 08:10
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Eusebius McKaiser

There is an incredibly basic but crucial leadership lesson to be learnt from the Marikana disaster. It is this: unresponsive leadership will not be tolerated forever. The Congress of South African Trade Unions released a statement “urg(ing) all the workers who have left the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to return”.

This “urge” is fascinating. The union leaders view these workers as delinquents; as naughty children who ran away from home and who should return if they know what’s good for them.

Even last night on my radio show, Talk At Nine, general secretary of NUM, Frans Baleni, argued that the wage deal that had been struck at Marikana set a bad precedent in the sense that workers have successfully tried their luck outside the legal structures for negotiating wage increases. He fears they will inspire such action in other parts of the economy. He might be right. But these statements from NUM and Cosatu miss a more crucial point.

Failing to see what happened

Neither Baleni nor Zwelinzima Vavi is asking the right questions. The question is not whether it is a bad thing that illegal actions should lead to a 22% wage increase. Obviously destruction of property, the use of intimidation against fellow workers and illegal bargaining processes are bad for us. Baleni and Vavi should ask, “Why are some workers abandoning us? Why did many workers choose to represent themselves in wage negotiations?”

They are failing to see what happened at Marikana in an honest light: a vote of no confidence in union leadership. If NUM and Cosatu convince themselves that Marikana is not an indictment of their leadership then more members might rethink their membership of the unions.

By deciding to negotiate for themselves, workers are clearly expressing dissatisfaction