The latest clash in the ongoing struggle of the South African mine workers against the regime union NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) is the fight of the gold mining workers at the Gold One Modder East operation in Springs, a major gold mining centre on the Witwatersrand, 30 kilometres East of Johannesburg. The present conflict began with a sit-in which started on the night of October 22-23 when the workers stayed in the mine following their night shift. Of the 1,800 workers employed at that operation, 562 were there at the time to conduct this sit-in, and many others showed up in the morning to demonstrate their support for the action, which they affirmed was in fact an action that the workers had agreed on and planned the night before, in contradiction with the lies of the bourgeois press, which claimed the workers were being held against their will by a radical minority of supporters of the AMCU (Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union). The AMCU is really supported by the vast majority of the mineworkers, and its recognition by the company was the primary demand in this sit-in. The "closed-shop agreement" between the NUM and Gold One, according to South African law, allows for the recognition of only one union, the one with a proven majority – proven, that is, according to balloting processes set up by the conspiracy of the NUM and Gold One.

We commended the determination of the 3,000 workers of the Lonmin platinum mine in their struggle at Marikana in 2012 against the bosses and the NUM, which culminated not with the crushing defeat of the miners that the bourgeoisie hoped for when it shot down 34 of them in the first week of the strike, but rather with a partial victory on wages after the workers pressed on for four more weeks. But more significant than the wage increase was the consequence that the continuation of the strike after the massacre, and its spread to other mines and even beyond the mining sector, eventually led to the recognition of an AMCU majority in the mine and in other platinum mines, and to a general weakening of the NUM’s hold on the class – along with that of the COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions), with which the NUM is affiliated and which constitutes one third of South Africa’s tripartite alliance, next to the ANC and the Stalinist SACP. Hence the real significance of the battle is its place as a major victory against the regime union and in the progress made towards the unification of the workers’ struggles.

Since then this long and arduous campaign has continued with periodic clashes in several other mines, and gradually the stranglehold of the COSATU is being weakened further, thanks to the combativeness and intractability of the proletariat in Africa’s most industrialized nation – and particularly of the workers in the mining industry, because this sector places such large numbers of proletarians (around 475,000 directly employed workers, as well as around a million who are indirectly employed by the industry) in conditions which are totally intolerable.

The gold mines have been a major front of the struggle against the regime union since those victories in the platinum mines. By 2016 the AMCU had the same number of members as the NUM in Sibanye Gold. In 2019 the AMCU attempted to win a higher wage than the one negotiated by the NUM, by going on strike. This led to several violent clashes between union members; according to the NUM and the media, AMCU workers were attacking NUM workers, but the AMCU held that in fact it was once again violence of the NUM against AMCU workers and against the NUM’s own militant unionists, which is what occurred in the Marikana strike and in other instances. Following the 2019 strike the government threatened to deregister the union on various pretexts.

Over this entire period the bourgeois press has maintained the narrative that all of these conflicts are instigated by AMCU officials, that they constitute a long-running contest between the two unions for influence in the mines, in which the workers themselves are mere pawns. The actions of the NUM have repeatedly proven that this is essentially fiction; the fight is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the so-called power struggle between union leaders is in reality just one chapter in this class war, the toppling of the regime unions and the construction of a strong class union.

The bourgeoisie’s labelling of the sit-in at Gold One Modder East as a “hostage situation” is thus consistent with its usual narrative, but not with reality.

However, while the fight against the regime union has made consistent progress, the dangers which we have commented on previously continue to threaten the formation of a strong class union.  AMCU’s president Joseph Mathunjwa continues to make frequent calls for respect for the bourgeois order, even reminiscing about the superior management of the apartheid bourgeoisie, and condemning the post-apartheid presidents for ruining a “functioning state”. His calls for national unity and encouragement of racialised struggle reveal a wide gulf between the combativeness of union’s membership and the politics it officially espouses.

On October 25 the sit-in ended. At one point, Gold One alleged, 109 workers forced their way out, after a violent struggle with the “hostage takers”. Eventually the company determined that around 450 were hostages and 100-110 were hostage takers; consequently, the company dismissed 74 workers, which it says were found to be guilty of misconduct after a thorough investigation, for which there is scant evidence, as many of the dismissed workers said they never received their alleged hearings.

In the following weeks, Gold One, the NUM, and the AMCU scheduled the termination of the closed-shop agreement, thus opening the possibility of AMCU being recognised at the mine, but only the possibility, since NUM and Gold One certainly haven’t given up their resistance yet. On November 14 the agreement was set to terminate a month later, on December 14. At this point, it seems, those three parties felt the matter was resolved, including AMCU officials, whatever there involvement in the sit-in had been. The workers essentially got what they wanted, and the company demonstrated that there would be consequences for the their militancy.

But, characteristically, the mineworkers were unfazed. Following the night shift of December 7-8, a second sit-in was staged, this time of 447 workers, which lasted until December 11. Their demand was the immediate reinstatement of all 74 dismissed workers. The press, Gold One, and the NUM initially maintained their confusion as to what the issue was this time, since the workers got what the wanted with regards to the closed-shop agreement. They claimed that it was difficult to communicate with the workers inside the mine, and as with the previous strike, little effort was made to communicate with the other workers gathered outside the mine, because doing so would have confirmed their support for the sit-in, and that it was in fact another planned sit-in and not a hostage situation. On the 9th, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe was brought in to give credence to the “hostage situation” story: Mantashe insisted that brutal beatings were occurring at the mine, as well as threats to execute hostages if food and water were not delivered. These stories were parroted by Gold One and NUM’s regional organiser, but Mantashe is the only source anyone can give. Mantashe insisted that since this was a hostage situation, the police would need to be brought in. The minister also lamented how these indisciplined workers had gone “behind our backs” in seeking the termination of the closed-shop agreement.

As the AMCU is not officially recognized at the mine, it remained at a distance through both strikes, but did assert that the version of events presented by the bosses and the NUM was completely false. However, it does not seem to have made any attempt to organize actions in solidarity with the Gold One mineworkers.

The strike ended on the 11th as miners gradually emerged. As with the previous sit-in, the bourgeoisie’s narrative was that hostages who had been starved and beaten were gradually forcing there way out, and consequently their captors gave up. However, the accounts of all the workers who emerged once again contradicted this: the private security and the police had in fact been the real “captors”, who clashed violently with the workers and then attempted to prevent them from leaving to receive medical attention (and the same goes for workers who were not injured, but needed to leave to get medicine, for diabetes, etc.). They also prevented those inside the mine from communicating with the outside, or from receiving food from their families; then, after starving the workers, they restricted their eventual retreat from the mine, only allowing the workers to leave in ones and twos so as to prevent a crowd from forming outside the mine. The ease with which the police and security can enforce starvation, and prevent aid or communication between the workers inside the mine and those outside, are major weaknesses of the sit-in strike tactic.

When the mine reopened after the holidays, many workers were suddenly prevented from getting into the mine for their shifts; over the first weeks of January, at least 445 workers were fired, mostly over text, and 140 more were suspended. The practice of mass firings in order to break the workers’ resistance is extremely common in this sector, frequently followed by a rehiring of the same workers after the wave of militancy has died down, though in this case the company will probably look for replacement workers who are not so set on opposing the regime union. The NUM has helped them in this regard by promising to advocate only for the dismissed NUM members who haven’t shown a desire to join AMCU.

But once again the mine workers show that their willingness to fight is extremely difficult to stamp out. Gold One reportedly cancelled a shift on January 10 over threats of another sit-in, this time over both waves of dismissals, against the replacement of those workers by contractors, and over the company’s refusal to pay the workers their December salaries. The company has said the situation is becoming “unsustainable”; in the second sit-in it claims the workers cost the mine 12 to 15 million Rand per day. Hence despite the short durations of the sit-ins due to the factors mentioned above, the workers have been able to apply pressure to the company through their resolve and solidarity, which continue to shine in spite of the efforts of all the bourgeois forces united against them.