Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi
Photo by: Duane Daws
CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) – Striking mineworkers who break the law will be jailed, Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi promised the Mining Indaba on Tuesday.
Leaving the labour issue till last in his 20-minute opening address to the jam-packed conference, the Minister told the 7 000 mining professionals attending that he was totally committed to taking the strongest action to preventing violent strikes similar to the five-month strike that dogged Rustenburg’s platinum belt from January to May last year.
“We’ll arrest and charge lawbreakers and send them to jail. There will be no turning back on that,” Ramatlhodi promised.
Ahead of that, every effort was being made to encourage the mineworker labour unions to contest in full accord with the law.
“We’re firm on discouraging violence used as an instrument of contestation between unions and we’d hope that the mining companies would help us by supporting those initiatives,” he said.
Describing the five-months strike as an exception to the rule, he indicated that the government would not tolerate a repeat of it and measures were already in place to ensure that there would not be a reiteration of last year’s longest strike in domestic history.