Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has expressed strong confidence that all parties will honour the important new framework for sustainable South African mining.

It was the Deputy President himself who led the who’s who of South African mining in the meticulous drawing up the framework’s draft on June 14.

Now, in Motlanthe’s words, all stakeholders, including the new Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), are on board (see also pages 8 and 9 of this edition of Mining Weekly).

However, the so-called workers committees could be a wild card.

Motlanthe’s framework takes in organised labour, but the workers committees fall in and out of organised labour at will, as they did in the platinum belt in the past, leading to the tragic Marikana killings.

It was the workers committees that reacted so vigorously when National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) shop stewards allegedly neglected their responsibilities to members on the platinum mines of the North West province.

The former NUM loyalists formed the workers committees outside of the NUM, in order to be the custodians of their own labour power.

When they realised the complications of doing this, they called AMCU in to assist them.

Will the members of those committees now fall into line behind the peace and stability framework on an ongoing basis?

They are largely unknown quantities and therefore their potential influence is uncertain and unpredictable.

Will they emerge again, this time in gold, where wage talks begin on July 11?

A ‘check and balance’ is that, in terms of the new framework, government, labour and business are committed to meeting immediately should any breaches or blockages arise.

To watch a video in which Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe answers MiningWeekly’s questions, scan the barcode on page 9 with TagReader (at www.gettag.mobi) on your cellphone, or go to ‘Multimedia’ and then ‘Video Clips’ on www.miningweekly.com.