The wage and housing agreement that the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) struck last week with JSE-listed Royal Bafokeng Platinum (RBPlat) shows that boardroom bargaining tops pyrrhic brawling. Instead of engaging in five months of mayhem, the NUM succeeded in round-tabling RBPlat into giving the lowest-rung mineworkers matching wages plus home ownership. The agreement jettisoned living-out allowances and put a finite horizon on the migrant labour system, which sociologists isolate as the root cause of the turmoil in the platinum belt. Read on page 12 of this edition of Mining Weekly of the lowest paid not only heading for R12 500 a month basic pay in three years but also able to elevate that to R14 594 by working overtime and earning bonuses. More than 3 000 houses are under construction to support a family-orientated lifestyle and RBPlat has agreed to subsidise bond repayments to ensure that all workers own their own homes by 2030.

Platinum sales continued “at normal levels” to all platinum customers during the five-month strike in the platinum belt. That is the amazing news that Anglo American has been able to share ahead of its presentation of financial results today. Astonishingly, the longest strike in South African history has “failed to affect” the platinum processing operations of Anglo American Platinum, whose refined platinum production remained “in line” with last year’s second quarter performance, supplemented by pipeline stock. Read on page 6 of this edition of Mining Weekly of Anglo American also increasing production of iron-ore, export coal and diamonds from its South African mines and the lucrative Mogalakwena platinum mine, in Limpopo, hitting record high production. “A reasonable quarter,” said Investec’s mining analysts and “exactly in line,” said Liberum’s analysts, who also threw cold water on the likelihood of Anglo American selling the under-performing Amandelbult, Rustenburg and Union underground platinum in the short term, as has been speculated.

Some 60 000 former mineworkers, from the traditional labour- sending areas of Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and the North West and the neighbouring states of Mozambique, Swaziland and Botswana, have now come forward to claim an estimated R5-billion in unpaid pension, provident fund and service-award claims. Read on page 8 of this edition of Mining Weekly of the current disbursement methods needing urgent reform to prevent the already large financial backlog from worsening. It is estimated that 200 000 former mineworkers and their beneficiaries have unpaid claims and one million awards are said to require analysis. Changes to the Pension Funds Act allow for a portion of the interest that has been accruing on the claims to go towards tracing costs.