JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The controversy surrounding the Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) platinum review emphasised the need for more engagement and trust-building between government, labour and mining companies, former Anglo American South Africa head Kuseni Dlamini said on national radio on Tuesday.

Speaking during an often-heated Xolani Gwala-hosted radio debate on SAfm's AMLive – in which ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, Webber Wentzel’s Africa mining head Peter Leon and Cadiz Corporate Solutions mining head Peter Major took part – Dlamini said steps needed to be taken to deal with the issue of “the trust deficit” between government, labour and mining companies.

“There’s a need to really focus on building bridges and making sure that there’s a respect-based, honest conversation between the different parties,” he said, advocating that the platinum industry should model its downsizing on that of the gold-mining industry of ten years ago.

Maximum benefit for South Africa needed to be extracted out of the current turmoil, which should be used as an opportunity to put an end to divisions and arrive at constructive solutions.

Leon said he agreed completely with Dlamini’s approach and particularly the emulation of the gold industry’s downsizing model.

“There’s been a lot of shouting and hopefully cooler heads will prevail. Hopefully there will be less rhetoric and more discussion,” Leon added, drawing attention to the R800-million social fund that Amplats was offering to soften the blow of the possible 14 000 retrenchments.

Leon regretted that the attack on Amplats had ignored the tripartite agreement between government, labour and business that was meant to take precedence.

Mantashe denied that there was policy uncertainty and said that Mangaung had brought policy certainty.

Anglo American, on the other hand, had "stolen our money" by turning what was a South African company into a British company, Mantashe added.

Amplats, which had been built on the back of South African labour, was now not respecting South Africa as a sovereign country.

He resented South Africa being treated as a junior partner, by Amplats making a pronouncement ahead of proper engagement with government and labour.

Major pointed out that, of the 14 000 people Amplats had earmarked for retrenchment, well over 4 000 were set to be redeployed into the wider Anglo American group and the mining industry as a whole, with remaining retrenched mineworkers being offered upskilling in order to prepare them for new non-mining job opportunities.

Major drew attention to 45 000 workers being laid off in the UK recently without anyone being consulted.

On the need for talks, Major said: “They’ve got to all go into a room, lock the door, take out the water and cut the air conditioning, and make the three parties work together – government, labour and the companies – like they did in the nineties when the platinum price was much, much lower than it is now and the mines were profitable.

“People were behaving like adults in the nineties and now they’re behaving like kids,” Major complained.

While robust debate was under way in public, Mineral Resources Department spokesperson Zingaphi Jakuja confirmed to Mining Weekly Online via SMS that formal government, labour and mining company platinum task team talks would take place this week under the umbrella of the mining industry growth, development and employment body, Migdett.

The Sowetan wrote, however, that a veil of secrecy had been thrown over the agenda for this week’s consultation meeting, which had been called to resolve the controversial issues bedevilling the platinum-mining sector.