The extraordinary Reuters story of how an Advocate and a Bishop were the catalysts in ending the five month platinum mining strike has been very well read on Biznews – and around the world. On CNBC Africa Power Lunch today, the Advocate, Dali Mpofu, came through to the studio to talk about how he got involved, the role he played and the lessons to be learnt from the destructive intervention of ANC bigwigs. A former chief executive of the SA Broadcasting Corporation, Mpofu also had some fascinating comments about the recent developments at the SABC. That part comes right at the end of our discussion. – AH
ALEC HOGG: Welcome back to Power Lunch. Talks to end the five-month platinum strike were successful to a degree, but were it not for the intervention of a bishop and a lawyer the platinum workers might yet, still be on strike. That is what the international news agency Reuters reported this week, in an in-depth analysis – talking to the various people who were involved. One of the key players is Advocate Dali Mpofu, who joins us here in our CNBC Africa studio. Dali, thanks for making the short trip from your chambers across the road.
DALI MPOFU: Thanks, Alec.
ALEC HOGG: How did you get involved in the first place, in trying to end the strike?
DALI MPOFU: Well, it’s a long story, Alec. As you might know, I’ve been involved with the Marikana Commission – with the community there – with the workers for almost two years now, since the tragedy of 2012. That led into a situation where… Actually, this started last year. Last year, there was a bit of a commotion when the commemoration of the massacre was about to happen with all sorts of stakeholders wanting to play a part. The workers then decided that they wanted three people to drive the process. They asked for Bishop Seoka, Mr (Joseph) Mathunjwa, and me to be the drivers of that event, and it went off smoothly. We accommodated all the political parties. Jumping over now to the crisis with the strike… Ironically, it was the Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy whom I know very well from my ANC days, who suggested, just after the elections, because he knew that I have a good relationship with Mathunjwa and with the workers, whether I could assist in introducing them to Mathunjwa because didn’t know him.
ALEC HOGG: The ANC didn’t know Mathunjwa.
DALI MPOFU: And what I thought could be done to end the impasse… I then related exactly what I’ve told you now, and suggested that if they wanted me to be involved, we should also bring in the Bishop because of the credibility that we already enjoyed with the workers and with AMCU, which might be capital that could be used. One thing led to another. Thereafter, the new Minister was appointed and when he started his process, Mathunjwa suggested that I should get involved. I suppose he also doesn’t know the ANC people that well, as much as I do, so he was wanting to know from me ‘can we trust this one? Can we trust that one?’ I had to play that kind of role.
ALEC HOGG: It is historic. You have a level of trust, a high degree of trust and so does the Bishop, but the Reuters story suggests that the influence of the Minister was more destructive than adding any value. Is that accurate?
DALI MPOFU: Not completely. Surprisingly, the Reuters story has some good details. Whomever they spoke to obviously, was one of the insiders, but there are some inaccuracies. I think the Minister was well meaning. I think he really wanted to shine for whatever reasons and resolve this.
ALEC HOGG: New job…
DALI MPOFU: Yes, he wanted a quick win, which is understandable. The tragic part is the fact that clearly, the ANC had jitters about a solution coming through, and I suspect the real reason was very sinister. They thought that should a victory come to AMCU that would spell the doom of NUM so they are forcing the Minister to withdraw abruptly.
ALEC HOGG: Who forced him?
DALI MPOFU: Yes, what happened is that we actually had a meeting on the Friday where we had made some progress with the Minister. I had even suggested ‘let’s meet the following Monday, close the door, and we just don’t leave. If it’s going to take us five days, we’re just going to sit there’ and that was the kind of understanding. All of a sudden, on the Saturday the Minister called a press conference. There was and NEC Lekgotla going on, so obviously during that, he was arm twisted to withdraw so that we shouldn’t find a solution.
ALEC HOGG: Well, ‘instructed’ is a more…
DALI MPOFU:Â Yes, he was instructed.
ALEC HOGG: What happened on the Monday? When you arrived there, all of a sudden it appeared as though everything was going to…the talks would collapse. That certainly was the feedback that came to us and yet, you managed to pull something out of the fire.
DALI MPOFU: We did. Well, that Monday the Minister basically said ‘look, this is what’s going to happen. You guys carry on. Goodbye’ kind of thing. We said ‘no, even in your statement, you said you are going to use Monday to do a last ditch, so you’re going to be here’ and indeed, he agreed. He sat with us and tried to assist, but we couldn’t find a solution that day and therefore, we had to find other means, which is how the Palazzo Hotel and the story in Reuters… Once the government was out of it for whatever reasons, we then had to find solutions among ourselves.
ALEC HOGG: Why did it take so long and why did it cost so much?
DALI MPOFU: Initially, I think it was a question of trust and that really is the centre of things. I brought in skills as a lawyer and as a former unionist etcetera. The Bishop brought the soft skills and Mathunjwa obviously brought the legitimacy of being the union leader. However, if you cut through all those differences, the central thing with trust – the issue was that the three of us were people who were trusted immensely by the union leadership as well as by the workers themselves.
ALEC HOGG: And you trust Ben Magara from Lonmin, but presumably, not so much the other two Chief Executives because you met with him, and not with them.
DALI MPOFU: Yes, that’s because… Again, Ben Magara… What we’ve been referred to since last year, are the Three Musketeers, so Ben Magara has a history with the Three Musketeers as it were, and he himself, knew the value that would bring, and he used it optimally I think, to his credit. Whenever there was a logjam, he would say ‘look, let’s have breakfast with the Three Musketeers’. We would go off to some place and have breakfast in the morning. Once, we even had a meeting in a hotel, which was next to where the Marikana Commission is because I was busy cross-examining somebody. They said ‘look, even if we just take teatime, we’ll come to you’, so Magara, the Bishop, and Mathunjwa drove to that place so that when I have lunch I can spend half-an-hour and knock off whatever problem there was, and then rush back there.
ALEC HOGG: I was very interested to see – because many of us thought the only way the strike would end, would be through divine intervention – that you prayed before and you prayed after, so it could have been divine intervention. We’ve had it in South Africa before – divine intervention. Perhaps it happened here too, and hence the Bishop’s…
DALI MPOFU: The Bishop played a major role. Some of us can be hot headed, want to bring things to a head, or get frustrated, and he was the calming influence on all of us. He would say ‘look, take it easy. Walk around the block and come back’ etcetera.
ALEC HOGG: The nation owes you a debt for this.
DALI MPOFU: Thank you.
ALEC HOGG: I don’t know if everybody appreciates quite how destructive it could have been right now.
DALI MPOFU: The starvation that was going on in those communities was just that we had to do something.
ALEC HOGG: The whole economic impact… Dali, was this an economic strike or was this ideological?
DALI MPOFU: Look, it’s a bit of both. People say it was political or it was economic. No strike is purely… In South Africa, as you know, we are a very politicised society. No strike can be purely economic. Obviously, issues such as the historical conditions of the mineworkers…and their real gripe was this: ‘20 years after liberation, we are still living in filthy hostels. There has not been a jump in our wages, which were obviously set at a time when we were looked at as inferior’. One of the most enduring things that people would say to me was ‘look, we’re prepared to go through this to the death, as it were’. Why? They would say ‘our grandfathers suffered through this. Our fathers suffered through this. We are suffering through this. We don’t want our children to suffer through this’, so it was much more. You couldn’t argue with that kind of thing at a level of ‘Rands and cents’. It was emotion, history, and politics all rolled into one. That’s why I think it went on for so long and that’s why there was so much determination to see it through. Sometimes logic didn’t come into it.
ALEC HOGG: The logic of this obviously, – and you’re an educated man. You know that if costs of anything go up, you have less of it in the future. Did the workers or AMCU say ‘okay, we know that it’s going to be higher prices and there’ll be less of us employed, but at least those who are employed are going to be better looked after’?
DALI MPOFU: Yes, sometimes we underestimate the collective intelligence of these people, simply because they’re not educated. Even their idea of putting together a team like Bishop, Mathunjwa, and myself is something…it was their own creativity. No matter how you brought the economic arguments etcetera, as you know once the issues have become emotional and laced with history etcetera, people would say ‘look, we understand that we are suffering now, but rather let us suffer so that those who are employed in future can be better rewarded’.
ALEC HOGG: One hopes that lessons have been learned, particularly on trust and on communication. Dali, before you go, you were the CEO at the SABC. There’ve been all kinds of ructions, including a development today.
DALI MPOFU: Yes. Well, I’d rather not go there. All I can say is that it’s pathetic when we get to a situation where skills are not valued, where the message that we send to young people is that you don’t have to work hard to get those degrees or to acquire those skills. All you need is to be connected. We all have said that. I am personally not against cadre deployment, but I always say that even if you are going to employ people who agree with you politically, first and foremost, they must have the skills to do what they have to do. It discredits the whole notion of transformation if you’re literally going to grab some guy from the taxi rank and say ‘go and do Alec Hogg’s job’. That cannot be what it’s about; it has to be about skills. That job is a very complex job, I can tell you.
ALEC HOGG: you know from the inside.
DALI MPOFU: Yes, in many ways, the job of the COO at the SABC is even more complex than the CEO’s job, so I don’t understand how anyone who allegedly does not have Matric can even do it at all.
ALEC HOGG: Dali Mpofu, thank you. Dali Mpofu is an Advocate and as I said before, someone to whom the whole nation owes a very big debt of gratitude. His intervention and his trust helped to end the platinum strike.
