7 November 2000
Mr Rick Menell, President of the Chamber of Mines,
Mr MG Diliza, Chief Executive Officer of the Chamber of Mines,
Distinguished Members of the Chamber,
Guests, ladies and gentlemen:
The historians among us will be familiar with the early 20th century newspaper "South Africa" with its head offices at Winchester House, London, EC., and seemingly a South African newspaper of record.
Even as late as 1911, it still advertised itself as enjoying the "largest circulation of any South African newspaper." In its edition of March 25, 1911 it reported as follows:
"The full text of the speech recently delivered by Mr J. G. Hamilton, in his capacity as President of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines, is now available...The late President of the Chamber is certainly no pessimist as regards the future of the goldfields, and the "bears" will extract little comfort from his remarks.
Mr Hamilton is not indifferent to the difficult problems which still confront the industry, more particularly as regards the economical breaking and hauling of ore, but he finds none of these obstacles insurmountable, nor such as to give rise to any misgivings even in the minds of the most nervously inclined. A fact which will appeal strongly to the thoughtful public is that the industry was the direct means last year of putting into circulation in South Africa no less a sum than P19 000 000, apart altogether from the dividends paid to shareholders resident in the country...As expenditure has increased, so the demand for labour, both skilled and unskilled, has expanded, and opportunities for employment have multiplied. Mr Hamilton's assurance that every effort is being consistently made to engage Europeans where it is economically possible to do so will be welcomed by those who wish to see more Whites and fewer Blacks employed generally on the mines."
An earlier edition of the newspaper, published on February 25, 1911, in which it first reported Mr Hamilton's speech, carries another interesting article that states:
"The annual meeting of (an) important body, (the Transvaal Chamber of Mines) was held in Johannesburg on Thursday. The cablegram giving us an account of its proceedings shows us that the Chamber is still in existence.
So far as an ocular demonstration goes in London one might perhaps be excused for having some doubt on the subject. When a paper of the importance of the Times publishes this from a French correspondent: 'As a matter of fact investors are no longer attracted by Transvaal mines, the majority of which are on the eve of exhaustion', we should have thought it the business of any representative of the Chamber in London to reply to such a reckless and mischievous statement...We ask our readers to carefully read the speech of the President at Thursday's meeting of the Chamber of Mines. It comes as a tonic in these days when the spirit of pessimism broods over the market leaders. Old companies are enlarging their operations, while fresh producers have recently been added and others will soon follow. That is the answer to the Times correspondent we have been quoting, and we hope he will see it."
Mr President, you will remember the remarks made by J.G. Hamilton on the issue of the employment of white workers on the mines.
Interestingly, the earlier February 25th edition that disapprovingly quotes the Times, contains the following report:
"Professor Stanley Kidd, writing in the Grahamstown Journal and discussing the problem of Black industrial competition with Whites, says: 'The extent to which skilled native labour is already competing with White labour is hardly sufficiently realised. What then of the future? Every year more and more natives will be turned out by industrial institutions, and there will be a still larger increase in the number of those who become skilled labourers by a less thorough process, that of experience and observation.
Some speak of 50 years as the limit of the White artisan's reign in South Africa, but more reliable observers maintain that in ten years or less the White artisan will be, except in special cases, squeezed out of the country.
The are, of course, certain elements in favour of the longer term. The greatest comfort to the anxious European is that religion and education are...increasing the wants and greatly raising the standard of comfort of the natives. There will be more and better houses to be built, better furniture to be put in them. The natives, it is thought, will themselves employ the greater part of this skilled labour...In the long run, perhaps, the native standard of comfort will approximate to that of the European, and the rates of wages will become more equal. In the meantime the white artisan will have to suffer severely, and he will undoubtedly not give in without causing great political trouble.'"
To which the newspaper comments:
"All the best artisans in South Africa soon become master men in one way or another, and those who fail to do so are not likely to possess the energy required even for the creation of political trouble. South Africa will soon put down the professional agitator."
I do not know whether the author of these comments was aware of the comments made by the leader of the South African Labour Party, the Hon Frederic Creswell, MP, during the debate on the issue of 'White Labour' at the February 7th, 1911 session of the House of Assembly.
These remarks were reproduced in the March 4th edition of the newspaper, as follows:
"Mr Creswell moved: That in the opinion of this House (1) The widening of the field of employment for the white population is essential to the well-being of this Union; (2) the continued importation of alien native labourers from territories beyond its borders is undesirable in that it tends to narrow the field of White employment; and (3) a commencement should at once be made to curtail such importation by prohibiting the entry into the Union of natives recruited in territories situated north of the 22nd degree of south latitude...(In the beginning) there was a large number of individual companies; gradually those became amalgamated into large groups, and gradually those were becoming more and more under one control until they would have the Witwatersrand under the heel of one financial organisation just as Kimberley was under the heel of De Beers. On one side they had the power of the purse, and on the other labour.
The White man was getting less and less and was employed in less and less numbers...White men's livelihood, the bread and butter of their wives and children, were being affected by the encroachment of Black labour into industries fostered by the laws of the country. That was the sort of the thing he desired to stop."
The Hon Patrick Duncan participated in this debate. The newspaper "South Africa" quotes him as saying that:
"He had always found that in any speeches he had had to make in the part of the country he represented, if there was one section of the people more bitterly opposed to immigration than another it was those people who called themselves the Labour Party."
The historians among us will, of course, remember that history proved both Professor Stanley Kidd and the newspaper "South Africa" right.
I refer here to the Professor's prediction that the white artisans were likely to cause 'great political trouble' and the newspaper's response that 'South Africa will soon put down the professional agitator.' These artisans took to arms during the Rand Revolt of 1922, a revolt that the Smuts government soon put down with merciless violence and brutality.
Whatever the level of competence of each one of us in the history of our country, I am certain that all of us will be familiar with one or another of the elements of our past mentioned in the 90-year-old newspaper reports we have cited.
But I quoted these extracts not merely to remind us of some of the debates that surrounded the mining industry, one year after the formation of the Union of South Africa and one year before the foundation of the African National Congress. I believe that our current circumstances dictate that we should, so to speak and to quote a phrase, go back to basics.
This 110th Annual General Meeting of the Chamber of Mines presents us with as good an opportunity as any to reflect on the future of mining and its larger role in the new South Africa and Africa we are all trying to rebuild, bearing in mind the fundamental reality of the process of globalisation.
The Minerals Development Bill with which you are all familiar is itself a response to the history that produced the newspaper reports we have quoted.
Again I believe that the mere fact of the elaboration of this Bill signals precisely this point that the times in which we are condemned to live and work, impose an obligation on all of us as South Africans to consider the basics of our mining industry.
Some among us, under corporate or other pressures to decide urgent and important questions on a daily basis, may consider this obligation as an obnoxious irritant that is best ignored, in favour of gains that must be made, and losses that must be avoided, today rather than tomorrow.
My own view, firmly held, is that those of us who are alive today, those of us who are present in this hall, sit with an extraordinary opportunity for which all future generations will envy us.
The opportunity we have is to make a new start in defining the role of the mining industry in our country, as we have begun to do. Yet again, the mining industry, the workers, the managers and the shareholders as well as the democratic state, have a possibility to embark on a road that will help to decide where our country should go and how easy that walk will be to a new reality.
This time, these stakeholders have the possibility to act together to produce an outcome that will benefit both themselves and all our people.
It will never be that I consider such an exciting historic opportunity as an obnoxious irritant that must either be ignored or resisted.
I am pleased and moved that this Chamber of Mines is of the same mind, as was demonstrated by its participation in the Mining Summit earlier this year and its contribution to the elaboration of and its support for the important decisions taken at the Summit.
With your permission, let me mention some of the lessons I think we should learn from our history, some of which is reflected in the 1911 newspaper excerpts we have cited.
In response to the misgivings of the nervously inclined, including those like the French correspondent of the London Times, who believed in 1911 that the Transvaal mines were 'on the eve of exhaustion', this AGM must repeat the message that mining in our country is a sunrise and not a sunset industry.
We must state this firmly that mining will continue to be a critically important player in ensuring the growth and development of our economy and society and the building of a better life for all our people.
Nothing, least of all the determination to create that better life for all our people, including those in mining, is 'on the eve of exhaustion'.
I believe we must communicate this message both to ourselves and the rest of the world.
In 1911, the newspaper "South Africa" wrote of 'reckless and mischievous' statements being made by some from the rest of the world about our country and a 'spirit of pessimism (that) broods over the market leaders'.
It challenged the London representative of the Chamber of Mines to reply to such statements, saying that this representative only needed to cite the objective reality of the development of mining in South Africa, to demonstrate that the spirit of pessimism was misplaced.
We would like to repeat this advice. Let all of us as South Africans communicate one simple message to the rest of the world -judge us by the forward movement that is taking place in our country! Take into account the fact that we have problems, but that none of these is insurmountable! Let us tell the whole world that we accept that we will make mistakes. Nevertheless, we assert this unequivocally, that our future is defined by the certainty of success and not by what is said by those who are driven by a spirit of pessimism, according to which our mineral deposits should have run out 90 years ago! From this AGM we must communicate the message to our country and the world that the mining industry remains a central force in the increase in the demand for labour and the multiplication of opportunities for employment, as the President of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines said in 1911.
The challenge of unemployment remains as urgent today as it did nine decades ago, when Africans had to come onto the labour market as a result on land dispossession and the imposition of the poll tax, and Afrikaners had to seek jobs because of the tragedy imposed upon them by the Anglo-Boer or South African War of 1899 - 1902.
Then, the Transvaal Chamber of Mines was proud to proclaim its contribution to the solution of the problem of unemployment in South Africa.
It can be argued with justification that the challenge has never been more pressing than it is today, that we unite as a people to end unemployment and therefore radically reduce the levels of poverty in our country.
I believe that a sunrise industry, such as mining, cannot but pledge by word, and demonstrate in action, that it is prepared to play its role to address this common national problem. All of us also enjoy the advantage that we can learn lessons from mistakes that our forebears committed.
During their own day and in their own circumstances, these ancestors of ours thought and did certain things, morally and intellectually convinced that they were right.
Most of us now know that racism is bad for our country and people. We would therefore disagree with both the President of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines, J.G. Hamilton and the leader of the Labour Party, Frederic Creswell, that the mining industry should have any taint of racism in its policies and practices.
The implication of this must surely be that as this Chamber, working both with the unions and our democratically elected government, we must make a commitment to remove all vestiges of the legacy of racism in the mining industry.
As part of this we have to understand that it will take recognition of the fact that a problem exists and that a solution must be found, as well as time and persistence, for us, jointly, to overcome the legacy of racism in mining.
Together we can and must recognise the truth of what Professor Stanley Kidd wrote in 1911, about the innate ability of all South Africans, both black and white, to acquire and use all skills that are necessary for participation in the economy.
This done, we have to ensure that all of us participate in the skills development programmes to which we have all agreed, with the necessary vigour and enthusiasm.
We must, in practice, recognise the fact that our own future depends on the levels of education and training of all our people and our capacity to integrate ourselves within the modern global society of rapid technological and scientific development.
As an industry, we must continue to create the space for new mining entrepreneurs to emerge, in part to deracialise ownership and to encourage the development of small and medium mining ventures.
We have to work hard to implement the decision we took at the Mining Summit to encourage the beneficiation of the minerals we produce, to ensure that our country progresses beyond the historic role of producer and exporter of raw materials.
In this regard, we have to devote more resources to issues of research and development, including the training and retaining in our country of the scientists, engineers and technicians we need to move ourselves decisively into the ranks of the developed countries of the world.
All of us know that this is critical to the achievement of the vision of an African Renaissance, which includes the modernisation of our economies and the eradication of underdevelopment and poverty.
In this context, I would also like to pay tribute to the mining companies and all those who work in this sector for the contribution they are making to the strengthening and reconstruction of the economies of many sister African countries. Nevertheless, I would like to plead that we work in these countries as equal partners with the African peoples in whose countries we conduct mining, without arrogance and committed to the vision of African development and shared prosperity. Our government is determined to work with everybody in the mining industry in a spirit of co-operation, to ensure that everybody, both inside and outside our country, benefits from a vibrant South African and African mining industry.
I am certain that we will also continue our co-operation as we jointly respond to the needs both of those who might get retrenched and the rural communities that have supplied miners to our mines for over a century.
Clearly, the struggle against poverty among these communities, for sustainable development and better health, including freedom from HIV/AIDS, must stand at the centre of our common efforts.
I believe that there is no difference among us that, as we make decisions that will position mining as a truly sunrise industry, we must deal with the issue of mineral rights once and for all.
I would also like to believe that we would also agree that the mineral resources of our country are a common heritage of all South Africans, which we must exploit to benefit all our people, regardless of race or gender.
I am also convinced that as we seek to establish a new regime with regard to the issue of mineral rights, we will do this in a manner that seeks to secure the widest possible national consensus on this matter.
I believe that this consensus should be based, among other things, on a common determination to redress the racist legacy we have all inherited; the need not to impact negatively on current mining, planned investment, property rights and the rule of law; the opening up of mining to new domestic and international entrants, including moving towards best international practice; and, the further elevation of the mining industry as a central contributor to the fundamental objective of the overall reconstruction and development of our country and the continuous improvement of the quality of life of all our people. As you are aware, we have sought to achieve these and other objectives as a consequent of agreement among all players in the mining industry.
For this reason, to enable the greatest possible interaction among these players, we delayed the processes leading to the adoption by our parliament of the necessary legislation.
We remain committed to the view that as a country and a nation, we will succeed best if we opt for the path of co-operation, rather than the route of confrontation.
However, for this approach to emerge victorious, all of us must be ready to enter into compromises.
None of us should pursue our partisan interests as though these, and only these, have merit.
None of us should use ultimata to impose on our society outcomes that serve our special interests best, regardless of other interests in our country that are as legitimate as our own.
Least of all should we threaten to use such power, ways and means as we may have, to win our battles, regardless of the damage we may cause to the very success of the struggle of all our people to build a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist, prosperous, peaceful and winning country.
I say all this because all of us have seen how the various interest groups in our country have sought to ensure that, as a society, we define and conduct ourselves as a federation of different and competing interest groups.
According to this paradigm, each of these groups has a right to impose itself on the rest, with no consideration for the implications of the injunction conveyed by the motto on our national Coat of Arms -!KE E: /XARRA //KE - let diverse people come together! Accordingly, I have heard people threaten violence and murder to achieve their goals.
I have heard others threaten us with a strike of domestic and foreign investors.
I have heard yet others threaten to paralyse government through strike action, so that no pensions are paid, children at our schools are not taught and patients at hospitals are not attended to.
I am convinced that we will sink or swim together. I am also convinced that we must respect the fact that indeed we belong to different interest groups, each with a right to pursue its unique objectives.
All of us will have to do everything that has to be done to encourage among ourselves the culture of Masakhane, to understand that our success as a country depends both on the pursuit of our individual interests, and the willingness to accommodate and tolerate the views and interests of others, even if these conflict with our own.
When Nelson Mandela spoke of a new patriotism, it was to such matters that he referred. It is these matters that we must consider as we interact on questions such as mineral rights, the future of the mining industry and its impact on the environment.
Today, as mine workers, managers, shareholders and a mining country, we stand in the front ranks of the mining industry globally. What we do attracts the attention of the people of the world.
What we do must communicate to the rest of the world the message that we constitute an industry that knows and carries out its responsibilities to the societies in which it earns its profits and generates wages and salaries; that values the humanity, the rights, health and safety of its workers; that protects the environment; and, that recognises the leading role it has to play in helping to pull the poor and underdeveloped, especially in Africa, out of poverty and underdevelopment.
On behalf of your government and in my own name, I wish you success in your deliberations at this important 110th AGM of the Chamber of Mines.
Thank you.