Hon Speaker, hon members, Azapo wants to be sure what crisis we are talking about. For us the crisis did not start in the past few months. The problem we have is that mineworkers continue to be exploited. They work under unbearable conditions. They live and stay in subhuman conditions. To top it all, they are still being paid starvation wages. Mineworkers have by and large been abandoned by their trade unions, as trade union leaders are involved in the kind of politics that have nothing to do with the wellbeing of workers.
We have read and heard about union leaders colluding with mine bosses in deciding how to deal with the workers. Collective bargaining has taken a knock, because workers have lost confidence in their own leaders and they have created parallel leadership structures. That is the crisis that we have in the mining sector. The strikes that we have now are a response to the problem that mineworkers have faced from time immemorial.
Azapo condemned and continues to condemn the violence that has accompanied some of the strikes, including the cold-blooded murder of workers at Marikana.
The Good Book tells us that we will eat from the sweat of our own brows. The bosses are eating from the sweat of the workers. The workers are singing now: Asiyifuni i-ajenda yama-capitalist. [We do not want the capitalist agenda.] The workers are singing now: Kudala sisebenzela amabhunu, basebenzi masihlanganeni [We have worked so long for the Boers, let us unite as workers.].
The bosses might have become darker, but some of them are equally ruthless. That is the crisis we have. The crisis we have is that communities that have mines around them are poor and they don't benefit from the wealth that is in their communities. That is the crisis. Now the strikes that we see are just a sign of what has been happening. That is not the crisis in our view. We thank you.