Speaker, how terrible! How terrible that in a democracy, we have to stand here and talk about the violent killing of 44 of our countrymen. It is incumbent on us to look into why this happened and to ensure that it never happens again!
I am sure I am not alone in wondering why we do not seem to have progressed as a country. When I heard the news of these shootings, I was catapulted back to 1985 when, as a young journalist, I first heard the news of the shootings at Langa, near Uitenhage. The police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. I still remember the shock in the voice of the first eyewitness who called through to Capital Radio News to report this event. Why is it that 27 years later we still seem to be repeating history?
Some have blamed Lonmin. Questions must be put to the mine management. The CEO was ill, and it seems nobody with sufficient authority or skills had been nominated to replace him. An already poisonous situation was made worse.
Hon Chief Whip of the Majority Party, of course, we must look at the socioeconomic circumstances. However, we must not use them as an excuse to duck the immediate and proximate causes. Amid the litany of failures last week, two stand out. One is a failure of our policing, and the second is the failure of our system of industrial relations.
Why are the police operating without a proper doctrine for crowd control? There have been at least 113 service delivery protests up until the end of July this year. How can we have police management that has not put proper crowd control doctrines in place? The answer, of course, is that when the ANC picks police chiefs, it does not choose them because they are good at policing, it chooses them because they are good at saying yes to the ANC. Any ability to understand policing is purely co-incidental.
One can feel for the police officers on the spot. They were underequipped, undertrained, badly led, and faced by a large number of people who seem to have been out for blood. Already two officers had been horribly killed. We can only imagine the mindset of their colleagues - nervous, perhaps, or vengeful. What, I wonder, was the mood of the police at Marikana? I hope the judicial inquiry will help us find out.
The DA understands the current labour dispensation only too well, hon Chief Whip of the Majority Party, which is why we pose the following question: Eighteen years after the advent of democracy, why are our industrial relations so violent? And this was not an isolated case! It is rather part of a pattern of violence that seems built into the system, particularly where the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Cosatu, unions are involved. But despite the violence, unions have never been accountable for the actions of their members. If we want different results, this must change.
Six years ago, for example, the strike by the Cosatu-affiliated South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, Satawu, led not to 40, but 69 deaths. To my knowledge, nobody has been prosecuted, much less convicted for those killings. The truth is that the violent template of our industrial relations system has been established by Cosatu. It has merely been replicated by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, Amcu.
One of the big lessons that had to be learned by government in our stormy past was that, when it comes to industrial relations, you cannot just talk to your friends. So why has this government been so reluctant to talk to Amcu? How can the Minister not be aware of Amcu? The Minister should read the papers, or she should fire her advisors, because she is wasting our money by paying them. Anyway, I think she proves my point.
Perhaps she can tell us why she cancelled the scheduled meeting with Amcu last week. Was that on the advice of the Minister of Labour? Can the Minister assure this House that it was not as a result of instruction or advice from Cosatu?
When I suggested to the Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources that we hear from Amcu some months ago, there was a metaphorical shrieking and jumping onto chairs. We were told that we could not meet them because they were not recognised. That reminded me of the previous regime. We have to change the way we do things, because if we do not, we will be back here again talking about more shootings, similar to the ones that happened at Marikana. [Applause.]