[miningmx.com] – JOSEPH Mathunjwa, president of the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU), said he objected to unions having business links operating near where his unions had majority representation.
Speaking on the Midday Report, a programme aired by Talk Radio 702, Mathunjwa also expressed his antipathy for business leaders with links to unions and used the Marikana murders as an example of the consequences of such links.
Mathunjwa said these were issues that he wanted addressed before his union could sign the proposed framework agreement presented by deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe in Pretoria yesterday. The framework agreement was signed by all participants except for AMCU which is taking the matter back to members for further debate.
“We are committed to peace but these things have to be addressed,” Mathunjwa said. “We have to go back to our members. If the members say we must not sign the deal then we won’t sign it,” Mathunjwa told Talk Radio 702.
Mathunjwa’s comments express the parlous nature of AMCU’s involvement in the framework agreement which sets down conditions considered by business to be an important preface to gold and platinum wage talks later this month.
Mathunjwa added that the impartiality of the South African government would be raised again if his union’s reservations about the business links held by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) could not be incorporated into the agreement.
The NUM has two companies through which its investments are held: Numprop and the Mineworkers’ Investment Company (MIC).
Both are owned by the NUM’s Mineworkers’ Investment Trust (MIT), in which its top officials are trustees. The trust was established in 1995 “to improve the quality of life for its members and former members, and their dependants through investment opportunities’.
Numprop has a business relationship with Xstrata through the Tubatse Estate, a housing development in the Limpopo mining town of Burgersfort. Numprop is the joint developer of the estate with Commercial South African Properties.
