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The Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) is putting half a million jobs at risk in a numbers game about the race of mine owners, trade union Solidarity said today. As usual, the enrichment of a small elite will come at the expense of ordinary workers.

Gideon du Plessis, Solidarity General Secretary, says it is irresponsible of the DMR to fuel uncertainty in the already beleaguered mining industry in South Africa. “The DMR’s recently released calculations of ownership according to race in the mining industry are incorrect and an opportunistic misinterpretation of the Mining Charter. Moreover, it is contemptuous of the 500 000 people still precariously employed in the mining industry. The DMR is basically sacrificing jobs in order to create a few black diamonds.”

Du Plessis added that Solidarity is not oblivious to South Africa’s history, but transformation cannot be more important than the sustainability of the mining industry. “It is concerning that so much debate and energy go into the racial transformation of the industry, instead of changing the mining industry from a sunset industry to one over which the sun is shining – which will actually benefit the poor.”

Du Plessis says a stronger mining industry must be the ship on which true empowerment and employment can take place, but that an obsession with the racial transformation of shareholding is setting the ship on course for the rocks. “The current ideological fixation with racial transformation of ownership will be the death of the mining industry, at the expense of workers,” says Du Plessis.

Issued by Solidarity