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Trade union Solidarity says finality will at last be obtained today about whether a dispute about rock-drill operators’ pay was the real reason behind the wildcat strike and related violence at Lonmin’s Marikana mine outside Rustenburg.

Gideon du Plessis, General Secretary of Solidarity, says that since 10 August 2012 it has been speculated that the violence at Lonmin resulted from rivalry between trade unions or was even politically motivated because of the organised and violent way in which the armed strikers and protesters launched the action. “Questions also arose about whether many of the striking workers and their representatives are, in fact, employees of Lonmin and whether the majority of them are, indeed, rock-drill operators.”

Du Plessis says that should the striking workers return to work today in accordance with the peace accord and should those protesters who are not Lonmin employees withdraw from the unofficial strike, thereby allowing wage negotiations to start, the protest action clearly relates to a wage dispute alone, which may well be resolved. “If the wildcat strike, the illegal protest action and the accompanying intimidation continue today in spite of the opportunity to resolve the dispute by means of wage negotiations, then this violent protest action clearly has a more deep-seated cause and therefore will be difficult to resolve through wage negotiations.”