A colossal golden mine dump looks over Eloff Street in downtown Johannesburg.
Some may consider it just another unsightly blemish on the city skyline but it is a heritage site and a reminder of the lust for gold that has consumed Jo’burg and South Africa since its discovery in 1886.
Teba Limited, a mining labour recruitment agency, has rested under the shadow of this heap for more than 106 years. It has always focused on the recruitment and management of local and foreign labour but as the mining industry and country have changed, it has reinvented itself to keep up. James Motlatsi, Teba’s executive chairman, says the company’s role was to recruit unskilled labour from Southern African countries. “At that time the mining industry was ruthless and Teba, it was also ruthless.”
Motlatsi says context is important: “Teba was the instrument of a controversial industry.” The agency functioned during apartheid and only unskilled black workers were used as mine labourers. “Teba was controversial, but it was the industry which was controversial.”
As a young man, Motlatsi was recruited by Teba from Lesotho in 1970 to work on the mines where he earned 40 cents an hour. Since then, conditions in the mines have changed drastically. “Mineworkers, back then, were treated as subhuman by the industry.”
Motlatsi recalls waking up at 3am every morning. He and fellow workers were to remain naked for several hours while they bathed and were subjected to fitness and health inspections.
Acclimatisation was another practice all mineworkers were put through. New arrivals would have to step up and down concrete slabs in the stuffy mines for four hours a day, eight days in a row. The risks were also much higher then. “They died like flies and were buried like dogs,” says Motlatsi, referring to thousands of unmarked graves left behind by the mining industry.
Addressing the problems
Like so many others, Motlatsi was split from his family. Workers were not even given days off to bury family members. “We had to complete the contract.” Graham Herbert, Teba’s managing director, says a big effort is being made by the mines to address long-term problems associated with the industry such as illiteracy, poor pay and broken families.
He says that, although the mines are making an effort to build more family accommodation and are offering miners the option to live outside the compounds, “many miners choose to live in the hostel”. “It’s part of the lifestyle. And the quality of food is better.” The legacy of illiteracy in the industry is a problem, but adult basic literacy training is now available to workers and Motlatsi says it is now up to the individual to pursue it.
The turning point in the industry was on December 4 1982 when the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was formed. Motlatsi was a founding member and the union’s first president. He always advocated the idea of development in the industry and in 2000 was given a chance to implement his ideas. At a mining summit that year the mining houses committed themselves to playing a more developmental role in the industry and decided that Teba, then owned by the Chamber of Mines, would act as their developmental agent.
Anglo-American’s Bobby Godsell approached Motlatsi. “He said to me, the idea of the industry becoming developmental — it was your idea.” He suggested that Motlatsi join Teba and drive the idea of development from within the agency itself. So he resigned from NUM and joined the agency.
“My idea was very simple,” says Motlatsi. “The mining houses would set some money aside. A Teba agent would establish projects and the projects would use retrenched mineworkers so that they could generate their own income.” But things didn’t go that way and Motlatsi says it was virtually impossible to get funds.
Proposals were made to mining houses and agreed on, yet there was never any implementation. Five years after joining Teba, Motlatsi had made such little progress that he was on the point of leaving. But then he bought the agency and set up an employee trust and signed over 25% of the company to 600 employees.
“It was a gift,” says Herbert. The employees were not required to pay for the shares and each see returns of R10 000 a year. “It helps people to think like owners, not employees.”
Rebuilding
Traditionally, Motlatsi says, Teba had two functions in the rural areas — it would recruit labourers and it would be a messenger of bad news when miners died. But now workers can send money home to their families through Teba and the agency is engaging in home-based care for terminally ill mineworkers. With the help of donor funding, the agency provides clean water and sanitation, runs agricultural projects and assists in the building of schools in several communities.
“We spend R130-million on development per annum,” says Herbert. “It has a tremendous social impact and people rely on us as a last resort.” The agency was formed in 1902 to eliminate competition between recruits from inside and outside South Africa.
Teba was created through the merger of two agencies — Wanela, which recruited outside the country, and the Native Recruiting Corporation, which brought in labourers from local areas. When Herbert and Motlatsi began at Teba 10 years ago, the ratio of foreign labour to South African was 60% to 40%.
Of the South Africans, Herbert says, 80% came from former homelands such as the Transkei in the Eastern Cape. The reason for a larger percentage of foreigners was that mines did not want to be reliant on labour from some areas. “It was about managing risk,” he says.
But since changes were made to the Immigration Act the ratio has been reversed and the employment of foreign novices has been prohibited. Teba, Motlatsi says, is not a labour broker; most mining houses do their own recruiting and simply require Teba to process their recruits. “We don’t charge individuals but we charge the [mining] houses for services rendered to them.”
Herbert says labour brokers are a “dime a dozen” and often have a bad reputation for exploiting illegal immigrants. “It is quite easy to mislead the poor and the desperate. That is why not charging the workers is so important. It is the simplest way to keep things straight.” Teba facilitates labour pools in communities, which function independently and are valuable.
In the Limpopo area of Sekhu-khuneland there has never been a culture of mining. But now that mining opportunities have opened up there, the situation has become chaotic, Herbert says. “When a poor area suddenly finds there are jobs available it attracts employers, community leaders and dishonest opportunists.” Local chiefs in the area are trying to enforce the idea of using labour only from the community but most of their skilled workers work in Welkom.
Herbert says illegal mining and syndicates pose a major problem: “Corrupt relationships threaten the industry and certainly threaten Teba.” But the diminishing reserves of gold, which will last only another five years, are also a challenge to Teba, although Herbert says production has been fairly good of late. South Africa also mines gold deeper than any other country, which is expensive.
Teba recruits primarily for the gold and platinum mines and might need to focus on other areas. But South Africa’s extensive platinum reserves, which account for 85% of international supply, promise continued employment for miners and the skills required to mine gold and platinum are similar: “Both are deep-level, hard rock mining,” says Herbert. Coal and diamond mines are small-scale producers compared to gold and platinum. Motlatsi agrees: “The future of the mining industry now is platinum.”
Change for the better
Lesiba Seshoka, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) national spokesperson, agrees that conditions in the mines have changed for the better. Issues of pay, services and no retirement funds have been addressed in the industry since the formation of NUM.
“There was no such thing as a retirement package. Workers would receive boots, an overall or a watch depending on years of service,” he says. “But there are still areas which require improvement.”
Seshoka says a particular concern is the smaller mining houses. Improvements are being implemented but they are still lagging behind other larger mining companies.
He is upbeat about the future of mining, despite the depleted gold reserves. South Africa, he says, has seen a significant emergence of platinum.
“We are the third largest producer of gold in the world, but we are the leader in platinum — all the largest platinum mines are here.”