Countdown: Mineworkers in Rustenburg burned NUM merchandise during the wage talks and strike that led up to the Marikana debacle
The once all-powerful National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) continues to shed members, ending 2015 at two-thirds of its size in 2011.
It currently has about 198 000 members, down by 110 391 from 308 628 members four years ago.
That roughly correlates with the rise of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and retrenchments in the mining industry.
Between January and December last year, NUM lost 17 642 members, an 8% decrease and its largest membership loss since 2012, when 20% of its members – 56 161 workers – left the union.
To make things worse, the union has operated on a financial deficit since 2013, which is currently sits at R14.9-million.
“We need to reduce the spending patterns and utilise the savings to recruit more members,” NUM’s general secretary, David Sipunzi, said during his secretariat report on Thursday.
“It will be suicidal if we remain silent about the impact of the membership decline and the sad state of our finances.
“Since 2013 … the union has been operating from hand to mouth. If we do not do something with this situation this union is going down the tube,” he said.
Despite this dire situation, the net asset value of the NUM-owned Mineworkers Investment Trust at the end of 2015 was estimated at R3-billion, Simphiwe Nanise, the MIT’s chief operating officer, said this week.
The union was started by Cyril Ramaphosa (now deputy president of the country) and has produced the likes of Kgalema Motlanthe and Gwede Mantashe, who went on to take up posts in the top six of the ANC’s leadership.
At its peak, the NUM was trade union federation Cosatu’s largest affiliate.
“Without money, there is no organisation,” said NUM president Piet Matosa in his opening address this week. “Reducing the decline of membership is an obligation and not a choice. We must refuse to be the memory that buried the NUM. If we are not strategic, we will be the undertaker leadership that buried the movement.”
He said the union’s leadership had embarked on a rescue mission.
“Comrade Frans Baleni [a former general secretary] and myself were part of the phase leading up to the decline. Comrade David Sipunzi and myself are now bound to pull the NUM out of decline,” Matosa told the meeting.
Branch and regional NUM leaders were also accused of conniving against their own members by working with Zwelinzima Vavi, a former general secretary of Cosatu and the architect of a new federation, which includes both Amcu and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa.
“Some leaders use NUM resources to weaken it by working with the new federation and attending secret meetings set up to destabilise our union,” Matosa said.
“These leaders divide the union by night and smile with us by day.”