After decades on the mines, a Mozambican man has been offered R1 777,54 for long service. He is one of thousands left without old-age security, writes Ferial Haffajee
FORTY-EIGHT years ago, Andre Muianga joined the throng of Mozambican men leaving their homes in Xai-Xai to work in South Africa’s booming gold mines.
On January 20 1997, Muianga (69) retired from the Tweefontein colliery. He received a long-service award of R1 777,54, and there’s been no mistake in the calculation.
That is about R58,07 a year for the time he spent working on the four different mines which employed him through his working life.
Although he walks with the help of a roughly-hewn stick, Muianga is wiry and strong through years of manual labour. He is strong-willed too and speaks with a slow and quiet insistence reminiscent of President Nelson Mandela. “I did not sign [for his long-service award] because I said `this money’s not correct’,” he says.
Muianga has been badgering the clerks at the mining industry’s employment arm, The Employment Bureau of Africa (Teba), since January to check and recheck his payment.
The dapper old man, dressed in a fleecy jersey and balaclava to protect him against the early winter cold, regularly takes a taxi from the Witbank mining hostel where he still lives to Teba’s offices in Johannesburg. From there, he makes his way to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) headquarters where he pressures union officials to work on his case.
“In January, I came here to the NUM. They sent me back to my region. From January to March, I heard no report, so I thought it’s better I come to headquarters.”
Muianga is convinced he should be paid more. “For 34 years, they want to pay me R1 000. It can’t be. I think I must get R36 000 to R34 000 because I worked on the mine for a long time.”
Roger Rowett, Teba’s MD, is embarrassed by Muianga’s case, but says that all the old man can hope for is about R500 more than he received for payments not included in the last calculation.
The people at Teba have been doing their sums and say the figure which the miner was paid was correct. They say it is so low because Muianga worked in the three lowest job categories of the industry and he also spent 9 years doing surface work.
Thus, although the technical calculations are correct, Muianga’s payment is a sad hangover of an industry which grew rich on racial discrimination.
“The long-service award was never meant to be a retirement vehicle,” says Rowett. “It was not a right, it was a privilege … an ex gratia compassionate payment with emphasis on underground workers.”
The average payment made to black mineworkers who achieved long-service prior to 1989 was R2 500.
The NUM’s benefits officer Frans Mahlangu says: “There are thousands of stories like this. Black mineworkers never had a pension or provident fund, though white mineworkers had them since 1948.”
Mahlangu’s own father, John, received R200 in cash and R200 worth of groceries from the colliery where he worked for 58 years.
It was the many thousands of cases such as these which amplified the union’s demand for a provident fund. The NUM finally won this demand after the 1987 mineworkers strike, but it took two years to implement the fund.
The Mineworkers Provident Fund was started for mainly black employees, and workers who retired after it was established received better cushions against old-age.
But Muianga was caught in the cross-winds of change.
When the provident fund was introduced, he was at his home in Mozambique. He stayed there for eight years because he claims to have lost his work permit and other papers “and it was difficult to come here without a letter”.
He finally returned in 1994 aged 66 and worked for three more years. In these three years, Muianga amassed about R3700 in his provident fund; more than double his payment for 36 years work on the mines.
“I sent most of that money to my family in Mozambique,” says Muianga, who has a wife and three school-going children in Xai-Xai. “I am living in the location. I pay R200 for my house and then I also have to buy mealie-meal, meat, potatoes and everything to make some food.”
Muianga says his money is running out, even though his two sons, who also work on mines in Carletonville, help support him.
Neither the NUM nor Teba is optimistic that anything can be done for Muianga. There is pity for him, but it is accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders which seems to say: “He’s a victim of history.”
As a last-ditch measure, the union is considering a racial discrimination case against the industry and may use Muianga as a test case.
In the meantime, the old man has not given up hope. “I just want my money. I want to go home now,” he says.