Business Maverick: Obituary: After the Marikana massacre, the writing was on the wall for Lonmin

Lonmin was initially christened in 1909 as the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company Limited. Focused on mining and ranching, it was at one point an unprofitable flop, foreshadowing its eventual fate. “Tiny” Rowland, a corporate raider and maverick, would take up the reins and transform the group into a sprawling African business empire.

In 2004, newly appointed chief executive Brad Mills launched a mechanisation drive that ended in humiliating failure. Unions did not buy into it, and there was a dearth of skills needed to operate the machines and gadgets needed for mechanisation – an issue faced today by Gold Fields at its South Deep mine. The geology also proved to be an obstacle for mechanised methods, with a reef that was at times too narrow and too steep to accommodate machines.

In 2012, the excrement would hit the giant cooling systems used to regulate the temperature in the shafts. Lonmin, built in part like other mining companies from the sweat of cheap migrant labour provided by apartheid, would be caught in the vortex of rising worker resentment against the status quo. The militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union was its vanguard, dislodging the National Union of Mineworkers as the dominant labour force on the platinum belt.

We all know how that worked out. A month later the Marikana Massacre took place, with police shooting dead 34 miners – many of them cold-bloodedly in the back – who were taking part in a violent wildcat strike against Lonmin. Management, which refused to meet with the strikers – what happened to engaging AMCU? – stirred the pot.

Even the Free State’s disastrous low-cost housing projects under Ace Magashule, outlined in detail in Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s, had better delivery records. In a 2017 working paper for Wits’ Society, Work and Development Institute, Gavin Capps and Stanley Malindi noted that Cyril Ramaphosa had direct responsibility for such projects as chairperson of Lonmin’s “transformation committee”.

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