DA: Hostage dramas at Gold One’s Springs mine points to policing failures

The Democratic Alliance (DA)’s Ashor Sarupen says the recent so-called hostage dramas at Gold One’s Modder East operation point to policing failures.

In October, a turf war between rival unions saw hundreds of workers at the Springs mine stuck underground for three days.

And then last week, close to 500 workers were apparently taken hostage in an underground shaft on the back of a new dispute, before finally resurfacing on Monday.

Sarupen, who’s the DA’s constituency head for the area, says the situation is “completely unacceptable”.

“I think the first thing it points to is the complete inability of SAPS to maintain the rule of law wherever it breaks down. We’ve seen this all over. We see it in construction mafias and elsewhere. And it’s now in the mining sector as well, where unions, and in this case errant workers, take the law into their own hands and they’re able to do so with impunity.”

Sarupen says it also points to issues around labour relations and the Labour Relations Act, though.

“Clearly, the single union recognition system is going to result in more and more strikes in the long run, so we have very much got to look beyond that and look at reforms in labour legislation to prevent this.”

-EWN

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