The National Union of Mineworkers could have averted 43 deaths at Marikana by renegotiating a wage deal for Lonmin rock drill operators, advocate Ishmael Semenya argued yesterday.
Representing the police at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry in Rustenburg, Semenya said the NUM - which in October 2011 signed a two-year wage deal with the platinum mine - did not do enough for mineworkers during the illegal strike in August.
He was cross-examining William Setelele, chairman of the NUM branch at Lonmin's Western Platinum operations.
The commission was set up to examine the roles of the police, trade unions, Lonmin and mineworkers in the unprotected strike, which left 44 people dead.
Dissatisfied with the 10% increase agreed to by NUM and Lonmin during the 2011 wage talks, rock-drill operators went on an unprotected strike to demand a basic salary of R12500 a month.
They refused to be represented by trade unions.
Semenya said yesterday: "We are going to argue that, as early as August 8 or 9, you knew, as NUM, that these demands existed and you also knew that you could have done it [renegotiate] contractually, but you chose not to do so until lives were lost."
Setelele responded that, when tension mounted at Lonmin's Wonderkop hostel during the strike, the NUM had encouraged its members at mass meetings not to participate in the strike and to refrain from making the R12 500 demand.
It had urged them to report to work despite intimidation, he said.
Semenya criticised the union, saying it should have put lives ahead of labour agreements.
But Setelele said that after more than 3000 workers - most of them NUM members - carried weapons to a meeting on a koppie, and after 10 people were killed, the NUM was not given a chance to talk to the strikers or hear their demands because they did not want anything to do with the union.
The commission resumes its hearings today.
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