The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration fired an extraordinary broadside at the Chamber of Mines this week, calling on it to retract critical comments made by its chief negotiator about the quality of the mediation in the platinum strike or ''face the consequences''.
The Sunday Times had quoted the chamber's Elize Strydom, a widely respected and seasoned negotiator, as saying that she was appalled by the poor standard of the mediation intended to end the seven-week strike.
According to Strydom, CCMA mediators had, early in the negotiations, suggested that the three mining companies affected - Anglo-American, Impala and Lonmin - meet the wage demands of militant union Amcu halfway by considering a wage increase of 25% to 30% for entry-level miners, whose basic pay was R5700.
Amcu had demanded R12500 a month for entry-level miners, an increase of 120%; the companies had offered 8.5%.
In making the proposal, Strydom said, the mediators had ''showed an absolute lack of economic acumen'' by admitting that they had not taken into account the companies' economic circumstances.
Stung by the criticism, the CCMA has accused the chamber of ''white-anting'' the mediation process , saying it must apologise or endorse Strydom's comments and in so doing propose an alternative mediation process, ''which would indicate that you clearly have no faith in the institution that is made available by the state and which is accepted by all social partners in other economic sectors''.
This reaction is thin-skinned hogwash.
Strydom was not undermining the commission - she was criticising the lack of economic nous of the facilitators it assigned to solve the most damaging strike in our history.
Billions of rands of precious foreign exchange have been lost and tens of thousands of jobs - not to mention the future of platinum mining in North West - are on the line.
Amcu - and, on Strydom's version, the assigned CCMA mediators - urgently need to grasp this reality.
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