Marikana: 'Only 544 of the 2,658 houses promised by government' are complete

Ten years after the massacre of 34 people protesting over pay and conditions at their place of work, the government still has not delivered on its promise of housing for the community of Marikana, says Amnesty International SA and the Centre for Applied Legal Studies.

Between August 12-14 in 2012 10 people were killed during protest action at Lonmin in Marikana in the North West platinum mine belt, including two security guards and police officers. Then on August 16 that year the country watched as police opened fire with R5 assault rifles, killing 34 miners.

University of the Witwatersrand human rights organisation the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) represented the SA Human Rights Commission at the Marikana commission of inquiry into the massacre and made submissions on Lonmin’s social and labour plan. It also participated in the Competition Tribunal hearings on the merger between Lonmin and Sibanye on behalf of Sikhala Sonke (We Cry Together), a Marikana women's organisation, to ensure the social labour plan (SLP) conditions were taken into account.

Now, a decade later, human rights organisation Amnesty International SA and CALS said in a report on Tuesday that the government has failed to deliver the promised housing in Marikana. They also criticised Sibanye-Stillwater, the company that took over Lonmin.

According to the report, only 544 of the 2,658 houses promised by the government have been completed since the Marikana extension 2 integrated development project began in the 2014/15 financial year.

Lonmin donated 50ha of land for the development which was meant to be completed over three years.

“This is not the only broken promise,” the organisations said. In its 2006 SLP, Lonmin committed to building 5,500 houses for its migrant employees but only built three.

“The company said it did not find any financial partners and workers did not want to buy the houses, which was why the houses were not built.”

The Farlam commission rejected this explanation, the organisations said. “The SLP provided a capital budget for the housing programme, stated that housing will be offered for rental and sale, and made no mention of the plans being dependent on a partnership with a property developer.” 

In 2014, Lonmin submitted a revised SLP committing to building “infill apartments”, apartment blocks built in between buildings.

“According to then-president Jacob Zuma, the infill apartments would replace the 5,500 houses that they committed to, and would address 85% of the rental needs of employees who were uninterested in home ownership. Lonmin only produced 1,240 apartments under this project, despite the fact that the company’s 2013 SLP had indicated that there was an opportunity for construction of 4,000 units over the next five years.”

Amnesty International SA executive director Shenilla Mohamed said this infringed on workers’ human rights. 

“Government’s failure to deliver on its promises and to hold mines accountable has a negative impact on human rights, in this case the right to have access to adequate housing. According to the mine, 37% of all employees live in informal conditions.”

Tuesday's report says that documents shared by Sibanye-Stillwater show that a company employee survey conducted in 2017 found 63% of employees are interested in investing in their place of work. Of those, 33% want to buy a house, 28% want to upgrade their house, and 27% want to build and need to secure a loan.

The company's 2019-2023 SLP states that 65% of employees had creditworthiness challenges and 29% affordability challenges in purchasing a house. 

In its 2021 Integrated Report the organisations said the company states that at the Marikana operations, four home ownership transactions were concluded, with another 53 home ownership transactions lodged for transfer.

“While the mine has promised to support employees who are over-indebted and have a negative credit record to rehabilitate their credit standing 'as far as possible', it has not yet provided the details of how this will be done and how this will be measured. The current SLP also has no specific and clear targets related to housing,” the organisations said.

When the human rights organisations put this to the mine, they said Sibanye-Stillwater responded: “We will attempt where possible to answer on behalf of Lonmin what we could find in our files; but important to highlight that we were not operating the mine when some of the actions were taken and can only offer our views on the basis of second-hand observations.

“Our time horizon is 2019 and the new SLP you refer to was submitted originally by Lonmin and only approved recently so we are now implementing it to catch up on the balance of the years when it was still not approved for implementation.”

When the Competition Tribunal approved Sibanye-Stillwater and Lonmin’s merger in 2018, it stated all parties agreed that “Sibanye will honour all existing and future SLP commitments of Lonmin”. This was aimed at ensuring that “no obligations are extinguished or diluted as a result of this transaction”.

According to Tuesday's report, despite promising to share its annual compliance reports,  the mine has since declined to do this, saying: “Compliance report[s] are for the attention of the regulator as it is the authority dealing with that and we therefore recommend that you please engage the regional office to get the reports as they include personal information [the SLP has other elements other than mine community development and also contains private information of other stakeholders in other sections].”

Amnesty International SA and CALS  have submitted a Promotion of Access to Information Act application to the department of mineral resources & energy with regards to the annual compliance reports and are waiting for a response. 

“We have also written to the minister of human settlements requesting more information in relation to the Marikana extension 2 integrated development project and have not received a response yet.” 

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