The agreement by Anglo American Platinum to place a moratorium on their retrenchments cannot be trusted. The moratorium is for sixty days only and the conditions they have cited as making retrenchments unavoidable have not changed.

The threat to close four shafts, sell one mine and retrench 14 000 mineworkers in their Rustenburg operations is an open challenge to the entire working class. It would be the largest retrenchment by a single company in the history of SA. The real motives of the mining bosses is to crush the militancy that rocked the mining industry after the Marikana uprising. It is a desperate attempt to restore the balance of power in the mining industry which, for the latter half of 2013, had shifted in favour of the workers.

It follows the earlier decision by Harmony Gold to illegally lock out 6000 workers from the Kusasalethu Mine in Carletonville and a similar announcement of retrenchment, leaving workers who had travelled thousands of kilometres from as far as Lesotho, Mozambique and the Eastern Cape, stranded in the rain without food or shelter.

Emboldened by the muted response to the Carletonville offensive, the mining bosses have opened up a second front in Rustenburg. The truce...