The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) is holding firm to its R12 500-a-month wage demand for workers in the platinum sector, AMCU President Joseph Mathunjwa said on Wednesday.

He told the Cape Town Press Club the union would keep pushing its demands to double the current wage. “Our objective is for our workers to get decent wages. We know the employers may prolong the strike to frustrate our members. But we have to keep focused.”

He said it was necessary to pitch the demand at way above inflation as mineworkers wages had been subdued for decades.

“The pay structure of black mineworkers was designed during the dark days of apartheid. We can’t talk of a percentile when the majority of people work below the poverty line.”

But he said he had implored workers not to resort to violence. “We are working very hard to preach to our members that they must not resort to any unlawful acts.”

Wage negotiations under way are being mediated by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.

Questioned about the threat of more retrenchments in the fragile platinum industry if a higher wage deal is brokered, Mathunjwa said AMCU had no option but to fight for much better wages for its workers.

Platinum companies shed thousands of jobs last year and Chamber of Mines COO Roger Baxter said this week that the platinum industry was losing R197-million every day since the strike started at the end of January, with a multiplier effect of R400-million a day.

But Mathunjwa rejected this. “We don’t believe it when they say they are losing money. They are selling platinum reserves at the end of the day. When they pay their CEOs R21-million a year – that’s to one family man – how can they be losing?”

He said the union needed to find some middle ground between not scaring off potential foreign investors and striking a better deal for workers. “We cannot say foreign investors are so crucial that the status quo should remain the same. We need to find a middle path.”

The AMCU head said workers in the mining sector were poorly paid in comparison to other sectors in South Africa, as well as its mining counterparts like Australia.

Mathunjwa said the mining sector had remained unpredictable in the aftermath of the 2012 Marikana massacre, when 34 miners were shot dead by the South Africa Police Service (SAPS). “Workers continue to die. The SAPS has done nothing to investigate the killing of AMCU members despite credible witnesses. We’ve given information to the police, but nobody has been arrested.”

AMCU, he added, still experienced victimisation and provocation from the National Union of Mineworkers and its alliance partners in the North West province.

Mathunjwa said mining companies should be obliged to build houses, schools, churches and facilities upon receiving licences to mine.

“Its flabbergasting and mindboggling that two centuries down the line, companies have amassed riches, yet people continue to live in shacks. Mineworkers work underground in 40 ºC conditions and then go back to shacks without proper ventilation.”