The dispute between the Chamber of Mines and the National Union of Mineworkers' led to the 1987 national strike. The massive 1987 mineworkers strike was the biggest and the costliest wage dispute in the history of South Africa. This is the strike that was also called "the seven days that rocked the chamber".
The Chamber of Mines, the true bastion of South African capitalism, became one of the crucial arenas in which the strength of organised workers' ability to contribute to the struggle to redistribute the wealth of the country was put to the test. The strike lasted more than seven days and was followed by mass dismissals by employers. Black Rock Mine was one of those mines that dismissed its employees.
The National Union of Mineworkers mobilised between 250 000 and 340 000 mineworkers, through a successful ballot, to go on strike for improvement in wages and conditions of employment.
The dismissals at Black Rock Mine and in other parts of the country remain vivid in our memory even today. The Kuruman Labour Centre sit-in reminds us about the brutality of apartheid, a capitalist system and a system that was driven by greed and profit maximisation, by confinement to the hostel system, by meagre wages and by being kept away from one's family and children.
The action by those ex-mineworkers sitting in at this labour centre required the intervention of the constituency office, so that they could claim back the benefits lost from their dismissal by the Chamber of Mines from their Black Rock unit. [Time expired.]