IF THE chairman of platinum miner Lonmin, Roger Phillimore, was not on a plane to South Africa on Friday evening, he should be ashamed of himself.In the wake of easily the worst state-on-citizen violence in South Africa since we became a democracy in 1994, protesting mineworkers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine near Rustenburg have shattered the company’s share price and sharply inflated the global price of platinum. That is almost a sideshow to the nearly 50 deaths that the strike has triggered so far — 34, according to the most recent confirmed figures, in a hail of police bullets at the mine on Thursday afternoon.Lonmin may not be directly responsible for the violence accompanying the strike, but it has wide and deep duties that it is spectacularly failing to fulfil. It has a duty to its shareholders, to its customers, to its staff, to the mining industry in South Africa generally and, ultimately, to all South Africans.But it is nowhere to be seen. Its CEO, Ian Farmer, is ill in hospita...
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