South Africa miners in stand-off with police

[maskerade]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/08/2012815173554808840.html

Thousands of armed striking miners faced off with South African police at Lonmin's Marikana mine after it halted production following the deaths of 10 people in fighting between rival unions.

Scores of police backed by helicopters lined up on Wednesday opposite a crowd of around 2,500 miners armed with machetes, clubs and other weapons, who had taken up position on a rocky outcrop overlooking the mine.

"The situation is stable but tense. We are busy with negotiations and are maintaining a high visibility in the area," Dennis Adrio, the national police spokesman, said.

Lonmin secured a court order compelling the miners to return to work on Wednesday, with permission to dismiss them if they fail to do so.

"If we believe that this criminal activity is still continuing and that rock drill operators are still on this illegal strike we will have no option but to issue the ultimatum," Barnard Mokwena, the company's executive vice president, said.

'Social challenges'

Thousands of Lonmin rock drill operators began their strike on Friday at the Lonmin platinum mine near Marikana, protesting over poor work conditions and wages in the latest in a series of strikes to hit the mining industry.

Ten people including two police officers, two security guards, three protesters and three other men had been killed since then.

The protests are believed to be linked to rivalry between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) over recognition agreements at the mine.

Frans Baleni, general secretary of the NUM, on Tuesday blamed the violence on the newer AMCU.

"These people are taking advantage of the common social challenges of people in this area,'' the union leader said.

"There's a high level of unemployment as we know, secondly workers are highly indebted, so it's easy to go to workers and say that if you belong to us, we will get you" more money.

Workers are also demanding higher wages.

Poor conditions

Lonmin, the world's third-largest platinum producer, threatened to sack 3,000 rock drill operators if they fail to end an illegal pay strike, its flagship mine 100km northwest of Johannesburg.

The illegal stay-away and the union clashes forced London-headquartered Lonmin to halt mining at all its operations in South Africa, which accounts for 12 per cent of its global platinum output.

South Africa remains one of the world's dominant producers of platinum, gold and coal, with 80 per cent of known platinum reserves, but many of its workers still face abysmal salaries and living conditions.

A report released on Tuesday by the Bench Marks Foundation, a non-governmental organisation monitoring the practices of multinational mining corporations, found Lonmin workers often live in deteriorating shacks without electricity.

Some children suffer from chronic illnesses due to sewage spills caused by broken drainage, the report said.

[Will Scarlet]

"If we believe that this criminal activity is still continuing and that rock drill operators are still on this illegal strike we will have no option but to issue the ultimatum," Barnard Mokwena, the company's executive vice president, said.
Looks like they 'issued the ultimatum'.

guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/16/south-african-police-shoot-striking-miners
aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/08/2012816141649568598.html

Very bad situation, especially with one union trying to break the others strike seemingly.

[maskerade]

UPDATE: Police have opened fire on the striking miners, coming to the protection of the large mining companies, what a surprise.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/08/2012816141649568598.html



At least seven people have been killed when police opened fire on miners staging a protest at a platinum mine in South Africa, according to Reuters.

South African police opened fire and dispersed a crowd of striking miners at the Lonmin mine in the North West province on Thursday after issuing an order to the protesters to lay down their machetes and sticks.

News TV images showed people lying on the ground, one with blood flowing from a wound.

Dennis Adrio, a Police Captain and spokesman for the officers at the mine, declined to immediately comment. South African newspaper, The Sowetan reported on Thursday that police officers had earlier said that negotiation with leaders of the rival union Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) had broken down, leaving no option but to disperse them by force.

"Today is unfortunately D-day," police spokesman Dennis Adriao was quoted as saying.

Journalists at the scene said several of those shot were laying on the ground and were not moving.

In a statement earlier on Thursday, Lonmin said striking workers would be fired if they did not appear at their shifts on Friday.

"The striking (workers) remain armed and away from work,'' the statement read. "This is illegal.''
The unrest at the Lonmin mine began on August 10, as some 3,000 workers walked off the job over pay in what management described as an illegal strike.

Those who tried to go to work on Saturday were attacked, management and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said.

On Sunday, the rage became deadly as a crowd killed two security guards by setting their car ablaze, authorities said.

By Monday, angry mobs killed two other workers and overpowered police, killing two officers, officials said.

Officers opened fire that day, killing three others, police said.

The protest and ensuing violence, which began a week ago, have killed at least 10 people there, including two police officers

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

SqUPlYQqjN0

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Disgusting.

[Robespierres Neck]

Disgusting.

It really is. More people need to see this.

[International_Solidarity]

You can see the original footage if you search this on youtube,
"South African police open fire on striking Lonmin miners - Rough Cuts"
I would post the link, but as a new user I need to have 25 posts first. :/

[Terminator X]

An absolute outrage. Where's the guy who was asking "why do people hate the police?" in another thread?

[Ravachol]

But I thought ANC-popular frontism was supposed to be a step forwards for the working class? Ah, the joys of a 'progressive' government. :rolleyes:

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Disgusting, the South African state is completely out of control, fuck the ANC

[Leftsolidarity]

But I thought ANC-popular frontism was supposed to be a step forwards for the working class? Ah, the joys of a 'progressive' government. :rolleyes:

Dispite what can be said about this situation, I think that saying that supporting the ANC at certain times was progressive is not false. If you don't see fighting against the apartide as progressive then I think you don't know what progressive is.

edit: added "is not false"

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Yeah I'm sure Ravachol was making a statement in support of apartheid with that comment :rolleyes:

[Leftsolidarity]

Yeah I'm sure Ravachol was making a statement in support of apartheid with that comment :rolleyes:

Re-read my post again before you accuse me of saying something completely different than what I did.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I think that's exactly what you were trying to suggest. It's been 20 years and the ANC has been a blatant ruling class party for all of them.

[Leftsolidarity]

I think that's exactly what you were trying to suggest. It's been 20 years and the ANC has been a blatant ruling class party for all of them.

I honestly don't see how you got that from my post at all. Its a massive twist of my words. Once again, re-read my post. I said that fighting apartheid was a progressive thing. I don't see how that translates into my saying that another poster supports apartheid.

Also, the fact that a group is a ruling class party does not make it inherently bad. It depends on which class is the ruling class. If it is the working class it is a good thing.

I'm not saying that South Africa is a worker's state. I just wanted to make a remark on that statement.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I didn't see him say shit about apartheid, your comment is the equivalent of people bringing up the holocaust when confronted with criticism of Israel. "Anti-Imperialists" still regularly give unconditional support to the ANC as if South Africa had turned into a workers state in the 90s.

[L.A.P.]

they played this on CNN tonight, surprised it's not getting more attention

UxpArGI83fY

[Leftsolidarity]

I didn't see him say shit about apartheid, your comment is the equivalent of people bringing up the holocaust when confronted with criticism of Israel. "Anti-Imperialists" still regularly give unconditional support to the ANC as if South Africa had turned into a workers state in the 90s.

You're like talking to a wall. Nothing you've said in reply to me has been about the actual content of my posts.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

You're like talking to a wall. Nothing you've said in reply to me has been about the actual content of my posts.

You were the first to bring up Apartheid, the domestic and international left both still play the popular front game with the ANC. Therefore a comment denouncing the popular front with the ANC has nothing to do with Apartheid. Everything I have said in reply to you has been about the content of your bullshit post.

[Leftsolidarity]

You were the first to bring up Apartheid, the domestic and international left both still play the popular front game with the ANC. Therefore a comment denouncing the popular front with the ANC has nothing to do with Apartheid. Everything I have said in reply to you has been about the content of your bullshit post.

The role of the ANC fighting apartheid has everything to do with whether they has been a progressive force or not. The poster who I originally responded to was saying that the ANC was not progressive.

This has diverged far more off topic than what I hoped and do not see it being a discussion to continue in this thread.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I'm ok with continuing it, I don't think you get to stop just because you aren't good at this. The ANC fighting apartheid 20 years ago has nothing to do with them or their lackeys being progressive now, since of course they are not. They are a capitalist party, supporting capitalist policies in a capitalist state. If I attack them now it has nothing to do with attacking their role during the apartheid struggle, since my comments do not represent a time machine. So fuck the ANC and fuck you.

[Leftsolidarity]

I'm ok with continuing it, I don't think you get to stop just because you aren't good at this. The ANC fighting apartheid 20 years ago has nothing to do with them or their lackeys being progressive now, since of course they are not. They are a capitalist party, supporting capitalist policies in a capitalist state. If I attack them now it has nothing to do with attacking their role during the apartheid struggle, since my comments do not represent a time machine. So fuck the ANC and fuck you.

If you want to argue with me about the ANC and their role, start another thread. I probably won't continue to debate with you, though, because I don't see that as a great use of my time.

This isn't really the spot for this conversation.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Yeah you're in a pretty weak position, you're released.

[Zealot]

Fucking disgusting. Note that the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the so-called Communist Party are two of the organisations in the "Tripartite Alliance" that governs South Africa, the third being the ANC.

[Per Levy]

South African police officers killed more than 30 miners who charged them at a Lonmin PLC platinum mine, authorities said Friday, as a national newspaper warned that a time bomb ticking over poor South Africans has exploded.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-08-17/police-more-than-30-killed-in-s-dot-africa-shooting

so 35 dead now, more to follow it seems.

[maskerade]

The union who 'illegally' walked out is not a member of COSATU and thus not related to the tripartite alliance - which probably explains the police shootings. Hopefully this event, as horrible as it is, will spread anger towards the status-quo, and will act as a catalyst for other workers to stand up for their wages and their rights.

the ANC can hardly continue in its current form, and to think that right now it is anything but a neoliberal party with some leftist rhetoric would be seriously misguided. the SACP is a complete disgrace, and they should have abandoned the ANC project as soon as the ownership question was completely ignored.

[maskerade]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/south-african-police-kill-34-striking-miners-in-clash-78-injured-1.917916

this article is a bit more detailed.

[pastradamus]

This is by far the worst, most direct and brutal attack we've seen in years on striking workers. Those callous bastards are a disgrace and this is an absolute outrage. I almost hasten to say that Aparteid was fairer than this.

Its a very sad day for Socialism, Liberty and Human rights in South Africa.

[pastradamus]

Yeah you're in a pretty weak position, you're released.

Open a new thread if you want to talk about the ANC. I usually wouldnt say this to someone but I think it takes the spotlight off this outrage. This trancends the ANC. Its a direct attack on the Working class in a murderous fashion.

[brigadista]

lots of links here

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news.pl?country=South+Africa&langcode=en

[Crux]

DSM (CWI South Africa): (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5894)

[Updated] Solidarity with Lonmin’s miners (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5894)

[ВАЛТЕР]

Tragic, yet it shows the reality of the class struggle very clearly. This is something that needs to be brought to the forefront. This shows all too clearly what even a strike entails and what they are ready to do to prevent even a slight gain for the working class.

People think that things like this massacre (I call it that because that is what it is, a massacre.) are a thing of the past. Something that happened in the late 19th century and early 20th century that we read about in history books. When child labor laws were being fought, and workers asked for fairer wages and hours. Well, we know and now the world knows that they are not a thing of the past. They will continue happening and sadly they will happen much more often as the class struggle intensifies. We are at war with our class enemy and I hope that they feel the wrath of the working class.

Also, I would like to ask a question. What would a libertarian say about this? Would they defend the striking miners? Would they defend the company? The cops? After all, the miners are "free" to go work elsewhere. Yet, they cannot deny a massacre just took place. The state and company have blood on their hands.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Tragic, yet it shows the reality of the class struggle very clearly. This is something that needs to be brought to the forefront. This shows all too clearly what even a strike entails and what they are ready to do to prevent even a slight gain for the working class.

People think that things like this massacre (I call it that because that is what it is, a massacre.) are a thing of the past. Something that happened in the late 19th century and early 20th century that we read about in history books. When child labor laws were being fought, and workers asked for fairer wages and hours. Well, we know and now the world knows that they are not a thing of the past. They will continue happening and sadly they will happen much more often as the class struggle intensifies. We are at war with our class enemy and I hope that they feel the wrath of the working class.

Also, I would like to ask a question. What would a libertarian say about this? Would they defend the striking miners? Would they defend the company? The cops? After all, the miners are "free" to go work elsewhere. Yet, they cannot deny a massacre just took place. The state and company have blood on their hands.

The strikers were infringing on the company's property rights, and the state was doing it's only actual role in society by protecting and enforcing those property rights. The workers should have found higher paying jobs elsewhere and allowed the market to force this company to pay higher wages in order to compete for labor. Their filthy collective rights interfered with the sacred individual rights of the company.

[Crux]

Get your vomit bag ready, here's the SACP's apologism for the massacre. (http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=3722)

[Ravachol]

Get your vomit bag ready, here's the SACP's apologism for the massacre. (http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=3722)

Kind of reminds me of their bullshit on the clashes with Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shackdwellers' movement): http://www.revleft.com/vb/sacp-south-africa-t143501/index.html



Blockading Public Roads is anarchy and reactionary

As the SACP in the Brian Bunting District (Cape Metro), we are serious outraged about the attitude and protesting method used by Abahlali Basemjondolo in the area of Khayelitsha. If this is the modus operand they use in their struggles, their campaigns will always be characterised as opportunistic, anarchist and populist and that they are using genuine concerns of the workers and the poor of Khayelitsha.

As the SACP, the vanguard of the working class and the poor, ours amongst other things is to fight for decent houses, decent jobs, health, clean drinking water, free and quality education etc. And we must therefore campaign for what we do not have and defend what we already got.


:laugh:

[brigadista]

no suprise the mine is operated by Lonmin,
formerly known as lohnro

here is the wikipedia entry

which makes interesting reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonmin

[maskerade]

Get your vomit bag ready, here's the SACP's apologism for the massacre. (http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=3722)

Wow...why is a communist party attacking workers instead of the police/mining company? honestly these guys aren't even trying.

Fucking hell.

[Crux]

The role of the ANC fighting apartheid has everything to do with whether they has been a progressive force or not. The poster who I originally responded to was saying that the ANC was not progressive.

This has diverged far more off topic than what I hoped and do not see it being a discussion to continue in this thread.
On-Topic then: I am surprised the WWP and PSL have not come out in support of the massacre yet. Or have they?

[blake 3:17]

So awful.

There's a Facebook group with lots of information & links: https://www.facebook.com/groups/275097599265710/

There are protest demonstrations planned in South Africa. If folks here learn of actions or solidarity efforts, please share.

[blake 3:17]

"Analysis of the video by a South African television channel suggested that the mineworkers may have been fleeing from a tear-gas volley from a different direction, rather than attacking the police, when they were gunned down by the officers."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/worldview/south-africa-mine-shooting-leaves-34-dead-and-a-nation-reeling/article4485512/?cmpid=rss1

[Leftsolidarity]

On-Topic then: I am surprised the WWP and PSL have not come out in support of the massacre yet. Or have they?

Your sectarian jabs are really pathetic and you are clearly just trying to flame bait me.

From my knowledge the PSL has not put out any statements but Im not in the PSL so idk why you're asking me. I've been with 40+ comrades within the past few days and had some very interesting discussions on the situation in South Africa. None of the comments made have been anything but denouncement when it comes to what happened.

[kuriousoranj]

Disgusting scenes. I instantly heard Johannesburg by Gil Scott Herron playing in the back of my mind. Solidarity comrades!

[blake 3:17]

Your sectarian jabs are really pathetic and you are clearly just trying to flame bait me.

From my knowledge the PSL has not put out any statements but Im not in the PSL so idk why you're asking me. I've been with 40+ comrades within the past few days and had some very interesting discussions on the situation in South Africa. None of the comments made have been anything but denouncement when it comes to what happened.

The meaningful question is around the tripartite alliance, and whether any of it worth supporting at this point. Many people on the international radical left have had different hopes around the role of COSATU or SACP, but it starts to seem like just a big mess. I don't know how intentionally corporatist the alliance is, but it seems to be the case.

[Crux]

Your sectarian jabs are really pathetic and you are clearly just trying to flame bait me.

From my knowledge the PSL has not put out any statements but Im not in the PSL so idk why you're asking me. I've been with 40+ comrades within the past few days and had some very interesting discussions on the situation in South Africa. None of the comments made have been anything but denouncement when it comes to what happened.
Well, the SACP made a denunciation too. Of sorts. It's not unreasonable to expect the WWP/PSL to end up on the same side as always in these conflicts, especially because there's a CP involved. From 56, with the Prague spring, and onward this has been the case. Why wouldn't the Triparte Alliance be kosher enough for you when the Mullahs of Iran and the Chinese "Communist" Party are? It's your anti-imperialist duty to defend this massacre, comrades.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There's some background on recent strikes as well as the ANC's response to rising working class struggle in this International Socialist Journal article:

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=362


A telling incident occurred in a Nehawu union strike meeting. When a speaker on the platform shouted, “Viva ANC!” I listened as usual for the loudness of the reply to judge the popularity of the ANC. I heard something I had never heard before—dead silence, followed by a sprinkling of insulting phrases. Soweto activist Trevor Ngwane commented, “You could hear the audience thinking in that silence, ‘Do we still support the ANC’?” Throughout the strike one striker after another repeated the refrain, “We put them where they are and look how they treat us.” The implication, still only half grasped, is that power lies below—a lesson that has been disguised by years of policy battles. Strike solidarity has also built new links between the social movements such as the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee and the Cosatu workers.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Does anyone know of any international solidarity actions?

I can't help but feel like if Occupy were still kicking here or if this happened in November we could have at least pushed a port shut-down, even if just symbolic/solidarity. Maybe it still wouldn't have been easy, but afterall we had the recent precedent of a port shut-down - the first with rank and file and even some leadership support - and there's a historical link since the ILWU did actions in opposition to Apartheid... so I think with the enormity of this (and with people in other countries also facing police violence - though less severe obviously) we could have forced the union leadership to follow the activists and rank and file in some kind of action.

Maybe there will be something, but probably small protests at the Embassy or whatnot - some activists, some union officials, a smattering of rank and file activists - but something directly involving rank and file labor and here (and raising the context of a world-wide neoliberalist agenda and austerity attack on workers and worker-rights... which I'm sure that rank and file activists would get behind and I'm also pretty sure that union leaders would not offer this context) would be much better in showing real bottom-up solidarity while also building some class consiousness here.

[brigadista]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/18/south-african-miners-julius-malema

They were there in their thousands, leaning against tin shacks or sitting in the dusty veld: miners and their wives still looking for answers after a massacre by South African police that left 34 striking workers dead. A red T-shirt worn by a rally organiser seemed to offer one, stating: "Fuck capitalism."

The huge crowd erupted as a charismatic young politician, Julius Malema, took the microphone. He is seen by some as a dangerous demagogue, but to the grieving, angry community at the Lonmin mine in Marikana he came as a messiah offering a radical future.

"The British are owning this mine," he said. "The British are making money out of this mine ... It is not the British who were killed. It is our black brothers. But it is not these brothers who are mourned by the president. Instead he goes to meet capitalists in air-conditioned offices."

Malema was expelled this year as president of the youth wing of the governing African National Congress after falling out with President Jacob Zuma, whom he accuses of failing to challenge "white monopoly capital". He has since been in the political wilderness; once contemptuous of the media, he now courts it. As the Marikana tragedy lays bare discontent over inequalities 18 years after apartheid, he senses his moment.

"President Zuma said to the police they must act with maximum force. He did not say act with restraint. He presided over the murder of our people and therefore he must step down. Not even apartheid government killed so many people ... From today, when you are asked 'Who is your president', you must say 'I don't have a president'."

There were cheers from people whose votes the ANC can no longer take for granted after 18 years in government.

It was the promises of a militant union that stirred violence at Marikana, where the ANC-aligned National Union of Mineworkers has been losing support. Malema hopes this will be mirrored on the national stage, where he accuses the ANC of failing to pursue economic freedom as it did political freedom, leaving millions of black people poor and disenfranchised. He wants mines to be seized from private companies and nationalised. The call appears to be gaining traction in Marikana, where workers are demanding from Lonmin, whose HQ is in London, a wage increase from 4,000 rand (£300) to 12,500 rand a month.

"Lonmin treat us like dogs," said Thembelani Khonto, 24. "When you're underground, it's like you're a slave and they don't know you. But on the surface people who don't do anything in offices are earning more than us."

Siphiwo Gqala, 25, said he sometimes spends up to 14 hours a day underground but does not receive overtime pay. "It's dangerous work," he said. "Sometimes you go down there and a rock falls and you die. Big vehicles can come and kill you." Recalling Thursday's massacre, he said: "I've never seen something like that: people killed like chickens. One of my friends is still missing. I don't know if he's in the hospital or the mortuary."

The impact on the community will be far-reaching, added Gqala, who lives in a shack because house rentals are too high. "Women come here from Eastern Cape with their husbands, who are the breadwinners. If someone has five children, how will they live? I have two young brothers depending on me. What if I die? Who's going to look after them?"

The conditions leave people like Gqala looking for radical solutions. "The mine must be nationalised. We support Julius Malema and the youth league for saying the mines must be nationalised. Now they're starting to shoot us. If we die today, all of us must die: we no longer want to work here."

Two days after the shooting, in which 34 people died and 78 were injured, many families are still waiting to learn the miners' fate. A casualty list has still not been published and there is little information on who is dead, injured or under arrest. Wives have been turned away from local clinics and hospitals.

A 22-year-old woman, who did not wish to be named, had lost a loved one in the shooting. "He was shot in cold blood," she said. "My tears have not dried; I cried all day. I'm worried about things like who's going to feed the kids he left behind. No one is going to give the love to his children like their father."

Elizabeth Makana, 48, a widow whose brother-in-law was wounded, said: "They treat the miners like dogs. The miners take the risk to dig platinum, but the people who sit in offices make the money."

Lonmin defended its treatment of mine workers. A community development brochure published by the company describes extensive health, education, infrastructure and economic projects in the area. Spokesman James Clark said: "We absolutely recognise the hugely positive relationship we have with communities living in the area and doing the best we can for them and their families goes to the heart of our business. It's why we do so much around health and education, but we're not complacent. We do the best we can and try to do better every time."

That will not satisfy Malema and his constituency, however, who argue that the ANC has been too moderate for too long, bending the knee to western corporations. Flashpoints like Marikana expose the fissures in a party that contains capitalists and communists.

Aubrey Matshiqi, a research fellow at the Helen Suzman Foundation, said: "I think the people of Marikana, particularly the miners, see themselves as the manifestation of the gap between mineral wealth and socioeconomic conditions. The death of so many miners has amplified the extent to which Julius Malema's views on mine nationalisation resonate with the people in the area."

He added: "You have the ANC that some people believe has been too pragmatic and sold out and bent over backwards for foreign capital at the expense of the people. Julius Malema suggests that a better life for all would be possible under someone like him. If he is wrong, you will have populism and disappointment that will lead to conflict."

[bricolage]

abahlali statement - http://www.abahlali.org/node/9032

[Leftsolidarity]

Well, the SACP made a denunciation too. Of sorts. It's not unreasonable to expect the WWP/PSL to end up on the same side as always in these conflicts, especially because there's a CP involved. From 56, with the Prague spring, and onward this has been the case. Why wouldn't the Triparte Alliance be kosher enough for you when the Mullahs of Iran and the Chinese "Communist" Party are? It's your anti-imperialist duty to defend this massacre, comrades.

Fuck off, how does this have anything to do with the topic other than your twisted attempts to slander 2 parties you don't like?

[bricolage]

WWP and PSL have consistently backed the SACP in the past; when they did nothing to stop GEAR, NEPAD and the World Bank and remained in full coalition with the ANC even being responsible for propelling Zuma to power, they did nothing when the police and armed gangs ran through shack settlements and slums burning houses and killing inhabitants, they did nothing to stop the institutionalised brutality and inequality that has accompanied the post-apartheid South African state. WWP, PSL and other leftist groups have continued to back the SACP and even the ANC because they use the word communist and make lip service to ideas of 'liberation' and such like. I see no reason why they would do anything different now, the numbers are different but other than that it's the same as everything that's come before.

[blake 3:17]

This is a useful backgrounder on the origins of the conflicts between the two unions: http://www.miningmx.com/special_reports/mining-yearbook/mining-yearbook-2012/A-season-of-discontent.htm

[Red Commissar]

I don't have much to comment beyond this whole affair making me very upset, especially at the union bosses, SACP, ANC, and other sellouts who stand with the authorities and mining corporations here. I had read in the past criticisms of the SACP, and now we see a very clear justification of those criticisms.

[Ele'ill]

Trigger warnings here- it is a news coverage segment then I think it just repeats the shooting scene several times then goes to another news piece.


p5stk8klE1Q

[Crux]

Does anyone know of any international solidarity actions?

I can't help but feel like if Occupy were still kicking here or if this happened in November we could have at least pushed a port shut-down, even if just symbolic/solidarity. Maybe it still wouldn't have been easy, but afterall we had the recent precedent of a port shut-down - the first with rank and file and even some leadership support - and there's a historical link since the ILWU did actions in opposition to Apartheid... so I think with the enormity of this (and with people in other countries also facing police violence - though less severe obviously) we could have forced the union leadership to follow the activists and rank and file in some kind of action.

Maybe there will be something, but probably small protests at the Embassy or whatnot - some activists, some union officials, a smattering of rank and file activists - but something directly involving rank and file labor and here (and raising the context of a world-wide neoliberalist agenda and austerity attack on workers and worker-rights... which I'm sure that rank and file activists would get behind and I'm also pretty sure that union leaders would not offer this context) would be much better in showing real bottom-up solidarity while also building some class consiousness here.
Britain (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5897)

Solidarity with South African miners (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5897)

Leftsolidarity: When either comes out with a solidarity statement I am happy to read it. Would be a positive shift for them, hopefully.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

Striking workers at the South African mine where police shot dead 34 miners on Thursday face a deadline to go back to work or face dismissal.
A statement from mine owner Lonmin said 3,000 workers were striking illegally and must report to work on Monday.
The company delayed the deadline from Friday in light of the killings at the Marikana platinum mine, north-west of Johannesburg.
Some miners said the new ultimatum was an insult to their dead colleagues.
President Jacob Zuma on Sunday declared a week of national mourning.
According to Lonmin, an initial headcount at mine suggests between 17% and 25% of workers expected on Monday's early shift have arrived.
The workers are those doing maintenance work to ensure areas are safe for work to resume, Lonmin spokeswoman Sue Vey told the BBC.
About 3,000 rock-drill operators (RDOs) at the mine walked out more than a week ago in support of demands for higher pay.

(more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19314709)

[Hiero]

This news report states that the SACP allege that "the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (the union that organised the strike) was funded by mining company BHP Billiton “in a deliberate attempt to undermine the National Union of Mineworkers". "

http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/probe-amcu-sacp-1.1365522#.UDIyV6Pujyw

The SACP made this claim in a Central Committee press statement:

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry must also consider the pattern of violence associated with the pseudo-trade union AMCU wherever it seeks to implant itself. Launched in Witbank by two former NUM members, expelled for anarchic behavior, AMCU was funded by BHP Billiton in a deliberate attempt to undermine NUM. The Commission should, in particular, investigate its leader Joseph Mathunjwa.

http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=3723

[robbo203]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/18/south-african-miners-julius-malema
[I]
They were there in their thousands, leaning against tin shacks or sitting in the dusty veld: miners and their wives still looking for answers after a massacre by South African police that left 34 striking workers dead. A red T-shirt worn by a rally organiser seemed to offer one, stating: "Fuck capitalism."

The huge crowd erupted as a charismatic young politician, Julius Malema, took the microphone. He is seen by some as a dangerous demagogue, but to the grieving, angry community at the Lonmin mine in Marikana he came as a messiah offering a radical future.

"The British are owning this mine," he said. "The British are making money out of this mine ... It is not the British who were killed. It is our black brothers. But it is not these brothers who are mourned by the president. Instead he goes to meet capitalists in air-conditioned offices."

Malema was expelled this year as president of the youth wing of the governing African National Congress after falling out with President Jacob Zuma, whom he accuses of failing to challenge "white monopoly capital". He has since been in the political wilderness; once contemptuous of the media, he now courts it. As the Marikana tragedy lays bare discontent over inequalities 18 years after apartheid, he senses his moment.


Malema? Is this the same Mugabe-loving scumbag capitalist politician who sheds crocidile tears for those he hypocritically calls his "brothers" while enjoying a luxuriously lifestyle, bankrolled by his corrupt business dealings, which those same brothers could barely imagine? Yup it look like it

This is the most detestable kind of bourgeois politician - a populist and a rank opportunist second to none who will seize on any cause to provide him with a leg up the greasey pole of power. Gawd help the the Southern African workers if he should ever get to hold the reins of power - if, or perhaps when, he returns to the ANC - that ever-reliable partner of big capital in South Africa. They will soon enough discover the wisdom of the old age that politicans who profess to speak most loudly on behalf of the workers are often the very ones who stick the dagger most deeply into the backs of the workers. Never trust a politician - particularly one who is so patently and grubbily preoccupied with the pursuit of power like Malema obviously is

Its a pity the miners did not exercise a little more discretion and judgement about who they invited to talk to them

[A Marxist Historian]

I honestly don't see how you got that from my post at all. Its a massive twist of my words. Once again, re-read my post. I said that fighting apartheid was a progressive thing. I don't see how that translates into my saying that another poster supports apartheid.

Also, the fact that a group is a ruling class party does not make it inherently bad. It depends on which class is the ruling class. If it is the working class it is a good thing.

I'm not saying that South Africa is a worker's state. I just wanted to make a remark on that statement.

Then what were you really trying to say? I don't think there are any people here who think that fighting against apartheid was bad. And if there are any, let's identify them so that the admins can ban them.

Fighting apartheid is one thing, supporting the ANC, which once fought apartheid but, when its Soviet backing disappeared when the USSR collapsed, decided to compromise with apartheid instead and collaborate with the white minority in a neo-apartheid regime, is something else.

You think apartheid is gone in South Africa? Where the mines are still basically owned by the old apartheid ruling class, and where the economic gulf between the black people at the bottom and the ruling class on top, still basically white but with ANC "wabenzis" added for decorative purpose, is actually greater than under official aparthed?

If that's the case, why were all the miners killed black, and why were the police who killed them mostly white?

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Malema? Is this the same Mugabe-loving scumbag capitalist politician who sheds crocidile tears for those he hypocritically calls his "brothers" while enjoying a luxuriously lifestyle, bankrolled by his corrupt business dealings, which those same brothers could barely imagine? Yup it look like it

This is the most detestable kind of bourgeois politician - a populist and a rank opportunist second to none who will seize on any cause to provide him with a leg up the greasey pole of power. Gawd help the the Southern African workers if he should ever get to hold the reins of power - if, or perhaps when, he returns to the ANC - that ever-reliable partner of big capital in South Africa. They will soon enough discover the wisdom of the old age that politicans who profess to speak most loudly on behalf of the workers are often the very ones who stick the dagger most deeply into the backs of the workers. Never trust a politician - particularly one who is so patently and grubbily preoccupied with the pursuit of power like Malema obviously is

Its a pity the miners did not exercise a little more discretion and judgement about who they invited to talk to them

Everything you say about Malema is true, but that's besides the point. This is stupid sectarianism. The miners need all the help they can get at this point, and many South African working people, whether you or I like it or not, see Malema as their leader.

And everything Malema said in his speech that was quoted in the piece is absolutely true and needs to be emphasized. So no, the miners made no mistake when they invited him to speak, not at all.

An injury to one is an injury to all. If Malema, for his own reasons, finds it useful to speak out on behalf of the miners, that is a very good thing for which he deserves credit.

Which doesn't mean we should shut up about Malema's multiple misdeeds ad bourgeois character, a united front only works if it includes freedom of criticism, otherwise it turns into somebody's front group.

But there is a time and a place for everything, and the moment when Malema does something good for once is not the ideal moment to denounce him as scum.

-M.H.-

[robbo203]

Everything you say about Malema is true, but that's besides the point. This is stupid sectarianism. The miners need all the help they can get at this point, and many South African working people, whether you or I like it or not, see Malema as their leader.

And everything Malema said in his speech that was quoted in the piece is absolutely true and needs to be emphasized. So no, the miners made no mistake when they invited him to speak, not at all.

An injury to one is an injury to all. If Malema, for his own reasons, finds it useful to speak out on behalf of the miners, that is a very good thing for which he deserves credit.

Which doesn't mean we should shut up about Malema's multiple misdeeds ad bourgeois character, a united front only works if it includes freedom of criticism, otherwise it turns into somebody's front group.

But there is a time and a place for everything, and the moment when Malema does something good for once is not the ideal moment to denounce him as scum.

-M.H.-



What Bullshit. Its is in moments like this that the seeds of future betrayal and huge political disappointment are sown. Its not "stupid sectarianism" to expose this individual for the blatant capitalist fraud that he is . That in itself is a pretty stupid observation when even you concede that what I say about him is true. If you cannot see his manouverings for the sheer opportunism that it is then you have to be extremely naive indeed. You want us to pat him on the back, tell him what a jolly good fellow he is, for mouthing fine sentiments when in reality we both know they mean fuck all to him . You cant seem to see that this is to bring those sentiments into disrepute coming from the mouths of people like him - our class enemies


There is nothing all to be gained by workers associating with opportuinist scumbags like Malema, let alone be seen to be giving him a leg up in his transperent bid for more power and influence. It does not aid the workers cause one jot but weakens it and fosters division. As a worker from South Africa myself, I say we dont need support from the likes of Malema and would be better off without it.

I detest this new breed of state capitalists amd their oily unctuous ways of gaining favour . Dont give them the oxegyn of publicity . "Turn your backs on them and tell them to get lost" is the best advice I could give

[A Marxist Historian]

What Bullshit. Its is in moments like this that the seeds of future betrayal and huge political disappointment are sown. Its not "stupid sectarianism" to expose this individual for the blatant capitalist fraud that he is . That in itself is a pretty stupid observation when even you concede that what I say about him is true. If you cannot see his manouverings for the sheer opportunism that it is then you have to be extremely naive indeed. You want us to pat him on the back, tell him what a jolly good fellow he is, for mouthing fine sentiments when in reality we both know they mean fuck all to him . You cant seem to see that this is to bring those sentiments into disrepute coming from the mouths of people like him - our class enemies


There is nothing all to be gained by workers associating with opportuinist scumbags like Malema, let alone be seen to be giving him a leg up in his transperent bid for more power and influence. It does not aid the workers cause one jot but weakens it and fosters division. As a worker from South Africa myself, I say we dont need support from the likes of Malema and would be better off without it.

I detest this new breed of state capitalists amd their oily unctuous ways of gaining favour . Dont give them the oxegyn of publicity . "Turn your backs on them and tell them to get lost" is the best advice I could give

Should the miners join his party, vote for him, etc. etc.? Should miners leaders make speeches about how Malema is the greatest thing since sliced bread? No. But thirty miners were murdered by the state, a lot more were injured, and the struggle continues.

The miners need all the help they can get from whatever source, and for someone as politically influential as Malema to speak out for them is very useful in their hour of need. It's not the miners giving Malema oxygen, but the other way around.

And the time to attack Malema full barrel is when he betrays the miners (possibly not long in coming) not when he helps them.

Is he a bourgeois? Yes. But this is the class struggle, comrade. When a capitalist helps the workers in their struggle against his own class, it is stupid to kick him in the face.

-M.H.-

[GiantMonkeyMan]

We don't need bourgeois scum to speak for us.

[A Marxist Historian]

We don't need bourgeois scum to speak for us.

Comes in handy sometimes though. Like for those miners in South Africa, who really do need all the friends they can get at this point.

When you get right down to it, the ANC has always been a bourgeois organization. When people around the world were demanding that Nelson Mandela, the leader of that bourgeois organization imprisoned by apartheid South Africa, be freed, were they making some kind of a mistake?

-M.h.-

[ckaihatsu]

The union who 'illegally' walked out is not a member of COSATU and thus not related to the tripartite alliance - which probably explains the police shootings. Hopefully this event, as horrible as it is, will spread anger towards the status-quo, and will act as a catalyst for other workers to stand up for their wages and their rights.

the ANC can hardly continue in its current form, and to think that right now it is anything but a neoliberal party with some leftist rhetoric would be seriously misguided. the SACP is a complete disgrace, and they should have abandoned the ANC project as soon as the ownership question was completely ignored.


I've represented this delineation in a diagrammatic form -- note the barely-class-conscious "communist" orientation (in the 'Fundamentals' diagram) that is closer to the reformists and nationalists than to revolutionaries.

In the second one I have the class-based cut-off falling right around the 'anarchist' point on the spectrum (with the dividing line for the right-wing at the point of neoconservatism).


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

http://postimage.org/image/34modgv1g/


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

http://postimage.org/image/1g4s6wax0/

http://postimage.org/image/2cvo2d7fo/

[robbo203]

Comes in handy sometimes though. Like for those miners in South Africa, who really do need all the friends they can get at this point.

-M.h.-

They are not "friends" and that is the point . People like Malema are opportunist users of workers causes who are intent upon using these causes to climb the greasey pole of power for their own self-interested ends. The fact that the sentiments they mouth might appear "pro-worker" is neither here not there. What is at issue is who utters those sentiments and why. It is naive in the extreme to think that you can somehow disentangle the sentiment from the person uttering it.

Expressed through the mouth of a person like Malema who is unequivocally, and by your own admission, a capitalist politican, and of the seediest type in my view, this does not aid the workers' cause but on the contrary, DISCREDITS it. The miners should say unequivocally to Malema - "Get lost! We dont need your sort of "help". It is a completely disingenuous from begining to end" Thats my opinion at any rate

[Crux]

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/526324_353765838034566_116419253_n.jpg

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Comes in handy sometimes though. Like for those miners in South Africa, who really do need all the friends they can get at this point.

When you get right down to it, the ANC has always been a bourgeois organization. When people around the world were demanding that Nelson Mandela, the leader of that bourgeois organization imprisoned by apartheid South Africa, be freed, were they making some kind of a mistake?

-M.h.-
And what use will the South African miners who just got mowed down by the police have for this bourgeois opportunist? Years from now they'll look back and say "I remember when the struggle hit a turning point when our brothers got mowed down and we listened to Malema and got him elected to office so he could change things," as Malema is sending in the police to shoot miners. How many times are working people going to do this before they realize people like this are antithetical to their liberation? When tens of thousands of workers were in the street of Wisconsin were you applauding and praising the Democrats for opposing the anti-union bill even though they just used working class anger to try(and fail) at getting a Democrat elected governor?

[Crux]

Marikana massacre, the struggle continues (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5901)

[ckaihatsu]

Azania/South Africa: Emergency ILC Appeal following massacre of strikers at the Marikana mine in South Africa


EMERGENCY APPEAL

Informed by the activists of Azania/South Africa who participated in the Open World Conference in Algiers (November 2010), the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples (ILC) wishes to alert its correspondents and more generally the groups and the activists of the democratic labour movement around the world of the following:

On Thursday, 16 August, the South African police opened fire on the strikers at the platinum mine of Marikana (belonging to the British group Lonmin). Nearly 40 deaths were counted. Workers in South Africa and the world over are shocked and indignant at what the South African press has called unequivocally a "bloodbath"(The Sowetan) that recalls "the worst massacres of the apartheid epoch" (Business Day).

For several weeks, the strikers, together with their trade union, have been demanding a salary of 12,500 rands (i.e., 1,250 euros -- instead of the current 4000 rands, i.e., 400 euros). "We live like animals," asserted one of the strikers who, like thousands of others, lives in a hut without running water.

Singing the songs of the struggle against the apartheid regime, the wives of the miners also came out into the streets, demanding that the South African government "stop shooting our husbands and sons!"

Speaking to thousands of miners on 18 August, the former leader of the Youth League of the ANC, Julius Malema, declared, "This mine belongs to the British, who make a lot of money on it. But these are our Black brothers who have died, murdered. Even under apartheid there never was such carnage."

As for the management of Lonmin, they gave an ultimatum to the strikers; they were to be fired if they didn't go back to work on 22 August.

The International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples (ILC) calls upon its correspondents and more generally upon all activists and democratic labour organisations of the world to take a stand in any way that they judge useful, particularly in relation to the embassies of South Africa, to demand that the South African government:

- immediately stop the repression of the strikers;

- put an end to the lock-out and denounce the Lonmin ultimatum; and

- compel the Lonmin management to open negotiations with the strikers and their trade union on their labour demands.

Louisa Hanoune and Daniel Gluckstein,
Co-Coordinators,
International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples (ILC)

(to unsubscribe from this list, please contact [email protected])

[ckaihatsu]

South African platinum miners’ strike spreads

By David Walsh
23 August 2012

The strike by thousands of South African platinum miners, which led to the police murder of 34 workers August 16 at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, is spreading to other companies in the industry.

[...]

Meanwhile, giant Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) reported that workers at its Thembelani mine near Rustenburg have given the company until Friday to respond to similar demands.

“Amplats spokeswoman Mpumi Sithole said yesterday the demands were presented after a march last week—by the workers, and not union representatives,” wrote Business Day.

[...]

Mineweb points out that the demand at Amplats “has come from workers directly, rather than through official National Union of Mineworkers (the principal mining union at the mines) channels, and this mirrors the demands at Lonmin’s Marikana mine where again no official demands were made to the mine owners via the union.”

[...]

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/mine-a23.shtml

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Wildcats in South Africa. Almost poetic. Great news that the miners are taking things into their own hands. Here's hoping it's a victory.

[A Marxist Historian]

They are not "friends" and that is the point . People like Malema are opportunist users of workers causes who are intent upon using these causes to climb the greasey pole of power for their own self-interested ends. The fact that the sentiments they mouth might appear "pro-worker" is neither here not there. What is at issue is who utters those sentiments and why. It is naive in the extreme to think that you can somehow disentangle the sentiment from the person uttering it.

Expressed through the mouth of a person like Malema who is unequivocally, and by your own admission, a capitalist politican, and of the seediest type in my view, this does not aid the workers' cause but on the contrary, DISCREDITS it. The miners should say unequivocally to Malema - "Get lost! We dont need your sort of "help". It is a completely disingenuous from begining to end" Thats my opinion at any rate

Malema is no more or less discredited than any other ANC politician, if anything he's the one right now with the "radical" image, which Zuma used to have before he was elected. And the mainstream opposition to the ANC is basically closeted white apartheid supporters.

As for the SACP, they unlike Malema are defending the cops!

I think your opinion is wrong and foolish. Malema has a lot of support, both among the miners and outside their ranks in the general public. Is he seeking to use the miners for his purposes? Of course. But support from Malema for the miners definitely makes life more difficult for the mine bosses and their lackeys in the ANC and SACP.

Actually, I find myself surprised to be in the position of a "defender" of Malema, whom I despise. But this is the biggest atrocity versus workers this year not just in South Africa, but anywhere, and the broadest possible unity in action in defense of them is absolutely vital.

But with unity of action must come freedom of criticism, even the very sharpest criticism. And this is what the South African Spartacists have to say about him, which, although we've yet heard from them on this, does not IMHO in any way shape or form contradict being in favor of him speaking out on behalf of the miners.

http://www.spartacist.org/english/wv/1006/safrica.html

-M.H.-

[Crux]

Great to see the strike spread.

International protests following Lonmin massacre in South Africa (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5909)


(http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5909)
Reports of CWI-organised lobbies in Ireland, Israel, Austria (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5909)

[blake 3:17]

There is a solidarity action in Toronto on Saturday:


Demonstration outside the Consulate of South Africa in Toronto

When: 1:00 pm, Saturday, August 25, 2012
Where: South Africa Consulate-General, Toronto
110 Sheppard Ave East, Suite 600, (Sheppard-Yonge Subway Station)

Condemn the massacre of South African miners Stand in solidarity with
mineworkers in South Africa

A rally is being organized by labour, community and international
solidarity activists on Saturday, August 25, 2012 at 1 pm, outside the
Consulate of South Africa in Toronto, in condemnation of the massacre of
striking mineworkers and in solidarity with South African workers’
movement.

On August 16, 2012, police launched an offensive against thousands of
striking workers from the Marikina Platinum Mine and began shooting and
killing dozens of workers. More than 35 workers were killed and hundreds
were wounded and arrested.

The mine is owned by U.K.-based Lonmin Corporation, the world's third
biggest platinum producer and it accounts for 12% of the world's output of
platinum. However, the working condition of the mineworkers and the
standard of living in their communities are outrageously bad.

All working people and concerned individuals and organizations are urged
to join this protest action.

For more information and to endorse this rally contact:

Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity: [email protected]
Ilian Burbano, Chair, CUPE Ontario International Solidarity Committee:
[email protected]


Endorsed by:

Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity
CUPE Ontario
Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL)
Latin American Trade Unionist Coalition (LATUC) Ontario
Latin American & Caribbean Solidarity Network (LACSN)
CUPE Local 4772
International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI)-Canada Branch
Toronto Bolivia Solidarity

[A Marxist Historian]

There is a solidarity action in Toronto on Saturday:

The Partisan Defense Committee and the Spartacists are calling for one in New York on the 30th, at the South African embassy.

http://www.spartacist.org/events/slus/nyc.html

-M.H.-

[ckaihatsu]

[U&I] Outrageous! So. African miners charged with the murder of their fellow strikers -- who were killed by the cops!


This is unreal. South African miners are charged with the murder of their fellow strikers--- who were killed by cops!

Miners face murder rap

http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2012/08/29/miners-face-murder-rap

In a bizarre twist, the National Prosecuting Authority has charged the 259 arrested Marikana miners with the murder of their 34 colleagues, shot dead by the police.

Frank Lesenyego, the NPA's regional spokesman, yesterday confirmed that the miners had been charged with murder and not public violence as previously stated.

Asked to clarify the confusion - after police commissioner Riah Phiyega had earlier confirmed that the miners died after police shot at them with live ammunition - Lesenyego said: "It's technical but, in legal [terms], when people attack or confront [the police] and a shooting takes place which results in fatalities ... suspects arrested, irrespective of whether they shot police members or the police shot them, are charged with murder."

On August 16, police shot dead 34 striking mineworkers at Lonmin's Marikana mine in North West.

On the same day, the 259 workers were arrested for public violence. Another 78 were admitted to hospital.

The 259 miners appeared in Garankuwa Magistrate's Court last week. The hearing was postponed to Monday to allow for further investigations.

The group returned to court on Monday and yesterday the hearing was postponed again because of a power failure. It has now also emerged that the police are investigating all cases of murder since August 12 when the illegal strike started.

The strike has led to a total of 44 deaths at the mine, including those of two policemen and two security guards.

On Monday, Brigadier Gideon van Zyl, head of detectives in North West, told the court that because of several disruptions to the investigation - including the memorial service that was held for the slain miners last week - the police were unable to finalise the verification of the miners' residential addresses.

Prosecutor Nigel Carpenter said it was crucial that all addresses be verified before the miners are released because not doing so could lead to miners walking free as the police would not know their whereabouts.

Carpenter also argued that, because "weapons were stolen but not recovered" during the strike, evidence could be lost.

Police are also investigating the murders of the 10 people killed before the massacre but Van Zyl said the 259 miners were not being charged with those murders.

Today, the lawyers defending the miners, led by advocates Lesego Mmusi and Dali Mpofu, are expected to oppose any further postponements, and to ask the court to revoke the murder charges against the miners.
Following reports of intimidation at the mine since the weekend, Lonmin has reported that only 8% of its workforce had reported for duty yesterday.

[Blackburn]

Thanks for posting this! Insane!!!!

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/689.php


The B u l l e t

Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 689
August 31, 2012


The Marikana Massacre: A Turning Point?


Martin Legassick


The massacre of 34, and almost certainly more, striking mineworkers at Marikana (together with more than 80 injured) on 16 August has sent waves of shock and anger across South Africa, rippling around the world. It could prove a decisive turning-point in our country's post-apartheid history.

Marikana is a town situated in barren veld, dry brown grass in the winter, with occasional rocky outcrops (kopjes, hillocks). The Lonmin-owned mines – there are three, Karee, West and East Platinum – are situated on the outskirts of the town. Alongside two of them is a settlement of zinc-walled shacks festooned with lines of washing called Enkanini where most of the mineworkers live.

Towering over the shack settlement are the surface buildings of the mine, together with a huge electricity sub-station, with giant power pylons marching across the veld. This is the mineral-energy complex (MEC) which has dominated the South African economy since the 1890s, basing itself on the exploitation of cheap black migrant labour. But now platinum has replaced gold as the core of it. South Africa produces three-quarters of the world's platinum (used for catalytic converters in cars and for jewellery) and has dropped from first to fifth in production of gold. The underground workers at Marikana are still predominantly from the Eastern Cape, the area most ravaged by the apartheid migrant labour system. One third are contract workers, employed by labour-brokers for the mines, with lower wages and no medical, pension, etc benefits.
Working Conditions

Platinum rockdrillers work underground in temperatures of 40-45 degrees celsius, in cramped, damp, poorly ventilated areas where rocks fall daily. They risk death every time they go down the shafts. At Marikana 3000 mineworkers were and are striking for a wage increase from R4000 to R12,500 a month.

The juxtaposition of the MEC with Enkanini, where outside toilets are shared among 50 people, where there are a few taps that will only trickle water, where raw sewage spreading disease leaks from burst pipes, and children scavenge on rubbish dumps, symptomatises the huge inequalities in South African society today. (More details on living conditions can be found in “Communities in the Platinum Minefields: Policy Gap 6.”)

Inequality has increased since 1994 under the post-apartheid ANC government. CEO's earn millions of Rands in salaries and bonuses while nearly one third of our people live on R432 a month or less. The top three managers at Lonmin earned R44.6-million in 2011 (Sunday Independent, 26/8/2012). Since 1994 blacks have been brought on board by white capital in a deal with the government – and engage in conspicuous consumption. Cyril Ramaphosa, former general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), who is now a director of Lonmin, recently bought a rare buffalo for R18-million, a fact contemptuously highlighted by Marikana workers when he donated R2-million for their funeral expenses. Unemployment in South Africa, realistically, is 35 to 40 per cent and higher among women and youth – the highest in the world.

The media have highlighted police shooting automatic weapons at striking mineworkers running toward them from the rocky kopje where they were camped, and bodies falling to the ground dead. The police had erected a line of razor wire, with a 5-metre gap in it, through which some mineworkers were attempting to return to Enkanini to escape teargas and water cannon directed at them from behind.

Researchers from the University of Johannesburg (not journalists, to their shame) have revealed that the main killing did not take place there. Most strikers had dispersed in the opposite direction from Enkanini, trying to escape the police. At a kopje situated behind the hill-camp there are remnants of pools of blood. Police markers in yellow paint on this “killing kopje” show where corpses were removed: there are labels with letters at least up to “J.” Shots were fired from helicopters to kill other escaping workers, and some strikers, mineworkers report, were crushed by police Nyalas (armoured vehicles). Within days the whole area was swept clean by police of rubber bullets, bullet casings and tear-gas canisters. Only patches of burned grass are visible, the remains of police fires used to obscure evidence of deaths.

There are still workers missing, unaccounted for in official body counts. The death toll is almost certainly higher than 34.

The cumulative evidence is that this was not panicky police firing at workers they believed were about to attack them armed with machetes and sticks. Why otherwise leave a narrow gap in the razor wire? Why kill workers running away from the police lines? It was premeditated murder by a militarized police force to crush the strike, which must have been ordered from higher up the chain of command. This is further confirmed by autopsies which reveal that most of the workers were shot in the back (Cape Times, 27/8/2012).

Because of the global capitalist crisis, with a slump in demand for new cars, the price of platinum has been falling, squeezing Lonmin's high profits. Lonmin refused to negotiate with the striking mineworkers, and instead threatened mass dismissals, a favorite weapon of mining bosses. They were losing 2500 ounces of platinum output a day, amounting to more than $3.5-million. It was in Lonmin's interest to smash the strike. A platinum CEO is quoted as saying that if the R12,500 demand was won “the entire platinum mining sector will be forced to shut down.” (New Age, 20/8/2012)

But the massacre has rebounded in their face. It has reinforced the anger and determination of the Marikana mineworkers to continue striking. “We will die rather than give up our demand,” said one at a protest meeting in Johannesburg on 22 August. Moreover after the massacre workers at Royal BaFokeng Platinum and Anglo American Platinum joined the strike, though now (27/8) at least some appear to have been persuaded to return to work.

The police chief, Riah Phiyega, visited police in Marikana in the days before the massacre. On the day of the massacre a police spokesperson declared “Today is unfortunately D-day” (Business Report, 17/8/2012). After the killings Phiyega said “It was the right thing to do” (The Star, 20/8/2012). The ANC government is implicated in these murders – in defence of white mining capital.

Certainly the massacre has severely damaged the moral authority that the ANC inherited from the liberation struggle. Since 16 August President Jacob Zuma has gone out of his way to distance himself from the killings. He has deplored the tragedy, visited the site six days later – to a cool reception from the mineworkers – declared a week of mourning and established a commission of enquiry. He is hoping to restore the image of the ANC and of himself before he has to face re-election at an ANC conference in Mangaung in December. The commission has five months to report – which he hopes will cover up discussion of the events until after Mangaung. “Wait for the report before making a judgement” will be the watchword of the ANC and its allies in the next months.

Suspicious of the official commission, the mineworkers have called for an independent commission of enquiry, and the dropping of charges against 259 workers who have been arrested. “The same person who gave the order to shoot is the one who appointed the commission,” said a worker (Business Day, 23/8/2012).

Expelled former ANC Youth League president, the populist Julius Malema, has taken advantage of the massacre to visit Marikana, denounce Zuma, and give assistance to the dead mineworkers’ families. Also all leaders of the parliamentary opposition went as a delegation to a meeting in Marikana on 20 August to offer condolences – like flies hovering around a dead body. At the same meeting a procession of twenty or more priests each sought to claim the loudhailer.

The media have claimed that the violence was precipitated by rivalry between the NUM and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). This is nonsense. When the Marikana rockdrillers went on strike they wanted to negotiate directly with management, not to have any union represent them. This was made absolutely clear at post-massacre meetings in Marikana, and (including by the AMCU general secretary himself) at the protest meeting on 22 August.

The strike was violent. In the week before the massacre ten people died, six mineworkers, two mine security guards, and two policemen.
NUM and AMCU

Historically the National Union of Mineworkers, with a present membership of some 300,000, born in the struggle against apartheid, has represented mineworkers. It has a proud history of struggle, including the 1987 mineworkers strike, led by Cyril Ramaphosa. But since 1994 it has increasingly colluded with the bosses. At Lonmin it had a two-year wage agreement for 8 to 10 per cent annual increases.

When the rockdrillers struck for more than doubled wages, NUM tried to prevent them. The strikers assert that the NUM was responsible for the death of two of them early in the strike. Two days before the massacre NUM general secretary, Frans Baleni, stated of the strikers, “This is a criminal element” (Business Report, 15/8/2012). Since the massacre Baleni has claimed it was “regrettable” but he has not condemned the police, only “dark forces misleading the workers” (see the video on the NUM website). Baleni earns 77,000 rand a month, more than 10 times what the rockdrillers earn. NUM members in Marikana have torn up and thrown away their T-shirts. At the Johannesburg protest meeting on 22 August an NUM speaker was shouted down by Marikana mineworkers.

The beneficiary is the AMCU, which before the strike had only 7000 members at Karee, a part of the Marikana mine where workers did not strike. (Its membership there was drawn in by a disaffected NUM branch leader after a strike last year.) Now workers from West and East Platinum are joining AMCU.

AMCU was formed after 1999 when its present president, Joseph Mathunjwa was dismissed by a coal mine in Mpumalanga and reinstated because of worker protest, but then faced a disciplinary hearing from NUM for “bringing the union into disrepute.” He was expelled by the NUM (whose general secretary, ironically, was then Gwede Mantashe, now general secretary of the ANC) and formed AMCU.

Today AMCU claims a membership of some 30,000. It represents workers at coal, chrome and platinum mines in Mpumalanga, and coal mines in KwaZulu-Natal. It has members at chrome and platinum mines in Limpopo, and is recruiting at the iron ore and manganese mines around Kathu and Hotazel in the Northern Cape. It has focused on vulnerable contract workers. In February-March this year it gained membership in a six-week strike of 4300 workers (in which four people died) at the huge Impala Platinum in Rustenburg, a 14-shaft mining complex with 30,000 workers. At this stage it is unclear whether it can build solid organization for platinum workers, or merely indulge in populist rhetoric.

AMCU is affiliated to the National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU), rival union federation to the 2 million strong Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), both of them also born in the struggle against apartheid. COSATU, however, is allied with the ANC and partly compromised by its relationship to government.

The platinum strikes and the massacre take place on the eve of COSATU's 11th congress to be held on 17-19 September. COSATU has long differed with the ANC on economic policy, and in the recent period has been racked by internal differences over this and over whether or not Zuma should have a second term as ANC president and hence, in the 2014 elections, as likely president of the country. COSATU's president, Sdumo Dlamini, supported by the NUM and the National Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) supports Zuma. General secretary Zwelenzima Vavi, together with the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU), is less keen on Zuma's re-election. Other unions are divided.

Vavi's political report to the Congress writes of “total state dysfunction” (concerning the failure of the ANC government to provide textbooks to Limpopo schools) and states there is “growing social distance between the leadership and the rank and file” of the ANC (Mail and Guardian, 10-16/8/2012).
Workers’ Control?

At its June Congress NUMSA passed resolutions on nationalization of industry and declared “that nationalization of the Reserve Bank, mines, land, strategic and monopoly industries without compensation must take place with speed, if we are to avoid sliding into anarchy and violence as a result of the cruel impact of... poverty, unemployment and extreme inequalities in South Africa today.” Under workers’ control and management, this policy could rapidly end inequality and poverty in South Africa.

(Malema and the ANCYL also favour nationalization of the mines, but this is interpreted as a desire to enrich predatory black businessmen who could sell their assets to the state).

NUM is less keen on nationalization. “We are for nationalization, but not a nationalization that creates chaos,” said an NUM spokesperson recently. In a June document NUM criticized “populist demagoguery... calling for nationalization as the solution to... challenges” such as socio-economic conditions and failures by the mining industry to adhere to transformation or mining charter requirements (miningmx, 19/8/2012).

Vavi in his political report also drew attention to “a growing distance between leaders and members” within COSATU unions (Mail and Guardian, 10-16/8/2012) – which applies to the NUM, for example. Recently the NUM general secretary in a private meeting with Vavi warned him to cease his “one-man crusade” or face being unseated at the COSATU Congress.

Now the shock-waves of the massacre will reverberate through the congress. The differences could be magnified, and some observers even predict that COSATU could split either at or after the congress. Both factions of the COSATU leadership, however, are threatened by the erosion of the NUM and the growth of AMCU and other unions attracting disgruntled COSATU members.

A COSATU statement (23/8/2012) speaks of “a co-ordinated political strategy to use intimidation and violence, manipulated by disgruntled former union leaders, in a drive to create breakaway ‘unions’ and divide and weaken the trade union movement.” It says the COSATU Congress will “have to discuss how we can defeat this attempt to divide and weaken the workers, how we can ... cut the ground from under the feet of these bogus breakaway ‘unions’ and their political and financial backers.” The threat to workers’ unity is a powerful stick with which to temporarily re-unite the factions in COSATU. This strategy will be backed by the South African Communist Party, which is influential within COSATU. In reality, of course, it is the NUM leadership who are dividing the working-class, through their failure to represent the workers adequately, causing them to leave the union.

Were COSATU to split, were AMCU and other dissident unions to link up with this split, favourable conditions would be created for the launching of a mass workers’ party on a left-wing programme that could challenge the ANC for power. It would represent a combination of splits in traditional workers’ organizations and the emergence of new organizations. But this is not the most likely immediate scenario.

The consequences for Zuma at Mangaung are as yet unpredictable. They depend on how reaction to the massacre unfolds in the next months. Already it is reported that members of the ANC national executive are incensed at Zuma (Sunday Times, 26/8/2012). Unless the ANC can manage the situation successfully, the waves of shock and anger could catalyse the beginning of the end of ANC rule. Certainly nothing will ever be the same again. •

Martin Legassick is active in housing issues in the Western Cape and a member of the Democratic Left Front, an anti-capitalist united front. He visited Marikana in the aftermath of the massacre.

[ckaihatsu]

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/gold-s03.shtml


Funerals of slain South African miners held as unrest spreads

By Julie Hyland
3 September 2012

Burials for most of the 34 platinum miners massacred by police on August 16 took place Saturday.

The killings at the Marikana mine, near Johannesburg, were an attempt to crush a strike by rock drillers, employed by UK-based Lonmin, against hazardous and backbreaking conditions on pay of just $500 per month.

The police injured over 70 other workers, in an event recalling the brutality routinely meted out by the former white apartheid regime. That such methods are now been employed under the African National Congress government—which preaches “black empowerment”—has caused widespread anger.

Many of those murdered came from the Eastern Cape. In one village, funerals were held for striker Phumzile Sokhanyile and his mother, Glorious Mamkhuzeni-Sokhanyi, who collapsed and died when she heard how her son had been killed.

Despite government-brokered talks between Lonmin, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and workers’ representatives, the strike is continuing. The inclusion of the NUM in talks is tantamount to a provocation, given that it has denounced the strike and supported police repression.

Management said less than 6 percent of its 28,000 employees reported for work Friday, down from 30 percent at the time of the massacre.

Labour unrest has also spread to the gold mines. On Wednesday, a quarter of the 46,000 strong workforce at Gold Fields—the world’s fourth-largest gold mine—walked out at the KDC mine, west of Johannesburg. KDC operates eight mines in South Africa, Australia, Ghana and Peru. Gold Fields is its largest operation in South Africa.

In a statement, the company wrote: “Employees of the East Section of the KDC Gold Mine on the West Rand (Johannesburg) in South Africa have been engaging in an unlawful and unprotected strike since the start of the night shift on Wednesday.”

The Marikana massacre and spreading strike action have staggered the South African government.

South African prosecutors withdrew bogus murder charges yesterday against 270 platinum miners from Marikana. Last week, the National Prosecution Authority (NPA) had announced that the miners were being charged with the murder of their 34 colleagues killed by police under the apartheid-era “common purpose” law. Earlier yesterday morning, moreover, President Jacob Zuma had said he would not intervene to help the miners.

Despite the NPA’s announcement, the miners are still imprisoned, though they are supposed to be released this week.

The state has also left open the possibility of reinstating the charges. Nomgcobo Jiba, the acting National Director of Prosecutions, told a televised news conference: “Final charges will only be made once all investigations have been completed. The murder charges against the current 270 suspects will be formally withdrawn provisionally in court.”

The NPA’s withdrawal of the charges was forced on the authorities by rising public outrage and opposition in the working class.

In a letter to the president, the miners’ lawyers said the charges were “bizarre in the extreme … It is inconceivable that (you) can genuinely believe or even suspect that our clients murdered their own colleagues and in some cases, their own relatives,” the letter said.

Leaked post-mortem reports indicate that many of those slain were shot in the back as they tried to escape a murderous police onslaught.

An account by Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Greg Marinovich, at the scene of the massacre on Wonderkop Hill, said that some had been shot at close range or killed by heavy police vehicles. Based on survivors’ eyewitness accounts, Marinovich said many had been killed out of camera sight. Trapped by police lines, they were gunned down or run over.

The account is supported by research conducted by Peter Alexander, professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg, and others who also interviewed witnesses.

Responding to the public outcry over the murder charges, Justice Minister Jeffrey Radebe, complained they had “induced a sense of shock, panic and confusion within the members of the community and the general South African public.”

Commenting on Radebe’s criticism, Ralph Mathekga, the BBC’s South African political analyst, said he believed it was “merely a façade to create the impression that the NPA’s decision has been made independently and the government did not play a role.”

Citing previous indications of government “meddling” in the judicial process, like the NPA’s decision to drop corruption charges against Zuma in 2009, Mathekga wrote: “[I]n the eyes of ordinary South Africans, the government is trying to appease foreign investors at the expense of aggrieved Lonmin miners, who are suffering further victimisation.”

Over two-thirds of the arrested miners have filed reports that they have been beaten and tortured in custody. Many suffer from tuberculosis and HIV/Aids and are unable to get medical attention. Most are not even allowed to attend the court proceedings, on the grounds that the courtroom is not large enough to accommodate them.

As the New York Times was forced to acknowledge, “The rage that had long been focused on white rule and white capitalism has turned on the ANC. South Africa’s liberation party has become the establishment. It has forged deep links to the white business class, and through its affirmative action policies, a small but wealthy black elite has emerged. Even the venerable left-wing unions are seen by the have-nots as co-opted by the haves.”

The ANC, and its partners in the Tripartite Alliance—the trade union federation COSATU and the South African Communist Party—continue to claim that the labour unrest at Marikana was the outcome of “criminal activity” by members of the AMCU and other, non-union miners in a bid to undermine the NUM.

Such claims are belied by the wildcat strike at Gold Fields. The AMCU has no representation in the gold mines. The gold producers also practise a system of collective bargaining that some have said should now be extended throughout the mining industry to prevent a repeat of events at Marikana.

The NUM has denied any connection between the Gold Fields strike and that at Marikana. It claims that the latest dispute arises out of company plans to implement a compulsory funeral scheme, under which all workers would have R69 deducted from their salaries. But Gold Fields says that it had already agreed to drop the compulsory funeral scheme, drawn up by the NUM.

According to the South African business website BDLive, “It is understood that a faction among workers at the mine is dissatisfied with the new NUM branch leadership elected in September last year, and that the former branch chairman has rallied workers around him.”

Mineweb reported, “NUM representatives from the highest levels are at the mine trying to settle the dispute.”

The Gold Fields strike speaks to the hostility of broad masses of workers against the so-called “tenderpreneurs”—a layer of ANC, COSATU and NUM leaders who have built up fabulous wealth helping transnational corporations to exploit their workforce.

NUM founder and former ANC Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa has indirect shares in Lonmin. This is because his Shanduka investment firm holds a majority stake in Lonmin’s major Black Economic Empowerment partner, Incwala Resources. Ramaphosa also sits on Lonmin’s board of directors.

Copyright © 1998-2012 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[Thirsty Crow]

Just this brief comment:


...white mining capital....Capital knows no skin color. And this is precisely the problem with the text by socialistproject, that it reinforces the illusion that race is the essential problem in this, when this illusion has been so tragically shattered by class struggle itself.

[Os Cangaceiros]

http://www.anarkismo.net/attachments/aug2012/530967_334034813354596_302201915_n.jpg

Another photo to add to the "workers in uniform" collection

[bricolage]

http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-09-06-marikana-eyewitness-he-raised-his-hands-they-shoot-him-in-the-head

[ckaihatsu]

South Africa’s miners and the fear of “contagion”

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/pers-s05.shtml

[essmat]

فعلا موضوع رائع

[maskerade]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/09/2012910576231476.html

reports of a 'wildcat' strike from Al Jazeera, but I don't really think they know what they're talking about. Either way, the strike is continuing and ongoing, with workers from various mining sectors joining in. The labour aristocracy/union bureaucrats have struck a deal which the workers obviously reject. This truly is extremely exciting

edit: al jazeera sympathy for the owners: 'they're losing 100 million USD in operating profit per month'. Yea, and the demand for a wage of 1500 USD a month is ridiculous....

[bricolage]

So after Lomnin were forced to give a 22% wage increase (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/south-african-violence-returns-all-miners-now-demand-pay-hike), workers at other mines have gone on strike to demand the same raise.

1. Definitely a victory for the AMCU over the NUM as the later sought to tone down and placate the initial strike but the formers strategy of continuing/intensifying it provided dominant and (notwithstanding the tragedy of the state violence) victorious.
2. A big 'fuck you' to those who say strikes are always bought off and then collapse, as getting an initial victory has (as it has done many many times before) led to further insurgency.
3. A good example of how strikes can spread beyond their immediate sectional basis, even if this one is still only confined to the mining industry it has definitely gone further than the company it initially referred to simply be virtue of happening and existing.
4. The South African working class remains undeniably very militant and has been for a very long time, this strike merely brought it to the attention of more people.