South Africa's Marikana massacre commemoration, two years on

Vanguard September 2014 p. 7
Contributed

A Crowd of 15,000, on the 16 August gathered at the Nkaneng informal settlement in Wonderkop, near Marikana in North West province, to commemorate the 38 mining workers who died at the hands of the South African police, Lomin Mine Corporation and the now exposed, corrupt ANC government. The dead mine workers’ suffering families were centre stage at the commemoration (above), making the event a moving tribute to the African people’s struggle for justice and a living wage.

By a living wage the mine workers and their union, Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) want their members to be paid 12,500 Rand per month.  They have been campaigning for this over the last two years. It is a figure which is three times their present wage. However, this increase is not significant or outrageous, for 12,500 Rand is equivalent to $1250 AUS. They want a weekly wage of $312.5 AUS per week, whereas at the moment mine workers and their families have to survive on $104.16 AUS per week.

This is a standard of living that is well below that of first world workers. The mining companies in South Africa have a history organising Africans to leave their homes and migrate to their mines and work as cheap labour so as to increase their rate of exorbitant of profits.


On and off the stage performers and the crowd celebrated their hardships and struggle for worker rights through song, dance, theatre and African protest dance – Toy-Toy. Local school children performed choir singing and their own poetry presentations to express their outrage and hope for a better and dignified future life. A variety of worker groups did their famous militant Toy-Toy around crowds of people as they assembled for the commemorative rally.

The sell-out officials from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the ANC and local government, were deliberately snubbed and not invited to the commemoration. Not surprising considering that two officials from NUM shot two Lomin mine workers two years ago, in an attempt to break the wildcat strikes that had started at Marikana and get the workers back to the mines.

 

(Above: workers gather at the hill where the massacre took place)

Wives and relatives took the stage as AMCU officials explained how the commemoration would be conducted on the day. Amongst the speakers, ranging from religious and parliamentary leaders – Julius Malema, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Moosiuoa Lekota, Congress of the People (COPE) – were two inspiring family representatives who resonated most with the crowd.

Whilst Malema and Lekota roared their support for the mine workers their message was essentially parliamentary, of “trust me with your vote”. However the family speakers, a father whose son died from police gunfire and a mine worker who was shot eight times and survived after being unconscious for several months, spoke of the loss of loved ones because of the shootings; hardships of working in the mines; trying to live on appalling wages paid to them by the mining corporations; and their efforts at carrying out industrial strikes to win a living wage. The crowd roared back in approval and support of their own kind.

South Africa’s leading political figures, the country’s President Jacob Zuma and ANC vice president and Lomin director Cyril Ramaphosa came in for a lashing from the family rep speakers. Utter contempt and hatred was expressed towards these two because of the treacherous role they played in supporting the mining corporations and ordering the police shootings, so as to deny the workers and their families a living wage.

The Marikana massacre has become a significant historical turning point, like Sharpeville and Soweto before it, in defining South African politics. It is the beginning of breaking the power and hold that the ANC and Council of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) have over the African population and workers. Their arrogance and monopoly over popular power is now on the wane.

Alternative organizations, such as AMCU and the peak union body National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU), have attracted workers away from the tame cat and corrupt ANC lead unions. Unfortunately, reports indicate some leaders of AMCU are practicing the same opportunism as NUM officials. The old short sighted habits continue: too much focus on signing up members to increase their paid membership; limiting industrial campaigns to just wages; overlooking health and safety issues such as on the job safety and dust blasted from the mining areas that blows over local communities’ shacks ; the correct resolution of land disputes between Indigenous land owners and the migrant labor force; the creation of desperately needed community services – sanitation, electricity, running water, free medical care and clinic and other facilities like community libraries.

Whilst there is militancy amongst the migrant mine workers, political consciousness has still has to be developed to overcome and resolve the myriad of social and political issues that confront the African people in Marikana. Therefore it is vitally important that political work be done amongst the people to overcome potential conflicts such as the mine workers and local land owners squabbling and fighting with each other over rights to land. Once broadening the base and narrowing the target is achieved, the real enemy can be identified – the mining corporations and the South African state!

The ANC in the long term will go into decline because of its open collaboration with corporate capital. Leaders such as Zuma and Ramaphosa are quite rightly seen as bourgeois compradors who don’t serve African workers, but who have become running dogs for white imperialists who actually run the South African economy!