The story of the London-listed Lonmin's Marikana mine shootings is that of a trade union that cosied up to big business; of an upstart and populist new union that exploited real frustration to establish itself; and of police failure.
It is a story which exposes South Africa's structural weaknesses too: we are one of the world's top two most unequal societies (with Brazil). Poverty, inequality and unemployment lie at the heart of the shootings this week.
The Lonmin story starts with the 360,000-member National Union of Mineworkers, formed in the 1980s to fight apartheid labour laws. Under the leadership of Cyril Ramaphosa – ironically now on the board of Lonmin, which owns the mine where the shootings occurred – the union became the biggest affiliate to the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), a powerful ally of the ruling ANC.
For more than a decade Cosatu has concentrated on socioeconomic and political issues. Instead of organising on the shop floor it has harried the ANC government to adopt increasingly left-leaning policies. The NUM, one of the two biggest unions within Cosatu, has been at the forefront of these struggles.
Over the past few years the NUM has been split by succession battles inside the ANC, with the current leadership campaigning for ANC President Jacob Zuma to win a second term. The union has paid a heavy price for this. At the Lonmin mines its membership has declined from 66% of workers to 49% and it has lost its organisational rights. Disgruntled and expelled union leaders had in the meantime started a new union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, and were organising on the NUM's turf.
The NUM's achilles heel was that its relationship with mine owners and the Chamber of Mines had become too close. Its secretary, Frans Baleni, is a more strident critic of the nationalisation of mines than many business leaders. The union has also allegedly accepted wage settlements that tied workers into years of meagre increases.
The AMCU dangled a fat piece of fruit in front of the workers' eyes: rock drillers (who are the core of this strike and do the hardest work underground) earning R4,000 a month were promised R12,500 a month. The union's support in the Lonmin mines shot up to 19% by last month, and it embarked on an illegal strike to force its pay demand.
This week the strike turned violent. On the ground, armed workers are promising to "take a bullet with my fellow workers". Traditional doctors have been anointing strikers with potions, allegedly making them invincible. The AMCU's leaders are preparing for war.
The NUM has lost all credibility and is bleeding members. Its already well-paid secretary, Baleni, was awarded a salary increase of more than 40% last year and his total salary package is just more than R105 000 a month. NUM leaders have refused to get out of police armoured vehicles to address workers. Last year one of them was struck with a brick and lost an eye. They have no cogent plan to end the strike.
The police, too, have lost credibility. Although the indications are that they were shot at, a death count of 34 in three minutes suggests panic, ill-preparedness and fear. A judicial inquiry is likely.
Lonmin saw its chief executive hospitalised with a serious illness two days ago. It is leaderless, then, and has no coherent plan to end the impasse. On Friday it kept a stony silence after days of hapless statements.
This could all have been prevented. Amcu has been organizing at other mines in the region and violence flared at Impala Platinum earlier this year, with several people killed in a manner not dissimilar to this week's events. The police failed to act or gather intelligence to prevent a recurrence.
The AMCU is also organising among poor workers and their shack settlement communities, which have become no-go zones for police. For these settlements, this is a strike against the state and the haves, not just a union matter.
The political leaders now pouring into the area are flying into hostile territory without a plan. Joseph Mathunjwa, an AMCU leader, told workers today: "We're going nowhere. If need be, we're prepared to die."
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Genuine question, and not casting aspersions in any way, but why carry machetes for a strike?
Looking in from the outside, With 10 already dead, and faced with that picture, I'm really not surprised that the police opened fire. I'd be genuinely interested to hear your thoughts.
South African workers need to abandon the ANC as a failed movement they need a real labour movement to emerge from the ashes of this struggle.
Thank you Justice for shedding some light on the situation.
The ANC were a real labour movement once. Like all real labour movement they went wrong. South African workers need plurality in their choice of goverment. We in the UK built the ANC up to be something it never was (saintly) we helped the ANC to be strong, we helped to cause the current problems.
SA needs a choice of parties so that when one is so obviously rotten another can step in. SA certainly doesn't need another "real labour movement" (ANC).
"Although the indications are that they were shot at, a death count of 34 in three minutes suggests panic, ill-preparedness and fear" It more likely signals state sanctioned murder.
Very informatice article btw
informative
The elite no longer have any power ... they are naked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxySGdJ7Yho
The murder of 34 miners has exposed the reality of the ANC in modern South Africa. 20 years on they have failed to challenge the ruling class and adopted the neo liberal agenda, the poor are still as poor as they were under apartheid and yet this is a country with massive gold reserves, unbelievable wealth in diamonds and other rare metals. Black South Africans still live in the same townships many without running water, heat or power and what have the ANC done to change this. Well on the face of it very little and what gains have been made are nothing more than window dressing.
The ANC like New Labour wrap themselves in the language of reform but are little more than the puppets of the ruling class, I hope South African workers realise they need to take control of the means of production and build a better future.
The ANC in peace agreements already sold itself out it was a process that enabled a buisness first model they never cracked the class issues that Apparhteid entrenched into ethnic issues.
My hope is/was for Zwelinzima Vavi to withdraw Cosatu from the Tripartite Alliance or at least reposition it to an orbit where he could criticise government policy even more freely, but
1) he seems in the last few months to have succumbed to the idea that he can change the ANC from within, and
2) this horrific episode will have cost him support soon after he lost SADTU over the Limpopo schoolbooks scandal with the ANC conference just around the corner.
The ANC in peace agreements already sold itself out it was a process that enabled a buisness first model they never cracked the class issues that Apparhteid entrenched into ethnic issues.
I mentioned Tutu as being the best thing in the ANC. Without his peace agreement you would have a well armed white minority in civil war with a poorly armed but number black majority. Unles you are a freak who is turned on but violence then the peace agreement was necessary and good. It is what has happened since the ANC took over that has had too many wrong turns (corruption in the ANC being the biggest)
Couldn't agree with you more RedHectorReborn.
A concise summary of the ANC decent in opportunism and corruption can be found at the link below.
http://socialistresistance.org/3801/the-corruption-of-the-anc
It is a dark day in our nation when the government attempts to silence disent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U
No the ANC's agreements left the men with money in power the ANC's corruption began at that point they didn't seak to change the lives of those who supported them they had long since given up on a number of goals to tackle class issues because they needed support from governments outside South Africa who would only support buisness first models in South Africa.
Corporate sponsored murder, but then I am free to have an opinion unlike most of the victims of this new phase in this brave new world of unfettered Randist worshippers.
It seems that in SA, as elsewhere, the message has been scripted by The Who - Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
The share price of the mine has dropped. Buying opportunity?
Good article, Justice. The solutions are not easy but part of the problem here is certainly just what you set out. The NUM, once at the core of the South African labour movement, has become to close to mine owners. This has created the space for populist unions like the AMCU to step in. South African mines and the almost inevitable surrounding informal settlements that service them with goods, services and prostitution are some of the bleakest places on the planet. Its no wonder that South African mineworkers become so desperate that they'll risk their lives in the face of police guns ...
The same question can be levelled at the SA police, they were armed with assault rifles and riot guns.
Why the need for military grade weaponry to police a strike. The SA state and the ruling classes clearly wanted to destroy the political resolve of the workers by orchestrating a massacre.
It clearly highlights how the capitalist ruling classes maintain control of the various nation states through the exercise of deadly violence against the workers and not through democratic consent.
Because two security guards had already been killed, as had two of their colleagues, and they were facing what looks like a picture of the Rowandan interhamwe? Don't know, just hazarding a guess.
The police and private security have beaten and killed strikers many times in the past. These strikers were prepared to fight back, can't criticise them myself.
The police weren't met with that picture either. The strikers were sat down quietly listening to a speech when the police began surounding them.
The police and some of the media are trying to say that the strikers fired first. Watch the TV pictures and the smoke they claim is from strikers guns, is actually a smoke bomb fired by the police.
The shooting didn't happen all in one place either. There are bodies far away from the initial site with wounds to their backs suggesting they were running away.
The strike has come about because workers are sick of living in makeshift huts next to the mines. They are paid very poorly while the owners rake in the money.
The picture above is no different to what was seen in apartheid. Do you believe it was right for the old apartheid police to kill people as well?
Article-2 of The Declaration of The Rights of Man and Citizen
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.a...
Applies very well to the basic human rights of those 33 or more Massacred South African Miners.
They were just protesting against oppression, those who machine-gunned down these innocent South African miners should all be tried for heinous Crimes Against Humanity specially those white officers that seemed to be in charge.
Article 2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
(The political association in the above article also includes the Police)
Declaration of The Rights of Man and Citizen
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp
These people don't want to work, they want more money to lounge about, and turn violent when they don't get their own way. They are traitors to the cause of workers everywhere. I hope those who murdered police and security are swiftly brought to justice.