Marikana Massacre Reveals True Face of Post-Apartheid Government in South Africa

By DANIEL XAVIER

On Aug. 16, South African police opened fire with live ammunition on 3000 striking workers at the Lonmin corporation’s platinum mine at Marikana in the country’s Northwest Province. This brutal incident of state repression, reminiscent of the apartheid era, left at least 34 workers dead, nearly 80 wounded, and many more missing.

The victims have been on strike for higher wages and a decent standard of living; most of them reportedly earn about $500 a month. Working conditions on the job are horrendous, requiring the miners to stand in swirling dust for hours on end while drilling the rock. After work, they and their families are confined to a squalid settlement of one-room shacks, without fresh drinking water and with 50 people often sharing a latrine. Leaking sewage from the platinum mine has polluted the surrounding farmland and groundwater.

On Aug. 24, a report surfaced of police assaults and torture of some of the 270 miners who were held in jail after the massacre. The National Prosecuting Authority, employing the apartheid-era doctrine of “common purpose,” charged the prisoners with responsibility for the deaths of their own comrades—an indictment that has now been “temporarily” suspended.

In the meantime, government officials, though crying crocodile tears for the slain workers and their grieving families, have defended the actions of the police and are pressing the people to remain patient while the state conducts an investigation.

Similarly, the pro-government trade-union leadership embodied in the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) put out a statement echoing the sentiments of the government and the police: “Now is not the time to go into this detailed assessment, nor to play the blame game. We must await the findings of the [government-appointed] Commission of Enquiry, which we hope will establish exactly what happened on that tragic day.”

The striking Marikana workers are represented by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), affiliated with the National Council of South African Trade Unions (NACTU). The union was initiated in 1998 after its current president, Joseph Mathunjwa, had been expelled from the COSATU-affiliated National Union of Mineworkers for leading a militant worker protest.

COSATU issued a report several days after the Marikana massacre that contained obvious accusations against AMCU. The statement denounced “what we have identified as a coordinated political strategy to use intimidation and violence, manipulated by former union leaders … to create breakaway unions and divide and weaken the trade-union movement.”

The international media was quick to blame the striking workers for the violence, alleging that they were brandishing weapons, that they were on strike “illegally,” and that the workers charged the police line, prompting them to open fire. For instance, The New York Times wrote on Aug. 16: “For the past three days, workers with machetes, sticks and wooden cudgels occupied an outcropping of rock near the mine, chanting and dancing, pledging their readiness to die if their demands were not met.”

The article continued: “Just before 4 p.m. on Thursday, after repeated warnings to the crowd of about 3,000 miners to disarm and disperse, the police began firing tear gas and water cannons to try to get them to leave, witnesses said. In video captured by several news organizations, the police appeared to fire upon a group of workers who charged toward them.”

A look at the news footage on YouTube, however, raises grave questions about the chain of events. We see the police shoot tear gas into an enclosure ringed with razor wire into which the strikers had been herded. We then see a group of miners (perhaps a few dozen) run out of the enclosure, apparently fleeing the gas and possibly bullets. The police then mow them down with automatic rifles, shooting hundreds of rounds at the workers until ordered to “cease fire!”

There is no evidence in the footage that the police were forced to defend themselves by force of arms. They clearly outnumbered the group of strikers who ran in their direction. And why would the strikers have charged a superior number of heavily armed police?

For the next half hour, moreover, some news reporters observed police on horseback and in armored cars and helicopters gunning down additional fleeing (or surrendering) workers. These later police assaults appear to have been responsible for most of the casualties. According to the Johannesburg Star, autopsies have shown that most of the strikers were shot in the back. It is thus out of the question that the massacre could be construed as the action of police officers defending themselves against an armed provocation.

The Marikana massacre poses additional questions that the mainstream press, police, and politicians all wish to avoid. Why were the police deployed to the isolated area of Marikana in the first place? Why did they have live ammunition? And, most importantly, why is the government intervening in a labor dispute on behalf of the employer? Only truthful answers to these questions can show us who is to blame for this tragic incident.

History can shed light on the situation, particularly the history of the African National Congress (ANC), their politics, their rise to power in the historic 1994 elections, and their track record since then. During the 1980s, demonstrations, boycotts, and strikes encompassed millions of people who were demanding civil rights for the Black population, economic justice, and the end to minority white government. The ANC, which had been formed years earlier as an organization fighting apartheid and for a “non-racial” South Africa, became the leading force in the movement.

As the mass movement began to reach potentially revolutionary proportions, President F.W. de Klerk began to grant concessions in hopes of calming the situation and paving the way for a “peaceful transition” that would give Blacks the right to vote but protect the economic dominance and minority rights for the ruling whites. Through these concessions, the legal ban on the ANC was lifted, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison, aspects of apartheid legislation were repealed, and negotiations began for a transition government. This led to the elections of 1994, in which the entire South African population was allowed to vote for the first time.

The ANC ran in the elections on a platform of land redistribution (87% of the population, specifically Black people, only owned 13% of land while whites controlled the rest), modest nationalizations, and socio-economic justice. Nelson Mandela was elected president by a landslide, and the ANC scored 252 seats in the National Assembly.

However, upon coming to power, the ANC disavowed its supporters and instead backed the interests of international and local capitalists, as well as partnering with the imperialist powers. Major planks of the ANC program, such as redistribution of the land, were discarded as South Africa’s new rulers assured business elites that their property and profit margins were safe.

For nearly two decades, the ANC has been in bed with the employer class and imperialism. A narrow crust of Black political leaders has been elevated to the boards of major white-dominated corporations. The new millionaire stratum includes Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC leader and former head of the National Union of Mineworkers, who now sits on the board of Lohmin PLC—the British-based conglomerate that owns the Marikana platinum mine

The ANC government has bent over backwards to satisfy its imperialist overlords, while its neoliberal policies have increasingly marginalized the poor and discontented that the ANC supposedly represents. The official unemployment rate borders on 25 percent; the mining industry has lost 131,000 jobs in recent years.

Those who dare to speak out for a better South Africa have often faced police violence and even massacres. Last year, police murdered Andries Tatane, a young worker, during a service delivery protest. Other trade unionists and strikers have also been killed by the government since 1994. In this sense, the Marikana massacre is not an aberration but the logical result of a government that supports the interests of the one percent against those of the 99 percent.

The workers of South Africa need to break with the ANC and the movement mis-leaders who support it (such as the COSATU trade-union bureaucracy), and build their own independent party to lead the struggle of the workers and rural peoples. Only when the South African people, led by the majority Black working class, seize control of the economy and administer it collectively and democratically in the interests of meeting human needs instead of the profits of the rich will there truly be justice in South Africa.