ABSTRACT
On August 16 th 2012, police killed 34 striking platinum miners in Marikana, South Africa. A report by Emily Paulin at Think Africa Press provides background on what’s now known as the Marikana massacre:
The episode began when miners walked away from their posts in defiance of their employers, their unions and the law. They demanded better treatment. Fed up with poor working and living conditions, these miners were willing to risk losing their jobs in an area beset with unemployment. Low-wage workers in competitive industries such as mining do not strike lightly, but do so as a last resort.
The demands made to Lonmin, whose headquarters are based in London, included a wage increase from R4,000 ($480) to R12,500 ($1,500) a month, greater safety provisions in the mines, and entitlement to overtime. Some supporters of the workers’ cause, including former ANC youth leader Julius Malema, have even called for the mine to be seized from private companies and nationalized by the South African government. Previous concessions have been made by Lonmin, but many see these as having been insufficient.
Much of the recent commentary on the strikes has focused on the division between the traditional miners’ union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and the younger Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU)… [T]ensions arose between the two unions over strikes and calls for pay rises at the Impala platinum mine in Rustenburg. AMCU was accused of using violent tactics and of trying to impede negotiations to further its own membership drive by unions such as NUM, which has been losing support. Meanwhile, NUM has been accused of having too close a relationship to both South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party (ANC) and Lonmin by rival unions. It is the largest union in the COSATU trade union federation, which is allied to the ANC and Cyril Ramaphosa, a former NUM Secretary General and multi-millionaire, is widely tipped as a future ANC president.
Furthermore, many of the various secondary and tertiary actors in this story (politicians, union leaders, traders in platinum) appear to be using the Marikana tragedy as an opportunity to appeal to their own interests. Malema has called for the resignation of President Jacob Zuma for doing little to benefit the nation’s poor, while Zuma, in an equally calculated move, declared six days of mourning for those killed in the clashes.
These dealings all divert attention from the real issues of dangerous conditions in mines, miners’ insufficient wages, rising inequality, and the failure of both unions 307and political leaders to speak up for the working poor, not to mention the failure of the police force in responding appropriately to the protests.
