10 years after the brutal massacre of striking mine workers in Marikana in South Africa, Mbuso Ngubane, Deputy General Secretary of NUMSA, talks about questions of justice and the close ties between mining giants and the state
31 July 2021: Former mine employee Bongani Mpofu says life in Marikana is hard for its impoverished residents. (Photographs by Bonile Bam)
The Marikana area in North West province may be rich in platinum group metals, but the profits from mining them do not benefit residents, who have little hope of improving their lives.
“We are dying slowly in Marikana,” says Bongani Mpofu, 31, who lives in the North West province mining town’s Maditlokwa shack settlement. “The carbon monoxide that comes from underground by way of ventilators that are positioned in the veld blows in the direction of the community.
4 August 2020 — Tricontinental
An Anti-Eviction Campaign activist gazes at the construction site of the Delft transit camp, a ‘temporary relocation area’ for people evicted from shacks closer to the city. March 2009.
Kerry Ryan Chance
30 May 2019 — Global Research
The death of the 110-year old mining house Lonmin at a London shareholders meeting on May 28 occurred not through bankruptcy or nationalisation, as would have been logical at various points in time. It was the result of a takeover – generally understood as a rip-off of investors and workers – by an extremely jejune (7 year-old) South African corporation, Sibanye-Stillwater. The latter’s chief executive, Neil Froneman, is known for extreme aggression in both corporate takeovers and workplace cost-cutting, with by far the highest fatality rate in the mining industry.
23 February 2018 — Pambazuka News
After Jacob Zuma’s firing, South Africa risks budget austerity and even renewed BRICS “poisoning”.
Cyril Ramaphosa’s soft-coup firing of Jacob Zuma from the South African presidency on 14 February 2018, after nearly nine years in power and a bitter struggle to avoid resignation, has contradictory local and geopolitical implications. Amidst general applause at seeing Zuma’s rear end in the society, immediately concerns arise about the new president’s neo-liberal, pro-corporate tendencies, and indeed his legacy of financial corruption and class war against workers given the lack of closure on the 2012 Marikana Massacre.
19 December 2017 — TRNN
After a tight race that exposed stark divisions within the party, the African National Congress elected Cyril Ramaphosa, an anti-apartheid crusader, business tycoon, and key suspect in the 2012 Marikana Massacre is positioned to be the country’s next president. But will he root out corruption, or is he part of the problem? (inc. transcript) Continue reading
28 January 2014 — SACSIS
The decision of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) to cut ties with the African National Congress (ANC) has received poor analysis. Comment has tended to focus on the possibility of a new political party in 2019 or whether all this means that Zwelenzima Vavi will get his job back. As such, the greater significance of the biggest trade union in the country throwing in its lot with a growing movement in opposition to the neo-liberal order, and thus to the left of the ANC, rather than the line up to the right (which includes the newly merged Agang and Democratic Alliance who want more of the same), is being missed.
4 November 2013 — Daily Maverick
[This article pretty much sums up my feelings about the ANC and just as importantly, the South African Communist Party. WB] Continue reading
16 August 2013 — Terry Bell
Shortly after the column below was written and blogged, the SA Communist Party issued its statement on Marikana that reveals the deep and dangerous sectarianism of this organisation. Here, I feel, is exposed one of the roots of the problem. I include here the final paragraph of that statement as an introduction to a repeat of the Inside Labour column that appeared here yesterday: Continue reading
22 July 2013 — The South African Civil Society Information Service
Last week Inigo Gilmore’s documentary, South Africa’s Dirty Cops, was screened on British television. It deals with the torture and murder that have become common at the hands of the South African police and includes an examination of the two most high profile cases of political violence on the part of our police in recent years – the murder of Andries Tatane in Ficksburg in April 2011 and the Marikana Massacre in August last year.
26 June 2013 — Black Agenda Report
A veteran of the South African freedom struggle and its Black-led government says the African National Congress’ soul “was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we ‘sold our people down the river.’”
12 April 2013 — Amandla!
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is in the midst of the biggest crisis in its 27-year history. This crisis has arisen from a South African Communist Party (SACP)-driven attempt to oust democratically elected COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, under the guise of corruption charges. The conflict’s roots are in longstanding political contradictions and ideological tensions between COSATU and its Alliance partners – the ruling African National Congress and the SACP. At stake is not only the leadership of COSATU, but its political and moral direction.
29 March 2013 — Africa is a Country
South African actress/singer/writer Masello Motana has had a career in the entertainment business that many would envy. She has played a leading role in a number of South African television shows as well as in a mainstream feature film. Her poems have been published in several anthologies in that country and she regularly amazes audiences as a musical performer. Sounds like the good life. Well, life would be much simpler for Masello if only she was content with collecting paychecks from beauty contracts and soap opera gigs. If only she pretended last year’s horrific massacre of mineworkers at the now infamous Marikana platinum mine in South Africa’s northwest never happened. If only she ignored the fact that businessman Cyril Ramaphosa, board member of the company that operates the Marikana mine, was elected to deputy president of the country’s largest political party, the ANC. If only she had kept her mouth patriotically clasped about social and economic inequality in South Africa. Continue reading
13 March 2013 — Coldtype
In the March issue of COLDTYPE MAGAZINE – download your free copy today
Continue reading
14 February, 2013 — The Real News Network
Patrick Bond: Mining interests are a powerful force shaping African politics (inc. transcript)
10 January 2013 — The Real News Network
Patrick Bond: Platinum miners strike inspires workers across <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>South <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Africa; Billionaire mine owner becomes deputy head of ANC
Bio
Patrick Bond is the Director of the Center for Civil Society and Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>South <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Africa. Bond is the author and editor of the recently released books, Politics of <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Climate Justice and Durban’s <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Climate Gamble. (inc. transcript) Watch full multipart Platinum Miners and Class Struggle in South Africa Continue reading
13 December, 2012 — Terry Bell Writes
The tortuous road to the governing ANC’s centennial conference at Mangaung ends next week. And, not to put too fine a point on it, much of the country is gatvol with the route it has taken and where it has arrived.
20 December 2012 — Links International journal of Socialist Renewal
Lover of fast cars, vintage wine, trout fishing and game farming and the second richest black businessperson in South Africa (global financial publication Forbes puts his wealth at $675 million or £416 million), Cyril Ramaphosa (left) celebrates his election as deputy president of the ANC with South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. Ramaphosa demanded that police break the Marikana mineworkers’ strike; police massacred 34 mineworkers and wounded 78 others.
By Patrick Bond
28 November 2012 —International Labour Research and Information Group
[Comment: This is a really interesting, well-written, witty, informative as well as an excellent summation of events since the 1990s, and proves once again just how traitorous reformism is for any revolutionary movement. A must read if you want get beyond the cliches and the ideologues. WB] Continue reading
9 October 2012 — The Bullet • Socialist Project E-<strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Bulletin No. 710
About a month ago I stood with some 200 striking farm workers in <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>South <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Africa’s Hex River Valley, a rich agricultural region that produces table grapes for export. The workers were on strike against severe pay cuts and outsourcing, which came about when a major fruit export company took over the farm from its previous owner. The workers were a mixed group. Some were Zimbabwean migrants, but the majority were Xhosa speakers from the more impoverished Eastern Cape, where 72 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Most of them currently lived in the valley’s informal settlements, expanses of matchbox houses and zinc shacks on the dusty ground between the grape farms. As we marched toward the farm, the workers began to sing struggle songs praising the African National Congress (<strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>ANC) and the role of struggle leaders like <a class=”relay” href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Tambo”>Oliver Tambo and <a class=”relay” href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hani”>Chris Hani. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 