'All systems go' on Farlam Commission
21 Sep 2012 13:03 - Faranaaz Parker
Justice Minister Jeff Radebe on Friday morning announced that the commission of inquiry into the causes of the Marikana massacre will begin in 10 days, on Monday, October 1.
The timeline is ambitious given that it runs through the December period during which many organisations and government departments run on a skeleton staff, and workers usually return home to other provinces.
Radebe outlined the logistics for the commission at a press briefing on Friday.
"From our side it's all systems go," said Radebe.
President Jacob Zuma called for a commission of inquiry days after the killings of 45 people at Marikana, following a wage dispute at Lonmin's platinum mines.
The terms of reference for the commission were gazetted on September 12, and the commission has been give four months from the day it begins to present its final report to the president.
The offices of the commission will be headquartered in Marikana and the hearings themselves will take place at the Rustenberg civic centre.
Planning logistics
The nearby Marikana community hall, which is central to many of the informal settlements from which Lonmin draws its workforce, has also been made available to the commission.
Radebe asked that the venue be used as a remote viewing site for the public hearings that will take place at the civic centre, to be used by those who could not travel to Rustenberg for the hearings.
Its unclear what sort of budget the commission will have at its disposal for the duration of the inquiry but Radebe said the budgetary needs had been costed that his DG was liaising with the national treasury to request the funds. The justice department has also earmarked funds from its baseline allocation for the commission's start-up operations.
Radebe said that given the circumstances, security was an important consideration for the justice department.
"The prevailing environment in Marikana may require a heightened sense of vigilance in regard to security," he said.
The Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster will coordinate security arrangements, and will be assisted by the minister for community safety and liaison within the North West.
Bringing out heavy-hitters
Radebe also revealed that Farlam has designated five advocates to evaluate and present evidence before the commission. They are Mbuyiseli Madlanga, Mathew Chaskalson, Geoff Budlender, Johannes Nxusana and Charles Wessley.
The advocates, who have a depth of experience in human rights issues, will be assisted by a team of investigators. Radebe said discussions between the justice department and the commissioners on who to select as investigators are "at an advanced stage".
Constitutional law expert Pierre De Vos said the choice of evidence leaders makes it clear that the commission "mean's business"
"They really are employing heavy hitters to assist them and the terms of reference, with the one exception, are very comprehensive," he said.
Challenges for the commission
That exception, he said, was that the terms of reference do not explicitly require the commission to investigate the broader issues within the police force dealing with training, shoot to kill messages and the remilitarisation of the police.
De Vos said one of the biggest challenges that the commission would face going forward would be gaining the trust of all the parties involved, "to get them to come forward and give evidence and share information, in a context where there is a lot of distrust".
Another issue which has dogged previous commissions of inquiry is the ability to force individuals in the security cluster to give evidence. The Donen Commission for example failed to get crucial evidence from members of police and the security agencies because they said national security would be breached.
Labels: MASSACRE, STRIKE
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COMMENT - It is the question to ask, however the article doesn't answer the question. Why and who charged the surviving miners under the old 'common cause' laws apartheid was so famous for? Is the ANC sending a message to the business community? If the ANC is behind the prosecution, and not some local prosecutor. The article doesn't say.
Who’s behind the Marikana murder charge?
Posted by: Michael Trapido
Posted on: August 31, 2012
Posted in: News & Politics
The decision to charge the protesting Marikana miners who were arrested by police with the murder of their 34 colleagues who died at the hands of the authorities is patently misguided. In this regard not only will the state’s efforts to prove the necessary dolus required for murder remain elusive but the alleged employment of common purpose as a means of tying everyone together appears to demonstrate ignorance about where this doctrine has application.
This aspect of the charge has been covered elsewhere by colleagues and will not be repeated here, what I would like to question is the motive behind utilising it.
Why charge these protesters with murder?
The answer lies in the impact of the charge rather than any sustainable belief that the state will be able to secure any convictions.
If the Marikana miners are up on a charge of murder their prospects of obtaining bail are drastically reduced. Murder is a Schedule 6 offence requiring the accused to demonstrate exceptional circumstances that make it in the interests of justice that they be given bail.
If the accused fails to discharge that onus he or she could spend years in jail awaiting trial.
As my learned colleagues are aware, multiple accused often means substantial delays in getting to trial. One need only have regard to the Boeremag trial to understand that where you have many accused the task of getting everyone the necessary documents, finalising applications and getting legal teams to agree trial dates is a nightmare.
Where you have over 200 accused it does not bear thinking about.
The questions therefore are why would anyone try to incarcerate these accused for years, over charges which are clearly unsustainable and in respect of which the cost involved in keeping them imprisoned and running a trial of this magnitude appears prohibitive?
If you can answer that then you will also be able to tell us who is the driving force behind the decision to do so.
The fact that the decision was made before the inquiry designed to ascertain what transpired on that terrible day has even begun its work says a lot about vested interests pulling against each other and demonstrates clearly the problems experienced in allowing politicians and others to tamper with the criminal justice system.
Labels: MASSACRE, MINING, STRIKE
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Vavi: Marikana an 'exploding bomb'
07 Sep 2012 13:22 - Sapa
The violent protests at Lonmin's Marikana mine reflected an "exploding bomb" created by poverty and inequality, says Zwelinzima Vavi.
"We have warned over and over again that South Africa is sitting on a ticking bomb – the recent Marikana mine massacre was an exploding bomb, sending an alarm signal to us all, [saying] 'Wake up, do something about this situation'," the Congress of South African Trade Union's (Cosatu) general secretary said on Friday.
"That seems to be a very clear message, not just from the workers in Marikana, but across the mining industry."
Vavi was speaking at the annual summit of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) on the East Rand.
He said it was unsustainable for the country to maintain its current levels of inequality. Youth unemployment required particular focus.
"If we fail to provide these young people with the hope of work and an income, the consequences for us all will be catastrophic," he said.
"Very many of the unemployed youth should in fact be at school, acquiring skills and increasing their employability potential."
'Free-market policies'
South Africa could not claim to have achieved the goals of the national democratic revolution when wealth was still unevenly distributed.
"The Freedom Charter ... and the Polokwane ANC conference resolutions are at one in rejecting neo-liberal, free-market policies," he said.
"They all insist that the state must intervene to plan the use of the country's resources in the interests of the people."
Vavi said more needed to be done in furthering education in the country, which was one of its "most powerful weapons in our struggle against poverty and inequality".
"We must retain our best teachers and provide professional support in order to improve the quality of education," he said.
"The salary structures of teachers must motivate them to remain in education and help us to lay the foundation to produce the knowledge [for] workers of the future."
– Sapa
Labels: MASSACRE, NEOLIBERALISM, ZWELINZIMA VAVI
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Readings from Marikana massacre
31/08/2012 00:00:00
by Nathaniel Manheru
I AM very mindful of one rule of life, namely that distance simplifies things. I am watching events in South Africa from across the Limpopo, and of course there is a vast distance between the great Limpopo, itself the margin or the helm for our two sister republics, and where I stand as I write this piece.
Much worse, however nearer we are to each other as neighbours, there is a vaster distance by way of our distinct histories, however comparable these may be. Of course, our cultures and languages do intersect in a variety of ways, factors that may lessen that distance. But only lessen.
So near yet so wrong
Much worse, we have seen from none other than South Africa itself how a false sense of proximity often translates to watching events of the other from the wrong end of the telescope.
At the height of our stand-off with Europe over our land reforms — specifically after the Thabo Mbeki era — and the concomitant economic challenges wrought by combined reprisal actions of embittered Britain and solidarity Europe and America, the trophy for the most warped view and interpretation of events unfolding here went to South Africa and her media.
So near yet so far. So near yet so wrong. So near yet so blind. And this triggered a whole train of baffling positions and stances that left a bitter taste in the gaping mouth of Zimbabwe.
Her brother’s keeper virtually became her brother’s villain’s succour, often creating ironical situations where the views of South Africa and those of Britain and Europe mutually reinforced, and often melded. That is how it looked from this side of the Limpopo.
Fraught Marikana
It is very easy for Zimbabwe to slide into a similar weakness, in the process creating a perception similar to that which we had of South Africa, namely that it was using a neighbour’s troubled circumstances to create an illusion of better situation, of superior circumstances, with which to feed and satiate her own masses. Or worse, that she sought to fish in troubled waters of her neighbour, including muddying even further those already disturbed waters for more, better catch.
The tragedy of Marikana is a great temptation to analysts, more so to those already incensed by South Africa’s presumptive righteousness shown in its past.Marikana is fraught, very fraught, and can easily accommodate easy analyses, facile conclusions, or even malice. The sheer scale and circumstances of Marikana grant this tragedy unusual longevity both in itself, and metonymically as a summary of post-apartheid governance.
Marikana is disturbingly rich symbolism for post-apartheid politics. And given the sharp alignment of political forces in South Africa, given that country’s bloody history, there are very powerful forces with an interest in turning Marikana into a veritable symbol for a lasting indictment of the African National Congress.
Feeding the Eurocentric archetype
With apartheid having given us Sharpeville and Soweto, and with the liberation movements having so ably turned these into iconic, powerful symbols of the anti-apartheid movement’s campaign against white apartheid brutality, it should not be too hard to conceive of a reverse process, all of it vengefully led by the same forces that gave us Sharpeville.
I hear them gleefully telling the ANC: now it’s your turn! And those forces wield media power, which they have already begun to use frenziedly to ritualise Marikana into a damning all-time symbol of post-apartheid excesses by the very forces that liberated.
While numerically Marikana is a small beer in relation to Sharpeville, today it reads incomparably dire and worse, thanks to the aggravating white media, itself a leftover of the long apartheid. Such an image neatly feeds into an already established trope of African politics: that of a liberator-turned-monster. A trope and archetype at the heart of Eurocentrism.
Exploiting the law of recency
All this must be familiar to us as Zimbabweans. White interests in South Africa are anxious to expunge Sharpeville from the South African liberation narrative, from the country’s bloody iconography. Or to overwrite it. Or, at the very least, to lessen its incidence in daily tales of that nation. Marikana allows for all that, enables white South Africa to blackmail the ANC and the whole retinue of liberation.
Today no one in the ANC or its government dares pontificate about Sharpeville, without risking and bracing up for an instant, stunning boomerang. Or the obverse: the South African white media can now so easily skim past Sharpeville, to detour comfortably and lingeringly on the grisly details of bloody Marikana.
[One constant though - who owns the mines? Lonmin, Anglo-American De Beers, that's who. - MrK]
After all, Sharpeville is now memory, a fading memory. You squint to visualise it, to reach its mistily imperfect outline. By contrast Marikana is here, is only an imperishable yesterday, and therefore an ever present now! And the law of recency in the construction of news and comment kicks in, delivering a lifelong guilty verdict on the ANC, a verdict delivered with compound interest.
Sin by kin
Soon, the forces of apartheid may not need to even pay for the lip service of guilt. Not even to balance things by making perfunctory references to Sharpeville. What for? There is enough outrage in black South Africa over Marikana to wash away past outrages, to cleanse past ills, much worse to make an instant hero of whoever mentions Marikana in whatever context, for whatever reason, to whatever end, and with whatever colour of bawling lips.
And we know who wields a long mouth. After all, the guns of apartheid were expected to shoot at Africans. At the hill of Marikana, it was the gun of freedom that shot dead, with cynical commentators adding, shooting for multinational interests. That makes the latter tragedy more execrable, makes Marikana a sin by kin, and therefore a sin beyond expiation.
Parallels with Gukurahundi
We in Zimbabwe have a story to share with South Africans. We know how the post independence disturbances in Matabeleland have become inextinguishable fodder for all manner of causes, principally those linked to ousted white interests. The disturbances play ladder to any power bid in Zimbabwe’s notoriously reducible politics.
Consistently, it had to be a David Coltart — himself an ex-Rhodesian securocrat — who had to author Breaking Silence, who had to shoulder the burden of turning those unfortunate disturbances into an abiding and ductile feature of our national politics, indeed who had to make them a legitimation instrument for white-fomented dissent by way of the MDC.
It was only proper that he became the first white MP and minister of those comeback politics, all founded on sins and misconduct of post-liberation. Today those disturbances have been transfigured into the mythic “Gukurahundi”.
Mythic not in the sense of that which never happened. We all know that lives were lost during those disturbances, lives lost on both sides of the conflict. That is why Dumiso Dabengwa, himself a player in that unfortunate phase of our short history, says apologies are due from both sides.
But mythic in the sense of that which must never die, never go away, never lose freshness or a galvanising immediacy in spite of the passage of time or the coming in of new generations. Mythic, too, in the sense of a disproportionate and unbalanced comprehension and rendering, in the sense of a tragedy appropriated by those least affected by it, whether by race or by class.
It is a bit of some sequenced blackmail, itself the motor of post-colonial history. To grasp what is about to happen, thanks to Marikana, South Africa must learn from our own experience. I doubt very much that they can ever escape a comparable fate.
Founding new evil, new morality
And the actual problem will not be Marikana, real and/or mythic. The real problem is a new and consuming indictment or criminalisation of the liberation struggle through its governing superstructure. The real problem is a new and overriding sense of disaffection with the liberation process arising as a consequence of Marikana.
The problem is the obverse: a new and underlying sense of naturalising and even forgiving the excesses of apartheid against blacks because a new outrage has happened, has been found and mythologised across scope, space and time.
The real, stiff problem of a new morality, of a new compelling judgement unrestrained by it’s awesome paradoxes, a judgement so draining and dissipative of the vital reflex of liberation, and thus so dangerously retrogressive.
There is at once a process of de-legitimation and re-legitimation. Old sins of apartheid are repaid and cleansed. Equally, the sinners of apartheid are completely cleansed for new roles as new “defenders” of hapless blacks they killed only yesterday. From Marikana, the Coltarts, Bennetts, Kays of South African politics shall be born, ready to join hands with servile blacks to lead the assault on a liberation movement that has made a fatal mistake.
And as matters and collective morality see-saw, it shall be lost to many that in both Sharpeville and Marikana, the sufferer was one and the same: the black underdog. That in both Sharpeville and Marikana, the prevailing interest was one and the same: white capital giving shooting orders to the same State under chronological hands. In the heat of present anger, all this shall be lost, and with it, a critical lever for lifting liberation politics to a level of new dialectics for a higher synthesis.
When the dead were the luckier ones
That takes me to the bafflement which is acutely exercising me just now. Reports from South Africa seem to suggest that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in that country is about to prefer charges against 169 or so survivors of that massacre for the murder of the 34 persons killed by the police on that fateful day. Can someone tell me that this is not correct? Please! Should this turn out to be true — and my God please forbid! — the implications are very serious, indeed dire.
Police shot the 34, with many of the dead bearing lethal bullet wounds picked from the back, all in mid flight. That means the police shot fleeing demonstrators, not charging ones. Those who face this alleged action were part of that collective flight from this lethal danger. They survived that danger, or so they thought. They were the lucky ones, or so again they thought.
Today, the action which the NPA is said to be contemplating makes the dead of Marikana safer, luckier, its survivors the most unsafe, the unlucky ones. It would amount to a double shooting, a double trauma. Much worse, politically, it is horrible provocation by a system which should be searching for its soul, while bringing anodyne, bandages and plaster to heal the wound it inflicted on the unarmed.
The art of sepsis, never the bland artifice of assaulting the bereaved and grieving, is what is needed. And the NPA action will just be that: a carelessly provocative assault that could very easily ignite South Africa, while puzzling the ANC’s allies and supporters abroad. Fatefully, our own draft constitution proposes a similar structure to our legal system!
When the beautiful ones are not yet born
There is also another contradiction, a serious one at that. President Zuma has appointed and announced a commission of inquiry on the massacre. I don’t like South Africa’s dependency on white judges — whether retired or serving. There is too much at stake in South Africa to make the former ruling class, at whatever branch of government, politically colourless or juridically impartial.
The days of post-apartheid are still too short, too near, to have permitted pregnancy and the birth of the beautiful ones for a new, hopeful dispensation. By and large, South Africa is still the old country it was. Marikana inquiry is one matter where South Africa would have been better served and possibly saved by a judge from Africa or the Commonwealth to which South Africa belongs. Not one enmeshed in its troubled history which is its tormenting present.
But Zuma is the president; he has decided, hopefully on good judgement. Let’s leave that one. The real question to pose is how an, any, action by the NPA relates to the proposed inquiry.
For a start, the NPA will bring Marikana before the courts, in which case the “sub judice” principle invalidates the inquiry. Or am I missing on a finer point of law? And of course in South Africa’s circumstances, the fastest way of discounting black South Africans as arbiters on any national matter is to take it to the white-dominated legal system.
As the Zuma painting case showed, even black attorneys, themselves better equipped to deal with white law than the masses, are reduced to tears! South Africa seems set for a two-track system of justice and truth — both tracks focusing on an outrage against blacks from a white perspective, with the black victims unable to control or repose trust in either of them.
Two tracks that clash
Lately, the NPA itself has been a creature shaped (or is it misshaped?) by buffeting winds. Recently, it was taken to court by a white interest group purporting to act on behalf of Zimbabweans claiming to have been victims of the 2007/8 election-related violence in Zimbabwe. These white litigants sought and got a high court ruling compelling the NPA to act on any persons named in the electoral violence, should they set foot on South African soil.
South Africa’s signature to the ICC protocols became the enabler of such litigation. To assist this action against the NPA, a white prosecutor employed by the NPA resigned ahead of the trial, and gave evidence against his former employer.
Today, the intention to prosecute Marikana’s survivors is ascribed to another white prosecutor serving in the NPA. Are we set for another challenge to the NPA should someone senior enough in the NPA decide to stop this insensitive and most provocative legal charade? Or has the NPA been sufficiently cowed down through such white legal harassment that it can now be made to do practically anything?
The Blair who gets away with it
There is a further question that begs. Tony Blair was in South Africa this week, pursuing Churchillian antics as always. He killed millions in Iraq, well outside the remit of the UN. He killed on the strength of a lie, only to turn around when Iraq was already a burnt out case to say he was wrong and mistaken.
Inquiries have been held on this matter, not to get to the bottom of this great British infamy, but to cleanse and close it. Still Blair is free, free to romp the globe, largely unmolested except by angry demonstrators soon beaten off by coercive arms of obliging states. What a remarkable contrast with Sudan’s Omar al Bashir! Anyway, Blair was in South Africa more or less the same time of Marikana.
Also in South Africa — well and kicking — are those white legal activist NGOs which purport to fight — pro-deo — whenever and wherever human rights are trampled upon. White legal groups who are so alert as to remind the South African government and its NPA of their international obligations under the Rome Statutes!
Why was there no action to force the NPA to arrest and bring before the courts of South Africa this one warrior of latter-day empire, this genocidal killer called Tony Blair? Why no white prosecutorial activism within the NPA? Uu-uh, black man, you are truly on your own. I wish South Africa well.
Icho!
Nathaniel Manheru is a columnist for the Saturday Herald. Email him: nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: MASSACRE, MEDIA, MINING
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Readings from Marikana massacre
31/08/2012 00:00:00
by Nathaniel Manheru
I AM very mindful of one rule of life, namely that distance simplifies things. I am watching events in South Africa from across the Limpopo, and of course there is a vast distance between the great Limpopo, itself the margin or the helm for our two sister republics, and where I stand as I write this piece.
Much worse, however nearer we are to each other as neighbours, there is a vaster distance by way of our distinct histories, however comparable these may be. Of course, our cultures and languages do intersect in a variety of ways, factors that may lessen that distance. But only lessen.
So near yet so wrong
Much worse, we have seen from none other than South Africa itself how a false sense of proximity often translates to watching events of the other from the wrong end of the telescope.
At the height of our stand-off with Europe over our land reforms — specifically after the Thabo Mbeki era — and the concomitant economic challenges wrought by combined reprisal actions of embittered Britain and solidarity Europe and America, the trophy for the most warped view and interpretation of events unfolding here went to South Africa and her media.
So near yet so far. So near yet so wrong. So near yet so blind. And this triggered a whole train of baffling positions and stances that left a bitter taste in the gaping mouth of Zimbabwe.
Her brother’s keeper virtually became her brother’s villain’s succour, often creating ironical situations where the views of South Africa and those of Britain and Europe mutually reinforced, and often melded. That is how it looked from this side of the Limpopo.
Fraught Marikana
It is very easy for Zimbabwe to slide into a similar weakness, in the process creating a perception similar to that which we had of South Africa, namely that it was using a neighbour’s troubled circumstances to create an illusion of better situation, of superior circumstances, with which to feed and satiate her own masses. Or worse, that she sought to fish in troubled waters of her neighbour, including muddying even further those already disturbed waters for more, better catch.
The tragedy of Marikana is a great temptation to analysts, more so to those already incensed by South Africa’s presumptive righteousness shown in its past.Marikana is fraught, very fraught, and can easily accommodate easy analyses, facile conclusions, or even malice. The sheer scale and circumstances of Marikana grant this tragedy unusual longevity both in itself, and metonymically as a summary of post-apartheid governance.
Marikana is disturbingly rich symbolism for post-apartheid politics. And given the sharp alignment of political forces in South Africa, given that country’s bloody history, there are very powerful forces with an interest in turning Marikana into a veritable symbol for a lasting indictment of the African National Congress.
Feeding the Eurocentric archetype
With apartheid having given us Sharpeville and Soweto, and with the liberation movements having so ably turned these into iconic, powerful symbols of the anti-apartheid movement’s campaign against white apartheid brutality, it should not be too hard to conceive of a reverse process, all of it vengefully led by the same forces that gave us Sharpeville.
I hear them gleefully telling the ANC: now it’s your turn! And those forces wield media power, which they have already begun to use frenziedly to ritualise Marikana into a damning all-time symbol of post-apartheid excesses by the very forces that liberated.
While numerically Marikana is a small beer in relation to Sharpeville, today it reads incomparably dire and worse, thanks to the aggravating white media, itself a leftover of the long apartheid. Such an image neatly feeds into an already established trope of African politics: that of a liberator-turned-monster. A trope and archetype at the heart of Eurocentrism.
Exploiting the law of recency
All this must be familiar to us as Zimbabweans. White interests in South Africa are anxious to expunge Sharpeville from the South African liberation narrative, from the country’s bloody iconography. Or to overwrite it. Or, at the very least, to lessen its incidence in daily tales of that nation. Marikana allows for all that, enables white South Africa to blackmail the ANC and the whole retinue of liberation.
Today no one in the ANC or its government dares pontificate about Sharpeville, without risking and bracing up for an instant, stunning boomerang. Or the obverse: the South African white media can now so easily skim past Sharpeville, to detour comfortably and lingeringly on the grisly details of bloody Marikana.
[One constant though - who owns the mines? Lonmin, Anglo-American De Beers, that's who. - MrK]
After all, Sharpeville is now memory, a fading memory. You squint to visualise it, to reach its mistily imperfect outline. By contrast Marikana is here, is only an imperishable yesterday, and therefore an ever present now! And the law of recency in the construction of news and comment kicks in, delivering a lifelong guilty verdict on the ANC, a verdict delivered with compound interest.
Sin by kin
Soon, the forces of apartheid may not need to even pay for the lip service of guilt. Not even to balance things by making perfunctory references to Sharpeville. What for? There is enough outrage in black South Africa over Marikana to wash away past outrages, to cleanse past ills, much worse to make an instant hero of whoever mentions Marikana in whatever context, for whatever reason, to whatever end, and with whatever colour of bawling lips.
And we know who wields a long mouth. After all, the guns of apartheid were expected to shoot at Africans. At the hill of Marikana, it was the gun of freedom that shot dead, with cynical commentators adding, shooting for multinational interests. That makes the latter tragedy more execrable, makes Marikana a sin by kin, and therefore a sin beyond expiation.
Parallels with Gukurahundi
We in Zimbabwe have a story to share with South Africans. We know how the post independence disturbances in Matabeleland have become inextinguishable fodder for all manner of causes, principally those linked to ousted white interests. The disturbances play ladder to any power bid in Zimbabwe’s notoriously reducible politics.
Consistently, it had to be a David Coltart — himself an ex-Rhodesian securocrat — who had to author Breaking Silence, who had to shoulder the burden of turning those unfortunate disturbances into an abiding and ductile feature of our national politics, indeed who had to make them a legitimation instrument for white-fomented dissent by way of the MDC.
It was only proper that he became the first white MP and minister of those comeback politics, all founded on sins and misconduct of post-liberation. Today those disturbances have been transfigured into the mythic “Gukurahundi”.
Mythic not in the sense of that which never happened. We all know that lives were lost during those disturbances, lives lost on both sides of the conflict. That is why Dumiso Dabengwa, himself a player in that unfortunate phase of our short history, says apologies are due from both sides.
But mythic in the sense of that which must never die, never go away, never lose freshness or a galvanising immediacy in spite of the passage of time or the coming in of new generations. Mythic, too, in the sense of a disproportionate and unbalanced comprehension and rendering, in the sense of a tragedy appropriated by those least affected by it, whether by race or by class.
It is a bit of some sequenced blackmail, itself the motor of post-colonial history. To grasp what is about to happen, thanks to Marikana, South Africa must learn from our own experience. I doubt very much that they can ever escape a comparable fate.
Founding new evil, new morality
And the actual problem will not be Marikana, real and/or mythic. The real problem is a new and consuming indictment or criminalisation of the liberation struggle through its governing superstructure. The real problem is a new and overriding sense of disaffection with the liberation process arising as a consequence of Marikana.
The problem is the obverse: a new and underlying sense of naturalising and even forgiving the excesses of apartheid against blacks because a new outrage has happened, has been found and mythologised across scope, space and time.
The real, stiff problem of a new morality, of a new compelling judgement unrestrained by it’s awesome paradoxes, a judgement so draining and dissipative of the vital reflex of liberation, and thus so dangerously retrogressive.
There is at once a process of de-legitimation and re-legitimation. Old sins of apartheid are repaid and cleansed. Equally, the sinners of apartheid are completely cleansed for new roles as new “defenders” of hapless blacks they killed only yesterday. From Marikana, the Coltarts, Bennetts, Kays of South African politics shall be born, ready to join hands with servile blacks to lead the assault on a liberation movement that has made a fatal mistake.
And as matters and collective morality see-saw, it shall be lost to many that in both Sharpeville and Marikana, the sufferer was one and the same: the black underdog. That in both Sharpeville and Marikana, the prevailing interest was one and the same: white capital giving shooting orders to the same State under chronological hands. In the heat of present anger, all this shall be lost, and with it, a critical lever for lifting liberation politics to a level of new dialectics for a higher synthesis.
When the dead were the luckier ones
That takes me to the bafflement which is acutely exercising me just now. Reports from South Africa seem to suggest that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in that country is about to prefer charges against 169 or so survivors of that massacre for the murder of the 34 persons killed by the police on that fateful day. Can someone tell me that this is not correct? Please! Should this turn out to be true — and my God please forbid! — the implications are very serious, indeed dire.
Police shot the 34, with many of the dead bearing lethal bullet wounds picked from the back, all in mid flight. That means the police shot fleeing demonstrators, not charging ones. Those who face this alleged action were part of that collective flight from this lethal danger. They survived that danger, or so they thought. They were the lucky ones, or so again they thought.
Today, the action which the NPA is said to be contemplating makes the dead of Marikana safer, luckier, its survivors the most unsafe, the unlucky ones. It would amount to a double shooting, a double trauma. Much worse, politically, it is horrible provocation by a system which should be searching for its soul, while bringing anodyne, bandages and plaster to heal the wound it inflicted on the unarmed.
The art of sepsis, never the bland artifice of assaulting the bereaved and grieving, is what is needed. And the NPA action will just be that: a carelessly provocative assault that could very easily ignite South Africa, while puzzling the ANC’s allies and supporters abroad. Fatefully, our own draft constitution proposes a similar structure to our legal system!
When the beautiful ones are not yet born
There is also another contradiction, a serious one at that. President Zuma has appointed and announced a commission of inquiry on the massacre. I don’t like South Africa’s dependency on white judges — whether retired or serving. There is too much at stake in South Africa to make the former ruling class, at whatever branch of government, politically colourless or juridically impartial.
The days of post-apartheid are still too short, too near, to have permitted pregnancy and the birth of the beautiful ones for a new, hopeful dispensation. By and large, South Africa is still the old country it was. Marikana inquiry is one matter where South Africa would have been better served and possibly saved by a judge from Africa or the Commonwealth to which South Africa belongs. Not one enmeshed in its troubled history which is its tormenting present.
But Zuma is the president; he has decided, hopefully on good judgement. Let’s leave that one. The real question to pose is how an, any, action by the NPA relates to the proposed inquiry.
For a start, the NPA will bring Marikana before the courts, in which case the “sub judice” principle invalidates the inquiry. Or am I missing on a finer point of law? And of course in South Africa’s circumstances, the fastest way of discounting black South Africans as arbiters on any national matter is to take it to the white-dominated legal system.
As the Zuma painting case showed, even black attorneys, themselves better equipped to deal with white law than the masses, are reduced to tears! South Africa seems set for a two-track system of justice and truth — both tracks focusing on an outrage against blacks from a white perspective, with the black victims unable to control or repose trust in either of them.
Two tracks that clash
Lately, the NPA itself has been a creature shaped (or is it misshaped?) by buffeting winds. Recently, it was taken to court by a white interest group purporting to act on behalf of Zimbabweans claiming to have been victims of the 2007/8 election-related violence in Zimbabwe. These white litigants sought and got a high court ruling compelling the NPA to act on any persons named in the electoral violence, should they set foot on South African soil.
South Africa’s signature to the ICC protocols became the enabler of such litigation. To assist this action against the NPA, a white prosecutor employed by the NPA resigned ahead of the trial, and gave evidence against his former employer.
Today, the intention to prosecute Marikana’s survivors is ascribed to another white prosecutor serving in the NPA. Are we set for another challenge to the NPA should someone senior enough in the NPA decide to stop this insensitive and most provocative legal charade? Or has the NPA been sufficiently cowed down through such white legal harassment that it can now be made to do practically anything?
The Blair who gets away with it
There is a further question that begs. Tony Blair was in South Africa this week, pursuing Churchillian antics as always. He killed millions in Iraq, well outside the remit of the UN. He killed on the strength of a lie, only to turn around when Iraq was already a burnt out case to say he was wrong and mistaken.
Inquiries have been held on this matter, not to get to the bottom of this great British infamy, but to cleanse and close it. Still Blair is free, free to romp the globe, largely unmolested except by angry demonstrators soon beaten off by coercive arms of obliging states. What a remarkable contrast with Sudan’s Omar al Bashir! Anyway, Blair was in South Africa more or less the same time of Marikana.
Also in South Africa — well and kicking — are those white legal activist NGOs which purport to fight — pro-deo — whenever and wherever human rights are trampled upon. White legal groups who are so alert as to remind the South African government and its NPA of their international obligations under the Rome Statutes!
Why was there no action to force the NPA to arrest and bring before the courts of South Africa this one warrior of latter-day empire, this genocidal killer called Tony Blair? Why no white prosecutorial activism within the NPA? Uu-uh, black man, you are truly on your own. I wish South Africa well.
Icho!
Nathaniel Manheru is a columnist for the Saturday Herald. Email him: nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: MASSACRE, MEDIA, MINING
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Marikana: Mthethwa receives preliminary report on assault allegations
25 Aug 2012 09:07 - Sapa
A report alleging that arrested mine workers have been assaulted by the police was handed to Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa on Friday.
"The preliminary report provided to the minister confirms that on August 22 it came to the attention of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) that
detainees linked to the Marikana incident were assaulted by [SA Police Service] SAPS members at Phokeng police station and Mogwase police station," Mthethwa's spokesperson Zweli Mnisi said in a statement.
Police shot dead 34 striking Lonmin Platinum mine employees and wounded 78 in a violent confrontation last Thursday. A total of 260 mineworkers were arrested.
They complained to the IPID that they had been assaulted by the police during their arrests.
"The IPID's investigators registered a case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm at the Mogwase Police Station. Investigators obtained statements from 50 victims in this regard," said Mnisi.
Two similar cases were opened at the Phokeng and Jericho police stations by mineworkers detained there.
Mnisi said arrangements were being made for some of the miners to be relocated and to receive medical attention.
"Any police officer who conducts him or herself in a manner that is not in line with constitutional principles should face the full might of the law and I encourage IPID to investigate these allegations, without fear or favour," Mthethwa said in the statement.
– Sapa
Labels: LABOUR, MASSACRE, MINING, POLICE BRUTALITY
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Mine killings: SA black freedom questioned
Saturday, 18 August 2012 22:26
Ambassador Christopher Mutsvangwa
As I write, I still dread to turn on my television set to watch the live scenes of armed South African police brazenly firing live bullets into a rag-tag crowd of protesting miners.
The unrepentant white rule nostalgists have lost no time in gloating over this tragic incident and are drawing comparisons with the notorious apartheid-era Sharpeville Massacre, their logic being to whitewash their consciences for the systematic and institutionalised oppressive segregation of the black majority in their ancestral homeland.
President Zuma has had to cut short a diplomatic visit to a sub-regional Sadc summit in Maputo to go and handle this politically sensitive massacre at a time he is fighting hard to get his ANC party to accord him a second presidential term.
Politics being what it is, I doubt if his many opponents will let him off lightly. Thirty-eight dead miners and scores of others injured is just too grave an issue.
All right-thinking Zimbabweans are at one mind of sympathy with their big neighbour to the south at this hour of pain and grieving over this unfortunate incident. That is how it should be because of the recent shared experiences in the struggle to rid the sub-region of the scourge of colonialism, racism and apartheid.
We emerged strong to cement multi-faceted bonds even further.
Only yesterday in Harare, Sadc ambassadors and their staff teemed together with the host Government of Zimbabwe and other well-wishers to celebrate Sadc in a splendid extravaganza of speeches, drama, music, poetry and very tasty dishes of varied sub-regional cuisine for the scores who were at the National Gallery in the capital city of Harare.
Whether in sorrow or in joy, Sadc people empathise with each other as one region linked as much by geography as it is by shared culture as well as common history. On the African continent, we have that distinct identity of the re-birth of a new type of African state that is a product of slain bodies, lost limbs and blinded eyes as the valiant Soweto ’70s generation took to armed confrontation of foreign and racist invaders.
The armies of the sub-region are an issue of the national liberation movements that organised the various national populaces across the whole swathe of land from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans, from Cape to Quelemane and from Maputo to Luanda into armed resistance to eject imperial and apartheid aggressors from power forever.
Post-victory revisionist history has sought to rob the sub-region of the many battlefield successes that dealt heavy blows to Portuguese colonialist fascism in Angola and Mozambique, to Rhodesian unrepentant minority racists and to the apartheid extension in Namibia in the heroic confrontation with the apartheid bastion.
Instead, great play has of late been given to demonstrations by well-wishers from far off capitals in the West as they pressured their won governments to desist from giving succour to the white minority monsters of the sub-region.
Those of us who were at the frontline of the struggle are quite appreciative of all the support we got from progressive humanity across the globe. It played an important part in improving our very difficult condition of deprivation and hardship while also boosting our morale. However, it is important to note that we were not typical refugees like those that stream out of the Rwanda-engendered mayhem of the Great Lakes region.
Rather, we were young people with a mission to get weapons from those countries that were ready to arm us so we could go back to confront the foreign invaders and racist white minority rulers in our home countries. Naturally, those who gave us those guns and bullets were much closer to our hearts and that gratitude goes to Communist China, Soviet Russia and its Warsaw Pact allies and other nations that stood four square with the then Organisation of African Unity and its Liberation Committee in support of the gallant duo of Zambia and Tanzania to host the various armed freedom fighter groupings.
We were overjoyed when progressive victories expanded the sphere of freedom in the sub-region as we tightened the noose around the apartheid bastion of South Africa.
At this juncture, it is important to highlight the two decisive battles that would shatter the notions of racist armed superiority and demoralise the ruling prospects of entrenched white minority.
The battle of Quito Cunavale in 1976 in southern Angola when the internationalist Cuban forces helped the Angolan army deliver telling blows on the much-vaunted South African apartheid invading force is etched in our memories of glory.
It demonstrated once and for all that the Africans had finally mastered the art and science of modern warfare.
Zimbabwe’s gallant forces would add another heroic chapter when for a full week of pitched battles, they blunted and then repulsed a massive Rhodesian combined ground and aerial assault on the Mavonde military redoubt in the Hauna border area north of Mutare in 1979.
This Mavonde Battle became the last major encounter of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War. In its wake, Britain ordered General Peter Walls, the commander of its rebel surrogate Rhodesian Army, to London to join the ceasefire talks he had scorned under mistaken military bravado.
On arrival in London, he was forced to salute General Josiah Tongogara, the illustrious commander of the Mozambique-based Zanla Forces, as they worked on the disengagement of the ground forces, leading to a ceasefire and the subsequent solution of Zimbabwe’s independence. Among the surviving heroes of this epic military encounter is General Paradzai Zimondi, who was the Camp Commander at Mavonde in charge of the intricate maze of underground trenches and other defences that foiled the combined ground and air assault of the Rhodesian army.
These two signature military encounters belied a qualitative build-up of military capability based on the concept of the classic guerilla tradition of the People’s War where a whole populace was politicised and organised into a potent force that would offset the technologi edge of Nato-trained colonial armies.
The two battles announced loudly and clearly to the minority apartheid rulers that notwithstanding their perception of military superiority, they stood to eventually face similar defeat should they persist in defying the will of the black majority in South Africa. They created a military environment that forced the apartheid white rulers to seek the path of negotiation well ahead of a desultory military confrontation they were now sure of eventually losing.
It is this tradition of the People’s Army that is the foundation of the new political and governance order of the Sadc sub-region. It is the bond that runs through the defence and security architecture of the countries that make up Sadc. These armies are a far cry from the majority of their counterparts on the African continent that were bequeathed to post-independence governments with express indoctrination to carry out anti-populist military coups that claimed a host of early African radical government leaders, Nkrumah included. Indeed a coup d’etat is an alien concept in the core Sadc nations associated with the national liberation movement. For the armies of these states, politics always command the gun.
In the instance of Zimbabwe, the guerilla war became so pervasive that no family was left untouched across the land between the Zambezi and the Limpopo. While it is accepted that independence created conditions for the armies to be professional in line with the new defence and security assignments, the People’s Army outlook remained ingrained courtesy of the core guerilla identity of the pioneer cadres.
It is the strong populist ethic of the People’s War that has been troubling to the West as it tries to retain its economic dominance of the Sadc region in the age of resource nationalism and an increasingly competitive global economic environment.
All along, the multinational corporations of the West could always count on the neo-colonial state apparatus to defend their business interests in the face of any popular challenge.
The likes of Joseph Mobutu and Idi Amin would remove elected rulers, the police would readily shoot land peasants reclaiming land stolen by colonial settlers and/or protesting workers. That way the stranglehold of multinationals on resources was assured while super profits were assured collusive monopolies.
From such an ideological stance, it is inconceivable that the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, their sister Zimbabwe Republic Police and other related services would find themselves readily disposed to shoot at
workers on strike because that strikes at their core orientation as a force of the people, from the people, for the people. That is precisely the reason why the people of Svosve could move in to occupy land still occupied by recalcitrant white colonial settlers long after independence in 1980. They did not need to factor in the prospect of the army and the police joining the fray on the side of those remnants of the defeated colonial order.
It is also the same reason that the small-scale gold miners can now agitate for official recognition as legal economic players. Even the mine workers can strike without ever fearing that they can be mowed down by State guns in cold blood.
In Zimbabwe, it is common understanding that the State enforcement authority in not exercised at the behest of hostile foreign economic interests against popular wishes. Neither is it within the psyche of the individual soldiers that they can shoot demonstrating workers and peasants confronting foreign economic interests.
That is precisely why the mujibha and chimbwido association with war veterans continues to endure because it was the basis of the common touch with the community.
Indeed Air-Marshall Perrance Shiri’s recent interview succinctly captured this people-centred outlook that resisted moving out of barracks in face of the adversity of sanctions on the welfare of soldiers during the 2007-8 economic meltdown. Even as the armed men went hungry and without pay, it never came to pass that they march to nearby State House, much to the chagrin of the United Kingdom and its Western allies.
We have gone through a decade during which every excuse has been contrived or invented to “get at Mugabe and his Zanu-PF”. There been spirited efforts by the USA, UK, EU and Anglo-Saxon to husband regional diplomacy to this cause with illegally imposed sanctions crafted to hasten this desired goal.
Within Zimbabwe, there is a cacophony of the ingrates from the post-independence education boom who are recruited to despise the unique historical achievements of a brave generation.
The charge is led by the legion of politico-lawyers spawned by reactionary instruction at the University of Zimbabwe Law Department. Given a chance to draft a home-grown constitution for Zimbabwe, they resort to littering the document with infections of Rhodesianisis, a virulent form of obnoxious racist restitution of land and citizenship rights, to the detriment of the victorious black majority. Such is the work of those in the ilk of Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, Douglas Mwonzora, Paul Mangwana, et al.
They want ex-Rhodesian nostalgists gratified ahead of the generality of the people of Zimbabwe. I bet their ingratitude may extend to the fact that they may still owe society the arrears on the post-independent student loan bonanza that gave me their erudite yet wayward elucidations.
It is from the same quarters that there is this litany of calls on so-called security sector reform. They clamour around President Zuma so he can abuse the heavyweight status of his nation so he will be made to impose an army, police and security service of their imagination at the behest of defeated imperialist forces. And their hiding behind misplaced notions of popular will to reform a state whose origin and birth is popular sacrifice on a national scale.
My foot, no vote or referendum was conducted to form Zanla and Zipra. People left for Zambia, Botswana and later Mozambique as individuals to go and sacrifice to form the army of the two armies that made it possible to have a new Zimbabwe state.
They sacrificed their once-only gift of life for the welfare and benefit of all subsequent generations of Zimbabweans; not just for sulky post-independence spoilt brats. Now we have this reckless coterie of sanctimonious legal minds that would arrogate to itself the singular role of refashioning by pen and paper the defence and security apparatus born of rivers of blood.
It is a fact that America had a civil war in the 1860s after independence, that it had segregation as recently as the Second World War (1939-45) and the Korean War (1951-3) with black battalions and black pilots fighting separately. All of these shortcomings have never been used to denigrate the heroism at the heart of the victory of George Washington and Minutemen as they founded modern America. Neither have they ever been used as a excuse to call for the restoration of the British rule of a vanquished King George III and his successors.
Now that the Marikana Massacre has happened, may our busybody legal midgets working under the rubric of negotiators finally take stock of their misdirected efforts that place extra-territorial heavy loads on the shoulders of the South African leadership.
With 34 fatalities and other scores wounded and so many dependent families deprived of a breadwinner, these busybodies should now be jolted out of crowding Zuma’s leadership. I can assure you many South Africans would be thankful for that. Their hands are full, trying to re-build a nation shattered to the core by centuries of racist white rule and decades of apartheid. They need all the time possible to restructure their state apparatus out of the trigger-happy if gratuitous killing of many black strikers working for the good of foreign multi-national corporations. Such conduct by our busybody negotiators would be a great act of solidarity to our black sisters and brethren in South Africa. It would be in keeping with our earlier tradition when we had wages and salaries deducted for the South African National Liberation Fund of the anti-apartheid struggle.
As for all other Zimbabweans, beware when such quarters clamour for Security Sector Reform. Dismiss the false accusations of a politicised army, police and security apparatus that are bandied about by Biti, Ncube, Mwonzora and Mangwana. You must be forever grateful that your sacrifice as a people in the glorious era of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s gave issue to a defence and security establishment of politically conscious cadres who will never turn their guns on you for the benefit of foreign economic interests.
Such a vocation on their part will continue to create boundless opportunities for your prosperity for generations to come. We just do not need Marikana-type massacres in Zimbabwe.
Labels: MASSACRE, MINING
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IMF drops SA growth forecast amid growing labour unrest, joblessness
23 Aug 2012 21:09 - Lynley Donnelly
Increased labour unrest in the face of stubborn unemployment levels was a key risk to South Africa's economic outlook according to the IMF. Increased labour strikes and high unemployment levels has caused the IMF to downgrade South Africa's growth forecast. (Oupa Nkosi, M&G)
But attempts to address unemployment were being hampered by "policies, product market structure, and labour market arrangements that end up protecting insiders at the expense of the unemployed", the International Monetary Fund said in its annual staff report, which followed consultation with the government.
It dropped its economic growth forecast for South Africa to 2.6% of GDP.
The report, released earlier on Thursday, came as the country reels in the wake of a violent dispute between striking miners and police at Lonmin's Marikana mine in North West. A memorial service was held to commemorate the deaths of 34 miners killed in the confrontation a week ago.
The IMF report drew attention to the political significance of the ANC's upcoming elective conference where the party will, along with its alliance partners the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, choose its next president.
"Impatience with the high structural unemployment, particularly of the young, could lead to inappropriate responses that might threaten macroeconomic stability," it said.
"In addition, adverse external developments and domestic shocks could increase further unacceptably high levels of unemployment."
Slow recovery
South Africa also faced a continued slow recovery from recession, thanks to the ongoing crisis in Europe, with economic growth coming in at below 3%.
But domestic factors had also contributed to this, particularly industrial action in both the mining and manufacturing sectors.
Job creation efforts were being hampered by policy choices, an economy dominated by large oligopolistic firms and an inflexible labour market.
The repeated standoffs between business and labour were costing the economy, according to the report.
"The struggle for dividing rents between highly concentrated, oligopolistic firms and strong and politically influential labour unions has resulted in large economic losses associated with frequent labour strikes," it said.
The IMF welcomed progress made to address market dominance and collusive behaviour by private companies but said penalties for misconduct needed to increase, while product market regulation needed to improve. It included state owned companies in its assessment, saying the government should consider "opening the sector reserved for public enterprises to private sector competition".
Critically more flexible wage bargaining mechanisms were needed especially for small businesses, along with more flexible labour laws and regulations to "improve the business environment and increase employment opportunities, especially for newcomers with limited skills" it said.
Labels: IMF, MASSACRE, MINING, STRIKE
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'Only Malema cares' - Lonmin miners spurn Zuma's task team
22 Aug 2012 08:04 - Nickolaus Bauer
The crisis surrounding events at Lonmin platinum mine has deepened after workers rejected overtures by the government to rescue the situation.
"If [President Jacob] Zuma wants to show us he cares and that he wants to help, he can make sure we get the money we want," Xolani Ndzuza said on behalf of striking workers at the mine.
Ndzuza was responding to the interministerial task team set up by Zuma to investigate last week's shooting, who visited the community on Tuesday.
Some 34 people were killed and 78 were wounded in a shootout between police and miners in Marikana, Rustenburg following a protracted labour dispute between workers and Lonmin management.
Most of those killed are understood to have been involved in illegal industrial action at the mine after rock drillers affiliated to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) demanded that their monthly salary of R4 000 be increased to R12 500.
"We agree with you that blood was spilled here. This is not something we condone," Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said, to angry jeers from the assembled crowd.
"We are sorry, this hurts all of us. As government we would like to assist you with the organisation of Thursday's memorial service," she added.
But the government's offer to help didn't placate the angry workers.
"Julius Malema is the only one who cares about us," Ndzuza said. "He spoke to us and he is helping us,"
Expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema visited the mine on Saturday and again on Tuesday when, along with seven survivors of the incident, laid murder charges against police for the shooting.
"We don't want your help and we don't want the R2-million Cyril Ramaphosa said he would give to pay for the funerals and assist the families," Ndzuza told the government team.
Most of the workers who involved in last week's industrial action are still on strike, after only about a third of the Lonmin workforce returned to their posts on Tuesday.
Those who stayed away say they won't return to work until their demands are met.
Ndzuza also said the incident had caused workers to lose their faith in their political leaders.
"We won't vote for the ANC. Black people killed black people here. We have been forgotten. They hate us," Ndzuza said.
It is understood by the Mail & Guardian that a parallel memorial service is being organised in opposition to the one being arranged by government and is supposedly being organised by the league.
"The police acted like they did before apartheid ended. It is not right and you must not accept it," Andile Lungisa, former ANC Youth League deputy president and current member of the league's national executive committee, told the assembled crowd of workers before the interministerial team arrived.
Expelled youth league spokesperson Floyd Shivambu and suspended secretary-general Sindiso Magaqa were also among workers when they were addressed by the task team.
"It's obvious certain people will try and use this situation for their own personal reasons," Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane, leader of the interministerial task team told the M&G, when asked about the involvement of current and former youth league leaders. "We are not able to control that and we can't stop people from coming here,"
Chabane also defended the government's approach to addressing the crisis.
"We were here as soon as the team was formed. We engaged bereaved and injured first, and we are here now to speak to workers. We will assure the memorial service goes off well and continue to deal with this situation," he said.
Labels: JACOB ZUMA, JULIUS MALEMA, MASSACRE
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Marikana tragedy: Who authorised the use of live ammunition?
21 Aug 2012 21:05 - Andisiwe Makinana
There was only one question opposition parties in Parliament wanted answered by the judicial commission of inquiry into the Marikana tragedy. Members of Parliament on Tuesday demanded the inquiry, announced by President Jacob Zuma on Friday, investigate who authorised the use of live ammunition on the striking workers. The incident left 34 people dead and more than 70 injured last week.
In a fiery parliamentary debate on Tuesday about the Lonmin platinum mine tragedy Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa emphasised the responsibilities that the Constitution imposes on citizens, but opposition MPs said the Constitution has been breached and whoever gave the instruction to the police to use live ammunition should be held accountable for the deaths of 34 striking workers.
Mthethwa said Thursday's event could have been avoided "if all of us had adhered to the noble principles of our Constitution".
He said the Constitution guarantees rights and imposes responsibilities on the citizens of the republic.
Mthethwa cited section 17 of the Constitution which assures the citizens the right to "peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and present petition and section 205 which speaks specifically to the South African Police Service and enjoins the members of the service to 'prevent, combat and investigate crime, maintain public order, protect and secure the inhabitants of the republic and their property and uphold and enforce the law'."
He said the police as part of our security services are always and at all material times guided by the Constitution of the Republic. The police did all in their power to avert (a violent) situation, he said.
"As we indicated above, the Constitution of the Republic guarantees us the right to strike, to protest in a peaceful orderly manner to express our dissatisfaction with anything. While all South Africans enjoy these rights, rights always come with responsibilities," said Mthethwa.
But leaders of the opposition parties came out guns blazing demanding answers on who authorised the use of live ammunition, and also called for a broad and data-driven commission of inquiry.
Lack of leadership
The Democratic Alliance's Lindiwe Mazibuko said the tragedy spoke of a lack of top-level leadership and of ministerial accountability.
She said the judicial commission of inquiry should specifically establish who authorised the use of live ammunition on the striking workers, within the context of how the police manage violent strikes. "Whoever authorised the use of live ammunition must be held accountable.
"It must also be revealed on what, if any, intelligence was the planning was conducted; and if the national police commissioner, Riah Phiyega, exercised appropriate judgment and leadership. At what point did she intervene?"
Mazibuko said the commission should also carefully examine the conduct and Mthethwa's role adding that: "In most democracies, a crisis of this magnitude would have immediately precipitated the resignation of the minister, and, in many cases, the fall of the government.
"The DA is concerned that no one in this government seems to be assuming political responsibility for the [tragedy]. We need accountability now."
She added that police minister, the secretaries general of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and the chief executive officer of Lonmin should carefully consider their positions, and offer their resignations. "Their position is untenable."
Congress of the People president, Mosioua Lekota reiterated that the incident was avoidable "had we only stuck to the provisions of our Constitution".
'Militarisation'
Lekota blamed the "militarisation" of police, especially highlighting the introduction of military ranks to the police service. He said this had prepared the "young" police officers in a manner which resulted in an outcome like the Marikana tragedy.
He said while the Constitution prescribed for a police service and not a police force, Zuma introduced military ranks. "When the authors of the Constitution decided on a police service, and not on a militarised police force, they had been informed by what had happened in the past under the then police force."
Lekota said whoever authorised the use of live ammunition was in breach of the Constitution.
"In this country, the Constitution does not allow death sentence, who is this authority who has the right to say to the police shoot with live ammunition that was definitely going to take lives ... Who was this person who is above the Constitution, who had the authority to decide that this right to life will be suspended today, for this moment and therefore shoot? ... Who had the authority to waive the right of the people to life and to mow down those numbers of people that were slaughtered on that day there," asked Lekota.
The Inkatha Freedom Party's Velaphi Ndlovu questioned the presence of the police in Marikana, saying they had been used by management.
"Why did the police go there, who called them? Workers were not on the mine property and didn't pose any threat to the management."
Civilian leadership
The appointment of a civilian to top police leadership also came into question.
United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa, who visited Marikana with other leaders of the opposition parties on Monday, said incidents like Marikana were here to stay, "unless we do away with the deployment of people with no professional police background to senior SAPS levels to command juniors with military training".
"Perhaps, it is time for this House to review the mechanism of civilian oversight in the SAPS. Should we not confine civilian oversight to the office of the Minister and let experienced police personnel run SAPS?"
Holomisa also questioned the tactics the police used to disarm and disperse striking mineworkers.
He then suggested that Parliament should closely monitor these salary negotiations given the questionable involvement of the police in this labour dispute. "We should not lose sight of the fact that both NUM and Amcu workers have one thing in common. They demand a salary adjustment."
Labels: BANTU HOLOMISA, LABOUR, MASSACRE, MINING, PLATINUM, POLICE BRUTALITY
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History of South Africa's Cheap Labour Economy: The 1946 Miners Strike and the Marikana Massacre
by Chris Webb
Global Research, August 21, 2012
Socialist Project
On August 4, 1946 over one thousand miners assembled in Market Square in Johannesburg, South Africa. No hall in the town was big enough to hold them, and no one would have rented one to them anyway. The miners were members of the African Mine Worker's Union (AMWU), a non-European union which was formed five years earlier in order to address the
12 to 1 pay differential between white and black mineworkers. The gathering carried forward just one unanimous resolution:
African miners would demand a minimum wage of ten shillings (about 1 Rand) per day. If the Transvaal Chamber of Mines did not meet this demand, all African mine workers would embark on a general strike immediately.
Workers mounted the platform one after the other to testify: “When I think of how we left our homes in the reserves, our children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on 12 August. It is better to die than go back with empty hands.” The progressive Guardian newspaper reported
an old miner getting to his feet and addressing his comrades: “We on the mines are dead men already!”[1]
The massacre of 45 people, including 34 miners, at Marikana in the North West province is an inevitable outcome of a system of production and exploitation that has historically treated human life as cheap and disposable. If there is a central core – a stem in relation to which so many other events are branches – that runs through South African history, it is the demand for cheap labour for South Africa's mines. “There is no industry of the size and prosperity of this that has managed its cheap labour policy so successfully,” wrote Ruth First in reference to the Chamber of Mines ability to pressure the government for policies that displaced Africans from their land and put them under the boot of mining bosses.[2]
Masters and Servants
Mechanisms such as poll and hut taxes, pass laws, Masters and Servants Acts and grinding rural poverty were all integral in ensuring a cheap and uninterrupted supply of labour for the mines. Pass laws were created in order to forge a society in which farm work or mining was the only viable employment options for the black population.
And yet the low wages and dangerous work conditions kept many within the country away, forcing the Chamber of Mines to recruit labour from as far afield as Malawi and China throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sordid deals between Portuguese East Africa and Apartheid South Africa ensured forced labour to be recruited for the mines and by 1929 there were 115,000 Mozambicans working underground. “It has been said,” wrote First in her study of migrant Mozambican miners, “that the wealth of Reef gold mines lies not in the richness of the strike but in the low costs of production kept down by cheap labour.”[3]
When AMWU was formed in 1941 black miners earned 70 Rand a year while white workers received 848 Rand. White miners had been organized for many years, but there was little solidarity between the two groups as evidenced by the 1922 Rand Rebellion led by the whites-only Mine Workers Union. White miners went on strike against management's attempt at weakening the colour bar in order to facilitate the entry of cheaper black labour into skilled positions. Supported by the Communist Party of South Africa under the banner of “Unite and Fight for a White South Africa!” the rebellion was viciously crushed by the state leaving over 200 dead. The growth of non-European unions in the 1940s was dramatic and for the very first time the interests of African mineworkers were on the table. Their demands threatened the very foundations of the cheap labour system, and so in 1944 Prime Minister Jan Smuts tabled the War Measure 1425 preventing a gathering of 20 or more on mine property. Despite these difficulties the union pressed on and in 1946 they approached the Chamber of Mines with their demand for wage increases. A letter calling for last minute negotiations with the Chamber of Mines was, as usual, ignored.
By August 12th tens-of-thousands of black miners were on strike from the East to the West Rand. The state showed the utmost brutality, chasing workers down mineshafts with live ammunition and cracking down on potential sympathy strikes in the city of Johannesburg. By August 16th the state had bludgeoned 100,000 miners back to work and nine lay dead. Throughout the four-day strike hundreds of trade union leaders were arrested, with the central committee of the Communist Party and local ANC leaders arrested and tried for treason and sedition. The violence came on the cusp of the 1948 elections, which would see further repression and the beginning of the country's anti-communist hysteria.
National Union of Mineworkers Poster on Fortieth Anniversary of 1946 Strike.
While it did not succeed in its immediate aims, the strike was a watershed moment in South African politics and would forever change the consciousness of the labour movement. Thirty years late Monty Naicker, one of the leading figures in the South African Indian Congress, argued that the strike “transformed African politics overnight. It spelt the end of the compromising, concession-begging tendencies that dominated African politics. The timid opportunism and begging for favours disappeared.”[4] The Native Representative Council, formed by the state in 1937 to address the age old ‘native question,’ disbanded on August 15th and ANC president Dr. A.B. Xuma reiterated the demand for “recognition of African trade unions and adequate wages for African workers including mineworkers.”[5]
The 1946 mineworkers strike was the spark that ignited the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC Youth League's 1949 Program of Action owes much to the militancy of these workers as does the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s and the emergence of the ANC's armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) in the 1960s.
It is too early to say what sort of impact the current Lonmin strike will have on South African politics, but it seems unlikely that it will be as transformative as those of the past. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), arguably the heirs to the 1946 strike are currently engaged in a series of territorial disputes with the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). Meanwhile COSATU's muted response has echoed the ANC's line of equal-culpability and half-mast public mourning. The increasingly incoherent South African Communist Party has called for the arrest of AMCU leaders with some of its so-called cadres defending the police action. Former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema's plea for miners to hold the line and form a more militant union reek of political opportunism.
Still Dependant on Cheap and Flexible Labour
What no one has dared to say, aside from the miners themselves, is that the mining industry remains dependant on cheap and flexible labour, much of it continuing to come from neighbouring countries. This has historically been the source of most miner's grievances. A recent Bench Marks Foundation study of platinum mines in the North West province uncovered a number of factors linked to rising worker discontent in the region. Lonmin was singled out as a mine with high levels of fatalities, very poor living conditions for workers and unfulfilled community demands for employment. Perhaps most significant is the fact that almost a third of Lonmin's workforce is employed through third party contractors.[6] This form of employment is not new in the mining industry. In fact, since minerals were discovered in the 19th century labour recruiters have scoured the southern half of the continent for workers. The continued presence of these ‘labour brokers’ on the mines and the ANC's unwillingness to ban them – opting instead for a system of increasing regulation – is the bloody truth of South Africa's so-called ‘regulated flexibility.’
There are a number other findings from the Bench Marks study that are worth mentioning as they illuminate some of the real grievances that have been lost amid photos of waving pangas. The number of fatalities at Lonmin has doubled since January 2011, and the company has consistently ignored community calls for employment, favouring contractors and migrant workers. A visit by the Bench Marks Foundation research team to Marikana revealed:
“A proliferation of shacks and informal settlements, the rapid deterioration of formal infra-structure and housing in Marikana itself, and the fact that a section of the township constructed by Lonmin did not have electricity for more than a month during the time of our last visit. At the RDP Township we found broken down drainage systems spilling directly into the river at three different points.”[7]
In fact, the study predicted further violent protests at Marikana in the coming year. The mass dismissal of 9000 workers in May last year inflamed already tense relations between the community and the mine as dismissed workers lost their homes in the company's housing scheme.
Once again, these facts are hardly new in the world of South African mining. Behind the squalid settlements that surround the mineshafts there are immense profits to be made. In recent years the platinum mining industry has prospered like no other thanks to the increased popularity of platinum jewellery and the use of the metal in vehicle exhaust systems in the United State and European countries. Production increased by 60 per cent between 1980 and 1994, while the price soared almost fivefold. The value of sales, almost all exported, thus increased to almost 12 per cent of total sales by the mining industry. The price rose so dramatically throughout the 1990s that it is on par with gold as the country's leading mineral export.[8] South Africa's platinum industry is the largest in the world and in 2011 reported total revenues of $13.3-billion, which is expected to increase by 15.8% over the next five years. Lonmin itself is one of the largest producers of platinum in the world, and the bulk of its tonnage comes from the Marikana mine. The company recorded revenues of $1.9-billion in 2011, an increase of 25.7%, the majority of which would come from the Marikana shafts.[9]
For risking mutilation and death underground workers at Marikana made only 4000 Rand, or $480 a month. As one miner told South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper that, “It's better to die than to work for that shit ... I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want. They have said nothing to us. Police can try and kill us but we won't move.” These expressions of frustration and anger could be from 1922, 1946 or today. They are scathing indictments of an industry that continues to treat its workers as disposable and a state that upholds apartheid's cheap labour policies. •
Chris Webb is a postgraduate student at York University, Toronto where he is researching labour restructuring in South African agriculture. He can be reached at christopherswebb_AT_yahoo.ca.
Notes:
1. Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946,” 1976.
2. Ruth First, “The Gold of Migrant Labour,” Spearhead, 1962.
3. Ruth First, “The Gold of Migrant Labour,” Spearhead, 1962.
4. Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946,” 1976.
5. Dr. A.B. Xuma quoted in Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946.”
6. The Bench Marks Foundation, “Communities in the Platinum Minefields,” 2012.
7. The Bench Marks Foundation, “Communities in the Platinum Minefields,” 2012.
8. Charles Feinstein, An Economic History of South Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 211.
9. Marketline Advantage Reports on South Africa's Platinum Group Metals, 2011.
Global Research Articles by Chris Webb
Labels: APARTHEID, LABOUR, MASSACRE, MINIMUM WAGE, MINING, SACP
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South Africa’s ‘Hill of horror’
Saturday, 18 August 2012 08:07
JOHANNESBURG. — In a loping, crouching run, striking South African miners advance towards a line of police in helmets and flak-jackets who are pointing automatic rifles at them. The police open fire.In less than a minute, the men, some of whom police say conducted witchcraft rituals they believed would protect them from bullets, crumple and fall in a hail of gunfire that kicks up clouds of yellow dust.
Television footage starkly captures the moment of the police shootings at a dusty platinum mine northwest of Johannesburg on Thursday that killed at least 34 protesting workers and tore a gash in the soul of post-apartheid South Africa.
The sight of protesters falling dead before guns fired by government security forces strikes a jarringly painful chord in a nation ruled by Africa’s oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress.
Its proud anti-apartheid image has long been nurtured by memories of fallen martyrs and massacres committed by police and troops under white-minority rule that ended 18 years ago.
Except this time the shooting, the deadliest security operation since apartheid was abolished, was carried out by a police force under the responsibility of an ANC government.
Seeking to answer why an industrial dispute ended in what many are calling a “bloodbath”, ministers and senior police went out of their way to say officers were forced to fire to protect themselves from charging armed strikers.
“We did what we could with what we had,” Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega told a news conference on Friday, flanked by senior officers who were peppered with questions by journalists about how and why the police used their firearms as they did.
Phiyega, a former banker only months in the job and seen by many in the force as a political appointee, said the police were responding to a week of violence in which two Marikana security guards, a supervisor and two police officers were hacked to death by workers armed with spears, machetes and clubs.
“We have seen . . . how they chopped our members,” she said, going on to describe how the violence culminated in Thursday’s shootings near a rocky hill which the several thousand strikers had used as a stronghold during the week. Local media have since dubbed it the “Hill of Horror.”
Police said they had evidence some of the protesters had used witchcraft, known as “muti” and involving them being anointed with special potions, to give themselves courage in the heat of battle.
“They told journalists this would protect them from police and make them immune to bullets,” police spokesman Dennis Adriao told Reuters, saying police helicopters had taken photos of a “sangoma,” or witch doctor, anointing some of the workers.
Phiyega, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and other police officials all justified the use of deadly force by saying that the protesters’ array of weapons included firearms.
Six firearms were recovered after the shooting, the commissioner said, including one which had apparently belonged to one of the slain officers. Other weapons retrieved included knives, spears, axes, metals poles and machetes.
“They are going to kill you”
Describing the buildup to the shooting, Phiyega said the police took a decision on Thursday to move against the striking miners after they ignored three days of negotiations requesting them to lay down their arms and disperse.
Weeping at a news conference on Friday, Joseph Mathunjwa, president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) that backed the strikers at the Lonmin’s Marikana mine, said he had pleaded with them before the shooting to move away peacefully. He said he told them: “Leave this place, they are going to kill you”.
In a tactical move, hundreds of police backed by helicopters, armored vehicles and mounted units, began laying down strings of barbed wire near the strikers’ hill-top stronghold, with the aim of containing them to be able to move in and disarm them more easily, she said.
As this wire-laying operation was underway, Phiyega said a “group of protesters armed with dangerous weapons and firearms” broke away and charged the police lines, obliging the officers to fire to protect themselves.
Television footage shows the group of men slipping between low scrub and police vehicles, heading straight for the line of uniformed police.
They are not visibly brandishing weapons, but appear to half crouch 30-40 meters away.
Lazarus Letsoele, an AMCU member, described how the security forces tried to start dispersing the protesters.
“They tried to move the crowd with security wire to force them down the hill. A group went forward. They were shot dead by police who were waiting,” he told Reuters.
“Some of us had arms, but they were for protection, not to attack the police,” Letsoele added.
Reuters photographer Siphiwe Sibeko said he saw at least one of the protesters shoot a pistol before the police, who included black and white officers, opened fire.
“A guy from the protesters fired a gun-shot towards us, a pistol,” Sibeko said.
“They were singing and knocking their sticks and spears together,” Reuters cameraman John “Dinky” Mkhize said.
In the television footage of the deadly confrontation, no specific order to open fire can be heard in the police ranks.
“I didn’t hear any order to fire. There was a lot of confusion. Police were shouting to us to move away,” Sibeko said. Mkhize, who was standing behind the police line, also said he heard no such order before the sustained police volley. — Reuters.
Labels: MASSACRE, MINING
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Shooting cuts Zuma stay
Saturday, 18 August 2012 08:01
THE death toll in Thursday’s shooting of striking miners at Lonmin Mine in Rustenburg, South Africa, has risen to 34, prompting President Jacob Zuma to cut short his stay at the ongoing Sadc Summit in Mozambique.
It was not clear at the time of going to Press last night whether Sadc had discussed the Rustenburg massacre. At least 78 people were injured as police battled to quell the violent protest. South African police have since arrested over 259 striking workers.
The shooting has sparked outrage with labour unions describing it as “unwarranted and ruthless”.
President Zuma, the outgoing chairman of the Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation, was scheduled to brief the full summit on progress in the implementation of Zimbabwe’s Global Political Agreement.
He had briefed the Sadc Troika on the same issue late Thursday night.
It was not clear yesterday evening whether President Zuma, the Sadc-appointed facilitator to the GPA negotiations, had managed to brief the full summit on Zimbabwe before his hasty departure. He had earlier attended the opening ceremony, which ended just after midday.
“The President asked the new Sadc chairperson President (Armando) Guebuza of Mozambique and his colleagues, the Sadc Heads of State and Government, to release him so that he can go and attend to the matters at home,” the South African Presidency said in a statement.
South African police opened fire on the striking Lonmin PLC platinum mineworkers in Marikana, Rustenburg, after they reportedly ignored orders to disperse.
South African police commissioner Riah Phiyega defended the shooting yesterday saying the officers were “forced to utilise maximum force to defend themselves”
after they were attacked by armed protesters.
The protestors were reportedly armed with machetes and sticks.
The police used water cannons, tear gas and stun grenades to try and quell the violence.
Trouble began when police were laying out barbed wire barricades to separate the 3 000 striking drill operators into “smaller groups more manageable for police to disarm”, Ms Phiyega said.
South Africa’s Sowetan newspaper quoted the president of Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union Joseph Mathunjwa as saying the death of the mine workers was tragic.
“I told them to leave . . . I pleaded, I pleaded,” he told reporters in Johannesburg.
Tears rolled down his cheeks as he recounted the events that led to the death of the 34 protesters.
He said workers had earlier refused to leave, vowing to stay on the hill even if they were killed.
“We got in our cars and left . . . After a few minutes, the phone rang (about the shooting),” said Mr Mathunjwa.
“I wanted to turn back and go and die with my comrades.”
Using a handkerchief to wipe his eyes, he said Amcu leaders went to the hilltop, where the protesters had gathered, before the shooting without a police or security escort, or any supervision.
Mr Mathunjwa said he pleaded with the workers twice to leave the hilltop, near the mine where workers had gathered, but they refused.
“They wanted R12 500 (a month),” he said.
Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions secretary-general Mr Bernard Danda said dialogue was the best solution to labour disputes.
“It is time African governments see the importance of negotiations over salaries and working conditions.
“This is disturbing and reminiscent of the apartheid era. Companies should be committed to dialogue than launching, through police, ruthless attacks on innocent workers.
“These are the workers that make them realise profits and there is no need of killing them.”
Secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions Mr Japhet Moyo said it was clear police officers in southern Africa needed training in dispute resolution.
“We are not happy with what has happened because labour issues are bread and butter issues and have nothing to do with politics,” he said.
“Police and management of companies need to refer to systems in their countries which are used to end conflict.”
Mr Moyo said the South African police should have applied “minimum force”.
“You cannot control violence with violence. This is a matter which could have been resolved without using force.
“If investigations reveal that the police were wrong, then the families should be compensated with tangible things and if the strikers were wrong then it’s another case.”
Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe president Mr Anthony Mandiwanza said workers and employees should avoid confrontation in labour disputes.
“This is extremely unfortunate because it has resulted in loss of lives,” he said.
“It is important that life is preserved through negotiations. Dialogue always stops people from confronting each other. What triggered the situation is not known, but this is not the best way to end a labour dispute.” — AFP/Herald Reporters.
Labels: JACOB ZUMA, MASSACRE, MINING
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