What really happened at the Lonmin Mine?

international | workers issues | opinion/analysis Saturday August 25, 2012 07:20 by Adrian Boutureira - St Helena Free Press News Service breadnroses005 at gmail dot com

The Story Beneath the Surface, Part I

The story that needs to be told about the massacre at the Lonmin mine in South Africa, will not come from the capitalist mainstream media, nor be told by the South African government. The story must come from those of us who wont allow for the critical questions behind the death of so many compañeros go unanswered. This is but a humble contribution towards that aim.

The telling of the story: Part I

Introduction

There is a dirty political story needing to be told beneath the horrible massacre of striking miners in the Lonmin mine in South Africa. A story not unlike many others involving post colonial regimes across the Global South, which have been unable or unwilling to truly realize their nation’s liberation and have instead held fast to neoliberal economics and neocolonialist social constructs.

No event since the end of Apartheid sums up the shallowness of the transformation in South Africa like the Marikana massacre has.

The story that emerges from this massacre is one of failure and betrayal by both the ruling African National Congress party (ANC) and the labor union leaderships; of party fragmentation and the vilification of legitimate opposition; of power struggles at the expense of the well being of the people and the workers; of self promotion, hypocrisy, ideological opportunism, lies, deceptions and corruption…In other words, not a story of leading a nation along a path of revolutionary transformation after centuries of colonialist racist exploitation, but a story about the machinations of the new administrators of the same illicit and brutal capitalist state set on advancing their own power and privilege.

Eighteen years after the ANC came to power, unemployment in South Africa among poor blacks is nearly 50%. Half of all employed workers in the country get no more than $2.50 a day. The modern urban infrastructure of roads, housing, services, recreational facilities, etc, that is enjoyed by the wealthy white population, and the new black middle class and ruling elite, has been built by the expropriation of millions of poor black labor hours, the nation’s progress but a distant mirage to those who produced it.

In the black townships as well as in the worker squatter camps that have sprung around the rich South African mines, living conditions are often horrendous. Criminal activity and violence is endemic, HIV is epidemic, and prostitution and alcoholism are rampant. Residents are often forced to live without electricity or proper sanitary systems while their children fall ill from chronic diseases due to poor hygiene.

All of this represents leadership failure and betrayal for the oppressed and exploited black population of “free” South Africa which is very much aware that it deserves much more after centuries of brutal colonialist rule. Neither the ANC government nor, in the case of the miners, their union, has been willing or capable of advancing and instituting the necessary changes to eliminate even the most crude manifestations of the apartheid system of injustice in the mines.

These words, by an unidentified Lonmin miner, capture the story of millions of workers across South Africa, and the story that I believe the striking rock drillers set out to change:

“Even though I belong to a union, they underrepresent my needs. My concerns are not adequately voiced, and I have no influence. Decisions never seem to benefit me.“I am constantly violated; and have to work under subjective violence. Despite my strength, I am powerless.”

Coming Next:

The telling of the story: Part II

Digging Deeper at Lonmin

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