South African Mine Massacre
By now you’ve probably heard that South African police opened fire on striking platinum miners, killing 34 and wounding 78. The miners were renegades from the corporatist National Union of Mineworkers and were attempting to gain rights for a new, more militant union called the Association of Mine Workers and Construction Union. The workers were armed with machetes and homemade weapons, but the outright massacre by the police force seems uncalled for and outrageous.
For many, the African National Congress opening fire on protestors reminds them of the apartheid state opening fire on ANC members protesting the oppression they faced. But then that’s not too surprising, given the corruption and poor governance of the ANC since Mandela stepped down. It also shows the great frustration of the South African population who believed their lives would be transformed when apartheid ended. There are many reasons for the slow pace of change–but ANC dominance over the state does not help.
This should also serve as a reminder that the days of violent suppression of labor unions may be gone in the United States, but are still alive and well in many places around the world, often involving western companies. In this case, the mine is owned by Lonmin, a London-based corporation.
Here’s some links with additional information by people who know much more about South Africa than I do:
A group of PDFs explaining various aspects of the situation.
Of course, speculators are taking advantage of the situation to send platinum prices up.
You can also watch the footage. If you can stand watching the ANC gun down miners, here it is. If not, I don’t recommend it.
This article was useful, as well: http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-17-beyond-the-chaos-at-marikana-the-search-for-the-real-issues
If the reports from the chief of police are true, I’m not sure what other action would have been appropriate. Machetes, guns found from slain officer, charging the police.
I guess you believe the NYT report is false and there was no violence or threat of violence to the police.
There’s obviously a huge backstory to this–it’s not like those miners starting marching out of nowhere.
Moreover, if this was 1892, would there be any good reason to believe the New York Times or the chief of police at Homestead? And would there be any reason to believe them about South Africa today?
I’m not saying the Times is lying–they are trying to put together a preliminary report that relied upon the head of a police force that just massacred over 30 people. So I think that’s something of a problem.
By your own words, these minors were renegades of the union and were not acting as the union.
And I agree with you that all of this is preliminary, but that’s not how you treated it when you characterized it as “violent suppression” in your piece.
So, how can you characterize this solidly as “violent suppression” of labor rights and then turn around and say the story is preliminary?
Shooting at a crowd is pretty well understood to be both violent and suppressing.
Do these renegades represent the labor union? Doesn’t appear to be so.
Looks like suppression of a violent gang, instead.
Chicago-style thugs, even. I believe they may even have been “urban,” if you catch my meaning.
Looks like a union suppressed by the violent gang called the ANC, instead.
A labor union is a mass movement formed by the participant workers. There’s no union that is/is not represented any more than there is a “flock” apart from the ducks who make up the flock.
were attempting to gain rights for a new, more militant union called the Association of Mine Workers and Construction Union.
Reading comprehension, you duzn’t haz it.
Renegade might not necessarily be the best word for Erik to use. However, it was clear that Erik meant that these workers thought that official union was too cowardly and wanted one that was more viligent in fighting for their cause. Dissenter would have also worked.
Who gives a shit WHAT they’re thinking or how justified you think their cause be be when you’re the cop and you’ve got an angry mob with machetes and pistols stolen from murdered policemen threatening your life?
Shoot
The reason they attacked you is irrelevant at that point.
Hi Jennie.
From what I understand, agents provocateurs are a pretty common tactic when it comes to cracking down on protests.
Okay, so I don’t know about police tactics, but I think that if you take the reports as completely true just for the sake of argument, it still seems like a much better armed police force has options other than gunning down the crowd. I think they choose that tactic to send a message.
I don’t know what you could possibly mean. Don’t you understand? They were PROTESTING. If we’ve learned nothing from watching police behavior in the US over the last decade or so, there is NOTHING more terrifying to cops than protestors.
[/eyeroll]
Or rather:
If we’ve learned nothing else from watching police behavior in the US over the last decade or so, it’s that there is NOTHING more terrifying to cops than protestors.
Yeah seems like a clean kill situation, doesn’t it? Randomly firing a 20 second burst into a group of people. It was the only appropriate action.
Worked at Ludlow.
Here’s some pieces on neoliberalism in post-apartheid SA:
http://monthlyreview.org/2003/01/01/neoliberalism-and-resistance-in-south-africa
http://www.thenation.com/article/south-africas-winter-discontent
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/09/29/south-africa-dead-in-the-water/
Of course, speculators are taking advantage of the situation to send platinum prices up
What is your motivation for throwing this line out there? Do you really think it is somehow inappropriate for the price of platinum to respond to a negative demand shock or the substantial risk of one? Is this some knee-jerk reaction to any commodity trading news? To me, this is such a silly observation that it makes your commentary (financial at least) seem highly uninformed.
Supply shock.
right, sorry.
what is happening has been coming for awhile. The ANC could not provide change quickly enough & the large unions are too affiliated with the government in power. There should have been more of a seperation between the unions & the ANC once the ANC became the government.
The workers most likely wanted more than the company was prepared to pay. The government/affiliated union no longer sees themselves as representing workers. Their interests are now those of an employer. Companies such as this mining company know they can rely on the government to take care of their interests.
Some may see this as a violent gang which needed suppression but most early union organizers & strikers have always been seen as violent gangs or protrayed as such in the media.
We will always have corporations which want to exploit workers. It is up to government to strike a balance. In this case it would appear the government didn’t. They placed profits of a corporation above those of their citizens.
It is hoped this is a one time situtation or we may see the start of the deterioration of S.A.
According to The Telegraph, two policemen were hacked to death by miners just this Monday. I don’t know about you, but that’s something that might make me a little quick on the trigger.
And the dissenting union members were armed with machetes and rifles. So this looks like a very complicated situation where the police had very justifiable fears of getting killedor maimed but then might have overreacted and started shooting everybody in sight. Tragic situation where more facts are needed before exonerating or convicting.
Of course, two people were killed by people that someone told me were part of this splinter group from an Union. Therefore, the only appropriate action is to start shooting people.
Hey, I saw this guy who an anonymous witness told me was killed by an American, so I’m just going to go start shooting into a crowd of Americans.
It’s the only appropriate response, right?
“Of course, two people were killed by people that someone told me were part of this splinter group from an Union. Therefore, the only appropriate action is to start shooting people.”
They were macheted to death. The newspaper reports leave no doubt that the perpetrators were part of the dissident union group (and the union group doesn’t seem to deny it). No one seems to deny that it was members of the group responsible for the two killings. Of course, that doesn’t justify mass murder but it certainly could explain why the police fired when approached by several dozen dissident miners with machetes and guns.
Yes, because anything that might be an explanation of motive is just an excuse, isn’t it?
I don’t really have the emotional oomph to comment on the subject matter, but did want to point out a dangling sentence fragment at the end of the first paragraph. Looks like you had a bit more to say?
And thanks for the links.
Now the rest of the world gets to see what “freedom” and “democracy” and “human rights” really means. All western lies, and they want to do it to China too, massive inequality and injustice.
No inequality in China, no siree. And protesters are respected and honored!
China has the best GINI score of pany developing country, and is in fact more equal than the USA.
In case there was any doubt in anyone’s mind, this is quite false. (China’s gini coefficient is about the same as the US, and middling for the developing world; higher than all of South Asia and much of sub-Saharan Africa, lower than Central and South America)
Protesters? Look at what your own Department of Homeland Security did to the Occupy protests.
I agree with all your points.
If you want to know why cracking down was the right decision, look at what happened to Russia when they listened and caved into their troublemakers on “human rights” and “freedom”. A decade of depression, anarchy, and crime.
Keep fucking that walrus, comrade.
Where “troublemakers” are defined as “investment bankers”.
Sort of like those troublemakers in the miner’s union.
Why the pretense that you oppose that sort of thing?
Absolutely nothing.
China was long a backer of the ANC, and still is.
…the African National Congress opening fire on protestors…
If you can stand watching the ANC gun down miners, here it is.
Is this conflation of ANC and SAP accurate or useful?
The “freedom” South Africans have is a big lie and illusion, as it is in all “democratic” countries. “Human rights” mean the right to be exploted and shot at and cast worthless votes for economic elites, and the right to live in slums and be unemployed.
To be fair to the Toronto police, they never specified who they were supposed To Serve and Protect. Canny.
Exactly. Well said.
There was no “massacre”. Nobody was killed inside the sqaure, it is a fact. Too bad you are brainwashed by the Western corporate media. There were a few clashes with trouble makers and hooligans in the streets around the square, no different from what your army and war hero MacArthur did to your Bonus Army March, though I doubt they even mention that in your history propaganda textbooks.
Our internet censors all discussions of the Bonus Army.
Cant decide whether a Stalinist/Maoist troll is better or worse than the right wing trolls that come here. Not much difference in terms of stupidity, lack of humour, self-righteousness and support of repressive government.
Here is an amusing Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
Interesting. So we might have a paid agent of the Chinese government here.
Big grain of salt, but the language is interesting.
You must admit – a Maoist criticizing Erik for being a knee-jerk pro-Americam conservative is at least different from JenBob’s psychosexual obsessions.
It is somewhat reminiscent of Manju, however, especially its monomaniacal obsessions and delusions.
Cant decide whether a Stalinist/Maoist troll is better or worse than the right wing trolls that come here.
Is a little education better or worse than an abhorrence of education? The eternal question.
Pretty sure Maoist troll IS a wingtard troll.
Yes, it’s JenBob trying to be clever. It’s what lefties really think, doncha know?
You guys are like troll connoisseurs.
Would JenBob really be able to keep up the act so long without slipping? I don’t think OO is real, but I think his arguments and style are well beyond JenBob’s capabilities.
No, JenBob wouldn’t be able to go this long without any reference to his insecurity with his own masculinity.
Plus, Jiang Zemin said that Tank Man was probably not killed. Whew! I was worried for a while.
There was no “massacre”. Nobody was killed inside the sqaure, it is a fact.
I think “Outside Observer” is Cantonese for “non sequitur.”
Or “idiot.”
As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no massacre! There was no tank, no Tianamen Square, no thing called “Douglas” to be followed. There was nothing in the square but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves in tanks alone with shadows and darkness!
With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Protestor Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some eight thousand miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from Tianamen Square! Then who, or what, has happened here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?
The terrible editing is a result of writing this while rushing out the door to drive to New York. My apologies.
I know standards are by necessity lower on blogs, but how hard is it for the author to go back and just finish the incomplete and ambiguous sentences in the first two paragraphs of this piece?
He’s responding to comments here, so he obviously has the time and opportunity to make his work clear.
This has been brewing for awhile. Beyongbrics has been following this (not that you should understand them to be critical observers, they’re neoliberals in the bad sense).
Also, check out Why Nations Fail blog, for a bit of depth.
It is certainly an appalling event, or set of events. I agree with some of those commenting that it is also quite complicated.
Even though COSATU is part of the ANC alliance, member unions are no pushovers, and COSATU has been quite critical of the government on a number of issues. It would be interesting to know more about what led to the formation of the new union, one whose members have apparently not been inclined to play by the norms of industrial relations. The marginalization of ordinary people in SA is real, but at the same time miners with jobs are relatively privileged compared to most. But certainly it is not surprising that the massive inequalities of SA, combined with a history of violence at all levels, result in some horrific outbreaks of both official and mob violence.
It is certainly an oversimplification to equate the ANC with the police or with COSATU (and its NUM member).
That said, I will repeat that this is appalling and it does remind me of the SA tradition of shooting as crowd control–a tradition that goes back to the 1920s and earlier.
I think you mean “are temporarily politically impractical”. The way things are going, I expect they’ll be coming back soon enough.
This is a horrific event, but I have to agree with those who see a more complicated event here than a deliberate massacre of helpless workers by the police.
1) Most of the pictures I’ve seen of the strikers show many of them pretty heavily armed e.g. this – big machetes (cutlasses, basicaly), spears, long clubs and pistols. All unambiguously lethal weapons. Spear, sword or bullet – they can all kill you.
2) Two policemen had been killed and one maimed by such weapons the day before – I do not think this is disputed.
3) The strikers then approached the police lines, someone (more commonly believed, but not proven to be a striker) opened fire, at which point the police opened fire more or less indiscriminately. In the videos I saw the police looked pretty panicky.
Now obviously better preparation, a larger police presence, and better distribution of plastic bullets etc might have prevented this, but when a large number of armed men and women, with some proven lethal intent approach a smaller number of scared and angry police, it seem s clear to me that they must share the blame for what happens afterwards. If I charge a cop in NYC with a machete and he shoots me, even from 30 yards, I’m pretty clear that he would be supported for it.
[...] one post at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis starts a discussion about continuing high levels of inequality in South Africa as evidenced by the recent massacre of [...]