(en) Anarkismo.net: Ireland, Belfast rallies in solidarity with massacre against striking miners in South Africa by WSM- Belfast

Around 50 people attended a lunch time vigil today organised by the Belfast Trade and
District Council. A range of political organisations and unions attended including the
Independent Workers Union, the WSM* and Organise!* During the rally one speaker from the
council also referred to the police being workers too. This will provide little comfort to
working people on the receiving end of state violence and terror. As our comrades from the
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front note, ?The role of the police is to repress and silence
the working class and poor. This problem cannot be fixed by commissions or enquiries ? as
some people think. Ask the family of Andries Tatane. It cannot be changed by elections.
Remember: Sharpeville 1960, Soweto 1976, Uitenhague 1985, Michael Makhabane in 2000, SAMWU
workers in 2009, Andries Tatane in 2011 ? Marikana 2012. At least 25 protestors and
strikers were killed from 2000, before Marikana.?

The attendence of Sinn Fein politicians at the rally also needs to be challenged given
their close relationship with the ANC/Communist Party of South Africa whose officials
frequently attend functions in West Belfast. While apartheid may have been overthrown, it
is clear that little has changed for the majority black working class. South Africa
remains one of the most unequal country in the world. The amount of poverty is excessive.
In every township there are shacks with no sanitation and electricity. Unemployment is
hovering around 40%. Economic inequality is matched with political inequality. Everywhere
activists are facing serious repression from the police and from local party structures.

Below is a statement released by anarchist organisations in South Africa

ANC Throws Off Its Mask! Workers Murdered!

Joint statement on the Marikana Massacre issued by the Tokologo Anarchist Collective,
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front and Inkululeko Wits Anarchist Collective.

The Constitution promises political rights and equality. It is quite clear that the bosses
and politicians do exactly as they wish. They walk on the faces of the people. This is
shown by the police killings of strikers at Lonmin?s Marikana mine.

Capitalists and politicians guilty! Stop police brutality.

No justice, no peace. No Zuma, no Malema, no LONMIN!

WHOSE RIGHTS?

People! We must face the facts. The ANC government and the big capitalists run the show.
The system makes the rich and powerful richer and more powerful.

The workers and the poor suffer. We have no protection. You work, but you do not survive.
Food prices are going up. ESKOM is going up. We must pay? With what? But when we struggle,
we get shot.

ANC/ STATE + BOSSES/ CORPORATIONS = ALLIES

The state uses brutal force against the majority. We are marching, raising our grievances.
This is our right. We must struggle to live. So, we fight against all elites: those who
control government and those who control companies (like Lonmin).

But our voices are silenced with bullets.

While we do not agree uncritically with all the actions of the workers at Marikana, we are
always with the working class and poor against the state and capitalists.

ANCYL = ANC = MARIKANA MASSACRE

The ANC promised to change the system. Instead, it became part of the system. Complaining
against the National Party?s (NP?s) oppression, the ANC took office. The NP murdered
workers. But now the ANC murders workers.

The ANCYL has no grounds to pretend to condemn the police killings (see its Statement 17
August 2012). The ANCYL is part and parcel of the ruling ANC regime.

Malema and other expelled ANCYL leaders also want to use these events to get reinstated
into the ANC ? to get rich or lie trying. But the ANC?s hands are dripping with blood.

The past and present ANCYL leaders (like all ANC leaders) want more money, not more
freedom for the people.

CAPITALISM NO THANKS!

Capitalism is a system of brutality and exploitation, of suffering. The black, Coloured
and Indian working class suffers from the legacy of apartheid national oppression and from
daily capitalist and police repression. (And even the white working class is exploited and
oppressed).

COLLECTIVISE, NOT NATIONALISE

ANCYL uses the ANC murders to bang the drum again for ?the nationalisation of mines and
other strategic sectors of the economy.? But Marikana shows the true nature of the state/
government, no matter what party: a bloodthirsty killing machine for the rich black and
white ruling class.

Real workers? control of the economy does not mean private corporations (privatisation) or
state corporations (nationalisation). It must mean real people?s democratic control of the
economy through worker and community committees, serving people?s needs.

POLICE CANNOT BE CHANGED

The role of the police is to repress and silence the working class and poor. This problem
cannot be fixed by commissions or enquiries ? as some people think. Ask the family of
Andries Tatane. It cannot be changed by elections. Remember: Sharpeville 1960, Soweto
1976, Uitenhague 1985, Michael Makhabane in 2000, SAMWU workers in 2009, Andries Tatane in
2011 ? Marikana 2012. At least 25 protestors and strikers were killed from 2000, before
Marikana.

PEOPLES POWER NOT ELECTIONS & PARTIES

Look at Marikana. Elections do not change the system. Joining the government and becoming
a politician is no solution. Replacing Jacob Zuma with another ANC leader is no solution.
A new political party ? even a ?left? or ?workers? party ? is no solution. All the
political parties are no solution.

UNIONS: WAKE UP!

The Marikana unions, NUM and AMCU, have fallen into the trap set by the ruling class
politicians and bosses. They fought each other, instead of fighting the real enemy. Unity
is strength: do not be divided and ruled. Workers of the world unite! Working class of all
countries and races unite! End the alliance! COSATU should have no links with the
bloodstained ANC.

ANARCHISM = COUNTER POWER

It is time to replace the capitalist / state system with Counter Power by the people. This
means that we want workers?/ community control of the economy, from below. We want
democratic and direct self-management of industry by the workers in the workplaces; we
want self- government of communities by those living in them. We want to collectively
decide on how we run our lives. We refuse to live according to the rules determined by
bosses and politicians, who use the police to shoot us like dogs when we disobey.

ONE SOLUTION: WORKING CLASS DEMOCRACY !

WE NEED YOU! DON?T VOTE, MOBILISE!

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/23687
=================================
* Anarchist organizations

a-infos-en@ainfos.ca

Britain, North London Solidarity Federation striking miners shot dead in South Africa

police repression South Africa energy & mining strikes Lonmin ---- North London Solidarity
Federation reproduce a powerful statement by Ayanda Kota - a member of the militant South
African shack dwellers organisation, Abahlali baseMjondolo, in protest at the murder of 45
striking miners by the South African police force and the role played by the ruling ANC
party (once presided over by Nelson Mandela) in allegedly facilitating the police to carry
out such acts of violence. ---- If you wish to express your anger at this, consider
phoning the South African embassy in London at 0207-451-7299 and emailing them at
london.general@dirco.gov.za . ---- For more phone numbers and emails, consider searching
google for other relevant phone numbers and email adresses, including those belonging to
the ruling ANC party.

Statement begins:

8 August 2012 (originally posted at http://abahlali.org/node/9035)

The Marikana Mine Worker's Massacre ? a Massive Escalation in the War on the Poor

It?s now two days after the brutal, heartless and merciless cold blood bath of 45 Marikana
mine workers by the South African Police Services. This was a massacre!

South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. The amount of poverty is excessive.
In every township there are shacks with no sanitation and electricity. Unemployment is
hovering around 40%. Economic inequality is matched with political inequality. Everywhere
activists are facing serious repression from the police and from local party structures.

Mining has been central to the history of repression in South Africa. Mining made Sandton
to be Sandton and the Bantustans of the Eastern Cape to be the desolate places that they
still are. Mining in South Africa also made the elites in England rich by exploiting
workers in South Africa. You cannot understand why the rural Eastern Cape is poor without
understanding why Sandton and the City of London are rich.

Mining has been in the news in South Africa recently. Malema, a corrupt and authoritarian
demagogue who represents a faction of the BEE elite, has been demanding nationalisation.
Progressive forces inside and outside of the alliance oppose Malema because he represents
the most predatory faction of the elite and is looking for a massive bail out for his
friends who own unprofitable mines. What we stand for is the socialisation, under workers'
control, of the mines. We also stand for reparations for the hundred years of exploitation.

Things are starting to change but not for the better. Khulubuse Zuma, the president?s
nephew and Zondwa Mandela, the former president?s grandchild, and many others with close
family ties to politicians have become mining tycoons overnight. China has joined the
bandwagon as well, plundering our resources.

Frans Baleni, the General of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) earns R105 000 a
month. NUM has become a route into high office in government and even to places on the
boards of the mining companies. The union is rapidly losing all credibility on the mines.
It is clear that it is now co-opted into the system and is part of the structures of
control. It is the police that take NUM to address the workers. Baleni's betrayal of the
workers has made him a very rich man ? a rich man who condemns and tries to suppress the
struggles of the poor. It is no surprise that workers are rejecting NUM, trying to build
an alternative union or acting on their own without any union representing them. The
workers are right to chase the NUM leaders away from their strikes.

The Marikana Mine is the richest platinum mine in the world and yet its workers live in
shacks. Most of the slain workers are rock drillers, the most difficult and dangerous work
in the mine. They do the most dangerous work in the mine and yet they earn only R4 000 a
month. Through the blood and sweat in the mines they do not only produce wealth that is
alienated from them, they also produce the fat cats, which wine and dine on naked bodies
and call that sushi.

The workers who occupied the hill came from many places including Swaziland and
Mozambique. But most of them came from the rural Eastern Cape, from the former Bantustans
where people live their lives as a living death under the chiefs, without work, without
land and without hope. Every Rand that they win back from the capitalists is another Rand
coming to the poorest part of the country. The part of the country that has been most
devastated by the mines over the last century. We celebrate every Rand that the workers
have taken back from the capitalists and fully support their demand of a salary of R12 500
a month. Will Baleni or Nzimande or Zuma accept R4 000 a month? If not why should anyone else?

The strikers see the NUM leaders as traitors. They delinked from the NUM because they saw
that they needed to delink from the alliance of capitalists and tendepreners that run the
ANC. The decision to delink was very courageous! We will have to delink in every sector if
we are going to build a real movement for change.

Workers under the tripartite alliance are being sundered from socialism; they are only
being encouraged to vote for the ruling party. Nothing is being done to fuse social
consciousness in their struggle. They are encouraged to participate in sensational
politics, the politics of who should lead and who should be removed. They are encouraged
to see communities and workers that organise independently as their enemies.

It is easy to decide not to decide. It is much harder to make a decision pregnant with
risk and promise. For miners to delink from the likes of Baleni and tripartite alliance
was a courageous decision. They understand that courage is an important element of all
struggles. They understand that there is no quick fix in the struggle for a just society,
a society that will respect and uphold the rights of workers and nature, a society that
will be ruled on the principle of each according to his needs. This society is based on
each according to his political connections with the elite that has captured the ANC and
its alliance partners.

If the strikers were protesting under the banner of the tripartite alliance they wouldn?t
have been slaughtered. COSATU strikes have often been violent but their members are not
shot like animals. In fact the campaigns to support Zuma in his rape and corruption trials
were full of threats of violence and yet Zuma supporters were not gunned down.

Before the miners occupied the hill they made a vow that no bullet will deter them. They
were willing to fight and die to get a fair share of the wealth of this mine for
themselves and their families. What this demonstrates is that these were people who were
aware of the risks that their decisions entailed, who thought about such risks carefully,
guided by their conscience and concluded that they were willing to face the consequences
that could arise.

Hellen Keller's words ring true ?There is no such thing as a complete security, and if
there was what fun would life be. Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only
through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired,
and success". She adds ?To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in
the presence of fate and adversity is strength undefeatable.?

The immense courage of the miners that gathered on Nkaneng hill was tremendous. They were
prepared to take a real stand. They were prepared to face real risks. We do not see this
courage amongst the left. In fact most of the left has abandoned real struggle in real
communities for meetings and conferences and emails. The left has become something that
NGOs run. It is about bussing poor black people into meetings that they have no control
over and that are very far removed from the realities of our real struggles. It is about
educating the poor and not about fighting with the poor. When real struggles happen in
places like the shack settlements of Zakheleni, eTwatwa or Kennedy Road most of the left
is not there. But when there is a big conference they are all there.

The ANC government has killed workers for demanding a salary increment from a notoriously
exploitative and very, very rich company. The workers earn only R4000 per month doing the
most dangerous work. The ANC president and cabinet ministers earn not less that R2 million
per year. And on top of that there is corruption everywhere. Our politicians are part of
the global elite. The lowest ANC deployee earns not less than R20 000 excluding benefits.

The Marikana mine workers lived in shacks with their families. The president of the ANC
has recently built a mansion in his homestead, a mansion that cost tax payers not less
than R200 million.

It is the ANC government that shoots and kills protesters when they are fighting for the
assertion of their humanity. They recently killed Andries Tatane. They have killed at
least 25 others on protests since 2000. If you are poor and black your life counts for
nothing to the ANC.

What lesson can be learnt from the Marikana mine workers' massacre? The ruthlessness of
this government does not diminish but on contrary increases with the number of workers and
unemployed who starve. They are criminalising our struggles and militarising their police.
It is clear that anyone who organises outside of the ANC, in communities or in the
workplace, will face serious and violent repression from the party and the police.

The NUM and the SACP have made it very clear which side that they are on. By supporting
the massacre and calling for further repression against the workers they have made it
quite clear that they are on the side of the ruthless alliance between capital and the
politicians. They have declared, very clearly, that they support the war on the poor.
Their reactions to the massacre are a total disgrace. No credible left formation in South
Africa or anywhere in the world can work with the NUM or SACP again. The decision of the
miners at Marikana to delink from the corrupt and ruthless politics of the alliance has
been vindicated.

Things will not get better but will get worse. When the elite?s power is threatened they
will respond with more and more violence. War has been declared on the poor and on anyone
organising outside of the control of the ANC. We are our own liberators. We must organise
and continue to build outside the ANC. We must face the realities of the situation that we
confront clearly and courageously. Many more of us will be jailed and killed in the years
to come.

What they have done can never be forgotten nor forgiven.

Ayanda Kota
=============================
* Anarcho-syndicalists

Bron : a-infos-en@ainfos.ca

(en) US, WSA* Statement on Souther Africa Marikana Massacre

We, members of the Workers Solidarity Alliance, send our deepest condolences to the
families and friends of the murdered miners. ---- On August 16th police open fire on
striking miners outside the Lonmin platinum mine in South Africa?s north west province.
Defending their interests, over 30 miners were killed and over 70 suffered injuries in a
gruesome display of the violence upon which this society has been built. One day prior to
the massacre, the Guardian & Mail reported that nearly 3,000 workers gathered daily near
the mine for several days, that the striking workers had said they were a united force
with no particular allegiance to a union and finally that negotiations had broke down
between the striking workers and the police. Its? also known that the workers have
stopped production in a dispute is over pay, a dispute between workers and bosses.

A video, that is very graphic in nature, clearly shows that the massacre was proceeded by
police stalking near the gathering not in standard riot gear like batons and shields, but
rather looking like foot soldiers wearing fatigues and carrying automatic rifles at the
ready. It was quite obvious that these mercenaries of capital fully intended to engage
the miners as if they were on a modern battlefield with a well-equipped enemy. It would
seem the strikers took this as a clear message from the mining bosses and the state that
workers standing up for themselves in unison is an activity that can no-longer be
tolerated. The arrival of militarized police appeared from the outside as a direct
provocation and a threat to the continuation of the strike. It was seen that the workers
resisted this threat with their available means.
Before the blood had dried at the site of the massacre, the mass-media wasted no time with
its? misdirection and deception. Framing the story as a ?tense scene? between rival
unions with police caught in the middle, the media have done well playing a strong defense
for the mine owners and their partnership with South Africa?s government. Sure, it can be
said that union bureaucrats from ?rival? unions had been playing a power game at the mines
prior to this massacre. At one point in the days prior, workers had even fell victim to
snipers allegedly acting in the name of one of the unions. Despite this bureaucrat fueled
discord, it would seem that the bulk of the rank-and-file miners have taken to direct
action against the mine owners. After all, the large gatherings outside the mine complex
were said to of been happening under no specific union?s flag. It was in this struggle,
the struggle of the workers against the bosses, that the strikers eventually faced down
automatic rifles. Most disgracefully, in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the
union leaders have wasted no-time helping the media perpetuate its? lies by pointing a
shaking finger of blame at each others organizations and members.
While union bureaucrats and the media have been tripping over themselves trying to assess
the blame and misdirect attentions in this clear-cut case of state violence on behalf of
the rich, the mine owners have threatened to fire every striking miner on Aug. 20th if
they refuse to end the strike.
The Workers Solidarity Alliance sends our solidarity to the workers engaged in united
struggle for higher wages and encourage workers everywhere to spread the news of the
massacre and discuss it with neighbors and co-workers. We condemn in the strongest
possible manner; the police, the mine owners they work for, the worried South African
state, the competing union hierarchies and any others who stand in the way of the unity of
workers in desperate struggle for a better life. We understand this massacre in a global
context of increased violent repression of independent movements of workers advancing or
defending their conditions. We understand this massacre to be an attack on workers
everywhere, a futile attempt to scare us away from uniting and advancing our shared
interests. We stand in solidarity with actions, however far removed from South Africa
itself, that draw attention to the massacre and the brutality of capitalism.
A workers best weapon is their solidarity with their fellows.
Wherever workers are in struggle, may the worlds poor and oppressed call out in unison: An
injury to one is an injury to all!

Yours in Solidarity,

The Workers Solidarity Alliance
=====================================
* Anarcho-syndicalists

Bron : a-infos-en@ainfos.ca

South African police massacre striking miners

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Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)



By Bill Van Auken
17 August 2012
South African police opened fire with automatic weapons on striking platinum miners in the country’s North West province on Thursday, killing at least 30.
Other reports cite a death toll as high as 40.
Corpses were strewn on the ground after a three-minute hail of gunfire. Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa told the media, “A lot of people were injured and the number keeps on going up.”
The mass killing came on the sixth day of a strike by miners at Marikana operations of the British-owned Lonmin Plc, the world’s third-largest platinum mining company. Thousands of rock drillers walked out of the mines last Friday to press their demand for a doubling of salaries. The platinum mines are among the lowest paying in South Africa, and miners charge that little has changed in their conditions since the end of apartheid nearly two decades ago.
Lonmin had ratcheted up tensions in the dispute by issuing an ultimatum that any miners failing to report to work today would be fired. The South African police, meanwhile, vowed before the massacre that they would put an end to the workers’ struggle. South African Police Service Provincial Police Commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo told the media Thursday morning, “our intention is to make sure that people leave that illegal gathering area where they are and that is what we will do today … today we are ending this matter.”
Before gunning down the striking miners, some 3,000 of whom had gathered on a hill overlooking the mine, police tried to drive them off, encircling them with razor wire and using tear gas, stun grenades and water cannon. It was in the confusion created by these attacks that a column of miners carrying machetes and sticks approached a line of police armed with automatic weapons. Video of the confrontation shows the police machine-gunning the defenseless workers.
The savage repression, which has drawn widespread comparisons to the massacres carried out by the apartheid regime in Sharpeville in 1960 or Soweto in 1976, was carried out with the full backing of the African National Congress (ANC) government and its most important union supporter, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which has worked with management and the government to break the strike.
Underlying the conflict is the challenge to the NUM posed by a breakaway union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which has organized a substantial section of workers who are disaffected from the NUM over its subordination of the miners’ interests to those of the mine owners and the ANC government.
According to some estimates, the AMCU has the support of a third of the miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, while the NUM has the support of another third, while the rest have chosen not to affiliate with either union. In the days leading up to the massacre, 10 people were killed in violence that pitted supporters of the two unions against each other, as well as in clashes with police.
Both the NUM and the ANC government rushed to justify the slaughter at Marikana, even as masses of South Africans reacted with shock to the bloodletting.
NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka told the media, “The police cannot just watch as our country is held to ransom by criminals.” Miners reported that NUM officials were working directly with the police in organizing the repression, traveling together with them in armored Caspir vehicles.
South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma of the ANC declared himself “shocked and dismayed by this senseless violence.” He quickly added, however, “I have instructed law enforcement agencies to do everything possible to bring the situation under control and to bring the perpetrators of violence to book.” Clearly the “perpetrators” he had in mind were not the murderous police, but their victims among the striking miners.
The NUM and the trade union federation of which it is a part, COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions), are a pillar of support for the ANC government, which in turn defends the interests of the mining corporations and other sections of foreign and domestic capital.
Rival upstart unions like the AMCU and the Professional Transport & Allied Workers Union (PTAWU) have grown at the NUM’s and COSATU’s expense, out of the growing frustration and anger of South African workers over the complete integration of the union leadership into the government and the corporations.
These relationships are personified in the figure of the former NUM leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the major beneficiaries of the policy of “black empowerment” that followed the fall of apartheid. He and others joined corporate boards, grabbed government contracts and amassed fortunes. Now one of South Africa’s richest men, Ramaphosa’s personal fortune was estimated last year at over $275 million, a large share of it in mining interests.
The AMCU had won enough support at the Lonmin mine to receive the company’s recognition as a union. At The Rustenburg operations of the world’s second-largest platinum producer, Impala, it claims to represent over half of the 20,000 workers and the company is conducting an independent audit to determine which union should act as the bargaining agent.
These defections from the ANC-affiliated unions are symptomatic of growing unrest within the working class as a whole and intense resentment over the levels of social inequality in South Africa, which are among the highest anywhere in the world. Increasingly, workers’ ire is turned toward the ANC and the class of black capitalists it has spawned at the expense of the masses of working people.
The unrest in the mining areas has been accompanied by growing protests within the poorer urban neighborhoods over the government’s failure to deliver adequate services in terms of housing, electricity, water and sanitation.
At least four people have been killed in protests that have gripped western Cape Town over the past week and a half. The unrest has seen the stoning of trains, vehicles and police stations, as well as roads blocked with burning tires as workers and youth have taken to the streets to protest against inadequate housing, deteriorating infrastructure, and poor public services.
Unrest has been fanned by the impact of the world capitalist crisis upon South Africa, whose economy is heavily dependent upon crisis-stricken Europe. The official unemployment rate stands at 25 percent, while many say that a real figure would be closer to 40 percent. Growth forecasts for this year have been slashed to 2.7 percent. Analysts warn that at least 7 percent is required to begin to address the unemployment crisis, however.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s richest 100 individuals saw their net worth rise by 62 percent last year, even as more than half of the country’s 50 million people fell below the official poverty line.
The author also recommends:
South Africa’s ANC at 100: A balance sheet of bourgeois nationalism
[11 January 2012]

Bron : via Ni Michiels