South African farmworker's rallies

Denia Jansen, chair of this rally, and Mercia Andrews, one of its organizers (who can be seen walking at the front with a white top, bushy hair and who puts a hat on) were arrested during the general strike on 4/12/12 with others for organizing workers and charged with incitement, intimidation, and participating in an illegal strike. They will appear in court again on January 21. Martin Legassick This rally of farmworkers in Ashton, 2/12/12 was organized by Mawubuye Land Rights Forum and the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union both of whom have been patiently and heroically organizing Western Cape farmworkers against racist and repressive bosses for years. In eighteen years the COSATU union responsible for farmworkers, the Food and Allied Workers' Union, with all its resources, has organized only 3% of farmworkers nationwide. The Trust for Community Outreach and Education was a third organizer. Martin Legassick

South Africa: Activists arrested for supporting striking farmworkers

This article was written by Helga Jansen-Daugbjerg. She is a member of the Rita Edwards Branch of the New Women’s Movement.  Please send messages of support or inquire about donations or other solidarity actions you can take by contacting them here: ritaedwards.nwmbranch@gmail.com

Mercia Andrews and Denia Jansen are among more than twenty people arrested this week for their role in supporting striking farm workers in the countryside of the wealthy Western Cape Province. Both women are long-time activists in the land and agrarian sector and have been at the forefront of supporting the work of the farm worker strike committees.  They were arrested and charged irrationally with intimidation and incitement to violence.

Are we months away from our world-class stadiums holding those who oppose a regime bent on breaking its bond with its people? Four years ago, my words would have had a ring of the overly-dramatic. A year ago the, workings of state, albeit ineffectual, served as a placebo against the realities facing us. South Africa is a country at a cross-roads for whom destiny now calls. Change must come.

2012 will certainly be remembered as a year of revolt by the poor who have nothing left to lose, and for repression by a state more out of touch with its people than ever before. The Farm Worker revolt is no different to the Marikana miners awaiting death on the mountain, or school children left illiterate by a system that deserted them before they were even conceived.  An echo from the past rings in every burning farm, in every witnessed killing of a Marikana miner, in every child who will repeat the poverty and anger of her parents 20 years from now - unless irrefutable change happens in South Africa.




The change that must take place is beyond the tragi-comedy of Manguang and the ANC. Beyond the Animal-Farm-like characters of those who believe that leadership is a god-given place at the trough. It is even beyond the reality of those of us living this moment. Change must take place for the clichéd ‘future of South Africa’. We are the ancestors our descendants will mock and rail against for not doing what should have been done – bringing about the change.

It is no small irony that the poor work in the most economically successful industries in our country.

Twenty-two years ago descendants of slaves worked the wine and fruit farms of the Western Cape, and migrants came from all over Southern Africa to dig up the minerals. Nothing has changed in their lives except the extreme levels of poverty – and if we do not act, nothing will change.

News of the arrests of those supporting the striking farm workers were met by activists in the close-knit NGO community in Cape Town with a numbing finality. It is as if we have been expecting this - first the Marikana Massacre and now the Farm Worker Strike repression. While Mercia Andrews and Denia Jansen, and the many others arrested this week will have their day in court inJanuary 2013, having spent a night in jail, the reality of the arrests can only mean one thing – we are in the thick of a dark and hard period in our country. 

Like the struggle against the inhumanity of apartheid, the struggle against the inhuman system of inequality requires all our energies. It is being led by those for whom restitution and dignity are the first prize. For the rest of us, we must heed their struggle in the name of change. Change, like a storm, will wreak destruction and pain and loss. But this too will pass and mark the time for a change we can be proud of, for it is of our making.

South African farmworkers resume strikes

Below is a report on the farmworkers strikes in South Africa from Lauren Paremoer of the "New Women's Movement Branch" As she explains, the strike which was put on hold pending a government investigation has continued.  Readers can contact them at ritaedwards.nwmbranch@gmail.com.

In August this year farm workers rose up in Cape Town, South Africa. Their call: R150 per day. Currently farm workers are earning between R60-R70 per day. However, there have been reports of workers, especially women, who earn less than this. Farm workers are the most marginalised workers in our economy, with very little unionisation.

Wine is one of South Africa’s biggest exports. According to the statistics released by the South African Wine Industry, wine producers earned a total income of over R3 619 million in 2011.[1]

The strike initially started in Du Doorns in the Hex River Valley in November and spread to at the very least 15 farming districts. Organisations working on farms have united under the banner the Coalition for Farm Workers Living Wage and Decent Living Conditions.

In late November, the strike was suspended to give government time to properly address the issue of decent living wages. In this case it is the South African government that sets the minimum wage and not farmers.

After being assured by the Minister of Agriculture – Tina Joemat Petterson that government would increase wages by 4 December, labour minister Mildred Olifant reneged, stating that wages can only be adjusted only in March 2013.

Strike action resumed on 4 December with mass action in every affected town. It was here that two prominent activists – Mercia Andrews and Denia Jansen – were arrested and held overnight in jail with two more people. 18 others in the Citrusdal area were also arrested and later released.

During this time the Western Cape general secretary of Cosatu, Tony Ehrenreich declared an end to the strike, saying that negotiations would be done on a farm to farm basis in an agreement with Agri-SA. Cosatu’s position is that the strike will resume on 9 Januay 2012, if negotiations failto deliver on a satisfactory solution. Despite the union’s statement and continued intimidation at the hands of the SAPS and private security companies hired by farmers, the Coalition for Farm Workers insist that the strike will continue until the workers themselves decide to call it off.

Lauren Paremoer 
Rita Edwards Branch - New Women's Movement
ritaedwards.nwmbranch@gmail.com

Support South African Farmworkers' strike: DLF press release

Democratic Left Front: press statement, 15/11/2012

SUPPORT THE FARMWORKERS STRIKE!
FOR A NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OF R150 A DAY!
          
            With the support of the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers' Union (CSAAWU) and of Mawibuye, the Democratic Left Front rejects the declaration by COSATU yesterday of a suspension of the farmworkers' strike for two weeks, but continues to support the call for a one-day general strike in two weeks time. It is clearly evident that the farmworkers have rejected the call to suspend the strike and the call reflected inadequate consultation with the strike committees. Moreover the police have now shot and killed at least one person -- Michael Daniels, a 28 year old farm worker – and possibly three in Wolseley. This continued brutality by the police is intolerable, and only reinforces the determination of the farmworkers to prolong the strike, and to win their demand of R150 a day minimum wage and improved living and working conditions. We call on COSATU, to avoid spreading confusion, to withdraw its declaration that the strike is suspended for two weeks.

            Farm workers do backbreaking work to produce food and drink for everybody in this country and many overseas, yet they are forced to work under unsafe and unhealthy conditions, to drink dirty water, live without electricity, live with poor toilet facilities, on poverty wages, suffering threats of evictions, and violent physical and verbal abuse and intimidation at the hands of the bosses. Workers in De Doorns earn R69 a day, of which, scandalously, R30 is deducted by their bosses for electricity, etc.

            CSAAWU’s joint Speak-Out Campaign, with Mawubuye, TCOE and the DLF, aims to bring an end to the oppression and exploitation of farm workers and farm dwellers by coming together to build solidarity, strength and hope amongst the rural working class. Workers have been intimidated and threatened when they try to build organization and when they speak out against abuses. Workers are dismissed, evicted, denied electricity and water and verbally and physically abused when they want to be together. Five worker leaders have been victimized by suspension on Leeuwenkuil farm in Agter-Paarl for this.

            Now farm workers have had enough! They have said they cannot accept being treated as little more than animals, being used to enrich a small elite of farmers who live in luxury, feeding off the continued exploitation and impoverishment of the workers and the rural communities in which they live. They can no longer accept being largely ignored by the very government that is supposed to ensure all workers receive a living wage and are treated with respect and dignity. Workers have no trust in an industrial relations system which had failed them thus far, merely keeping them in continued wage slavery. Enough is enough!

            The strike, which began in De Doorns, has spread to Paarl, Riebeeck West, Malmesbury, Moorreesberg, Ceres, Prince Alfred Hamlet, Saron and Citrusdal to the west and north and to Worcester, Robertson, Ashton and Bonnievale to the east and south. The demands may vary from area to area, but a general demand is for a minimum wage of R150 a day and improved living and working conditions. Workers are showing that it is only by their own efforts and self-organisation that reforms can be won and society transformed.

            On 13 November CSSAWU, in a coalition with the De Doorns Workers Committee, COSATU, Sikhula Sonke Trade Union, the Black Agricultural, Wine and Spirits Initiative (BAWSI), the Black Agricultural workers Union of South Africa, Mawubuye Land Rights Forum, Women on Farms Project, Trust for Community Outreach and Education, Surplus People’s Project and Food Sovereignty Campaign, met with the Minister of Agriculture, Ms Tina Joemat-Petersen. We explained that the workers wanted not less than R150 a day. This was in response to Ms Joemat-Petersen's speech to farmworkers in De Doorns when she supported the farmers paltry offer of R80 -- which was an insult to the dignity of workers and their families swimming in a sea of poverty.

            In more than 18 years, the ANC in government, either nationally or provincially, has done little or nothing to alleviate poverty among farmworkers in the Western Cape. The DA is no better. It has supported the farmers. Now Zille is asking Zuma to call the army in! The workers were right to refuse her a hearing. A few days ago provincial ANC chair Marius Fransman spoke to the farmworkers -- rather than dealing with the issues he launched a political attack on DA leader Helen Zille for going to Nkandla. Playing politics again instead of attending to peoples needs. And covering up for the exorbitant spending of R248 million of public money on the personal residence of President Zuma.

            CSAAWU has called for a R4500 a month minimum wage for farmworkers. We now demand, as a start, that the government increase the minimum wage on the farms to R150 a day. We reject the farmers' position that negotiations should take place farm by farm. This is an attempt to divide and isolate workers who have come together. The coalition told the minister we would refuse to negotiate any more on behalf of the workers until this was done. The workers will continue to press for this demand. De Doorns workers, who have already struck for two weeks, will suffer most but are prepared to continue to the end. They particularly need support with donations of food and money.

            Agri-South Africa's claim that there is "no crisis" on the farms is absurd, even from their own point of view. There is a crisis of extreme poverty, sometimes starvation -- which is the responsibility of the inhumanity of Agri-SA. We reject the DA's claim that these strikes are "politically motivated". They are motivated by people's needs for an acceptable life. They are self-organised, from below, like the strike of mineworkers, of which the epicenter is Anglo Platinum in Rustenburg. This is the sense in which Marikana has come to the Western Cape.

            We call on Mildred Oliphant, Minister of Labour, to intervene and urgently declare a national minimum wage for farmworkers of R150 a day. We call on Gugile Nkwinti, the Minister for Rural Development and Land Reform, to step in also. He is responsible for rural development, yet his department sorely neglects the interests of oppressed farmworkers.
          
            Police brutality will not stop the strike. Nor will farmers' violence. Workers' lives must be respected. We call on the Minister of Police to resign because his police now have another death, that of Michael Daniels, on their hands -- following the 34 dead on August 16 in the Marikana massacre, Andries Tatane, and countless others. Police activity must be reined in by the government, with no use of live ammunition, rubber bullets etc against workers demonstrating for the means of survival.

            Should the government not respond, the Democratic Left Front will support the call by the coalition for a 1-day general strike to demand a R150 legislated national minimum wage for farmworkers, and improved working and living conditions on the farms. We call on all the farmworkers' strike committees, meanwhile, to spread the strike. We also call on the strike committees of mineworkers to support the farmworkers demands and organize for this general strike.

            Together with the strike committees, with CSAAWU, with Mawibuye and with all other coalition members willing to support it, the Democratic Left Front is calling a mass rally of farmworkers at the Sports Stadium, Nkqubela, Robertson at 11am on Saturday 24 November. We call on all progressive forces to mobilize for this rally and to make donations for transport, banners, T-shirts etc.

FORWARD TO R150 A DAY FOR FARMWORKERS!
STOP VICTIMISATION OF FARM WORKERS!
FORWARD TO R12, 500 MINIMUM WAGE FOR MINEWORKERS AND FOR ALL WORKERS!
FOR UNITY OF MINEWORKERS AND FARMWORKERS!
FORWARD TO A ONE-DAY GENERAL STRIKE!
DOWN WITH CAPITALISM!
FORWARD TO SOCIALISM!

South African farmworkers' strike

Farmworkers show what they think of the cops

As reader are aware, the strikes in South Africa are not limited to the mining industry.  Farm workers have also taken action and like the workers in the mining industry these struggles have taken place without or in opposition to the established leadership. In the case of the South African Communist Party, they have openly collaborated with the bosses and the state in the violence against workers.  We share below a report on the recent strikes of farm workers in the Western Cape.

The Farm Workers' Strike: It's Far From Over
By Anna Majavu · 15 Nov 2012    http://sacsis.org.za/s/

The mines and the farms are two enduring symbols of old white colonial theft, of the minerals and land. Because of the monopoly of the National Union of Mineworkers, whose leaders and officials have long preferred compromise and co-determination over worker control, it has been difficult for mineworkers to strike – until the Marikana massacre.

It has possibly been even harder for farm workers to strike.

Human Rights Watch estimated recently that less than 3% of South African farm workers are organized. Most farm workers earn the minimum wage or well below, with many in the Western Cape still paid partly in alcohol even though white farmers claim that the ‘dop system’ was done away with years ago. Striking farm workers often face losing their homes on farms, where they have buried family members and where their children go to school.

Yet this week, farm workers went on strike in their thousands in rural towns in the province, with the added promise by Groot Constantia workers in the city of Cape Town of an imminent strike there.

Yesterday, COSATU and acting Labour minister Angie Motshekga declared the strike suspended for two weeks. This is not the case. Much like Marikana, COSATU and the ANC have no influence over this strike, which the farm workers have vowed to continue.

When the farm workers strike began in De Doorns last week, it took the ANC, DA and Cosatu by surprise. The farm workers in this small town 140 kilometres east of Cape Town blocked the N1 highway, set fire to the vineyards, and demanded a wage of R12 500 per month. This was a clear reference to the Marikana workers’ demand for the same monthly wage, which has since spread throughout the mines.

The Zimbabwean refugee rights group, PASSOP, rushed to the scene because the De Doorns farm workers had also allegedly looted Somali-owned spaza shops in the town. PASSOP officials who lived in the town for a year after the 2009 xenophobic attacks there, pointed out that the strike appeared to be spontaneous and not organized by any union.

In the Western Cape, farm workers tend to belong to non-COSATU unions, namely Sikhula Sonke – a women led farm workers union, and the independent and more leftist Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU).

The press is now reporting the Black Association of the Wine and Spirit Industry (BAWSI) as saying farm workers have suspended their strike. BAWSI is not a farm workers union, but a pro-ANC lobbying association with workers and businesspeople in it ranks, which aims to increase the levels of Black ownership in the wine and spirit industry. BAWSI has no authority to speak for 15 000 farm workers in the region.

The COSATU farm workers union, the South African Agricultural, Plantation and Allied Worker's Union, collapsed more than ten years ago. The Food and Allied Workers Union, another COSATU affiliate, was then designated to organize the farm workers but never did.

However, the De Doorns strike presented an ideal opportunity for COSATU to strike a blow against the DA, and COSATU quickly positioned itself as the voice of the strike, downgrading the farm workers demands to a modest R150 a day, or just R3300 per month.

COSATU claimed credit when workers on other farms as far as 70 kilometres away quickly took up the call for a R150 minimum wage. And after a general meeting in Franschoek, hundreds of workers affiliated to Sikhula Sonke downed tools on 13 November in solidarity with the De Doorns strikers, spreading the strike further.

However, these solidarity strikes were not of Cosatu’s making. By November 13, thousands of farm workers in Prince Alfred Hamlet in Ceres, in Wolseley and in Robertson had set up burning barricades, were setting fire to farm equipment and were being attacked by police. The workers were also calling for an end to labour broking on farms.

COSATU and ANC leaders had by then changed tactics and insisted that farm workers suspend their strike for two weeks while the government gazettes the new minimum of R80 per day on offer from the white farmers association.

The Cape Town-based Workers International Vanguard League has had activists on the ground in the area for the past week and reported that after the farm workers refused and vowed to continue the strike, police and militias made up of farmers then invaded De Doorns on the night of 14th November, opening fire on workers.

According to the activists, farm workers have agreed to be paid R150 per day and say they will strike until president Jacob Zuma gazettes this amount.

COSATU and the ANC have clearly not learnt any lessons from the mineworkers’ strike where their bid to crush workers who attempt to self-organise and take militant action, has been a flop.

In the farm workers strike, the DA at first openly sided with the farmers after arrogantly assuming that the disorganized farm workers’ strike would not last more than a few days. Once the strike spread, as the mine workers’ strike did, Helen Zille blamed COSATU for inciting violence, declared that only president Jacob Zuma could end the farm workers strike by increasing the minimum wage on the farms and repeatedly implored Zuma via Twitter to send in the army to crush the strike.

There is no reason why the white Western Cape farmers could not raise the wages of farm workers immediately - if they wanted to. In fact, Zille has known for a long time that the white farmers in the province are reluctant to pay even the existing minimum wage of R1500 per month. She is also aware of other abuses against farm workers – they are regularly transported like cattle on the backs of open trucks, and die in well-publicised accidents.

The DA, COSATU and ANC are all aware that Sikhula Sonke camped outside parliament three years ago in protest against a white farmer who forced workers to live in pigsties, and that CSAAWU is campaigning publicly against farmer Willie Dreyer from Leeuwenkuil farm in Agter-Paarl.

Dreyer allegedly evicted farm worker Patrick Philander, his wife and four children and laid false charges of attempted murder against him and another CSAAWU activist, Amos White, after they recruited other farm workers into the union.

And the internationally-publicised Human Rights Watch report into South Africa’s fruit and wine industries last year found farms to be “ripe with abuse” – with farm workers having their water and electricity disconnected, being harassed in the middle of the night by farmers’ guards and their dogs, being exposed to pesticides and being prevented from joining unions.

The ANC has previously fostered disunity between workers in De Doorns instead of trying to improve the workers’ lot. Three years ago, ANC ward councillor Mpumelelo “Poyi” Lubisi was named in affidavits supplied to the Legal Resources Centre as being a mastermind behind a xenophobic attack, which displaced 3000 Zimbabwean farm workers.

At that time, PASSOP spokesperson Braam Hanekom described De Doorns then as a “cut-throat environment that is a recipe for tension” with farmers hiring workers through “a thousand labour brokers” who took the lump sums and paid farm workers whatever lesser amount they were desperate enough to accept on any given day.

The farm workers can expect no help from the party, which rules the province – the DA, because the DA supports labour broking and white farm ownership monopolies specifically and the free market in general. The ANC and COSATU are only using the workers to score temporary political points against the DA and now seem as eager to end the strike, as they were to end the Marikana miners strike. As in Marikana, De Doorns represents the worst of South African party politics. Like the mineworkers, South Africa’s farm workers have long lived in slavery-like conditions and deserve the support of all to continue their strike and keep blocking the highways.
Majavu is a writer concentrating on the rights of workers, oppressed people, the environment, anti-militarism and what makes a better world.

South Africa: farmworkers' strikes spread

From Martin Legassick

The South African papers today report farmworker strikes in all the areas marked on the map above. Democratic Left Front bodies such as CSAAWU and Mawubuye have formed a coalition with the De Doorns strike committee (the first to initiate, about a week ago), Western Cape COSATU and other bodies to take forward the strike movement. The DLF-COSATU link is a first and a big achievement. De Doorns workers earned R69 a day (with R30 a day deducted by the bosses for electricity etc!) and are demanding R150 a day. It is the start of the grape harvest season. In De Doorns the workers burned some vineyards. This is as important as, and no doubt inspired by, the mine strikes.

Amplats workers defiant, strike continues

Striking mineworkers at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) would not return to work, a miners' representative said in Rustenburg on Saturday. "The workers decided they won't go back to work. There are conditions that are unfavourable," Evans Ramokga said. "The strike is still on."

Hundreds of striking workers were gathered at a mass rally at the Olympia Park Stadium in Rustenburg on Saturday morning.The crowd was singing and dancing as police in Nyalas and vans kept watch over proceedings. A police helicopter was circling overhead.

On Friday Amplats management re-opened discussions on miners returning to work.
"The outcome of these discussions is that management has revised the initial offer to a once-off allowance of R4 500 [gross of tax] to be paid to each qualifying employee," it said in a statement.
"[This was] comprising a R2 000 loyalty or hardship allowance and a R2 500 safe start-up allowance to be paid two weeks after employees have returned to work and have commenced actual work."
Ramokga said the rally was also to ensure the safety and stability in Rustenburg and to stop violence.
"We are here mourning for our comrades who passed away during the strike all over the country."
He said they were also holding the rally to demand a living wage and better living conditions for all.
The workers said they would not oppose returning to work if their salary demands were met.
"We are looking for money. If they give us what we need, we can go back to work," said Simon Gqaza, an employee at Amplats for the last three years.

"I need R16 000. If they give me that money that I'm looking for I will go back to work anytime."
Amplats fired 12 000 workers after they failed to appear for a disciplinary hearing. They had been on a wildcat strike since 12 September, demanding to be paid a minimum of R16 000 a month.
The company then made the workers a re-instatement offer, which was not accepted.

Organised
During the rally the Democratic Left Front (DLF) handed out pamphlets and a spokesperson addressed the crowd offering support to the miners.

"Mineworkers are no longer prepared to accept the starvation wages offered by mine bosses, while they reap huge profits," the pamphlet read.
Spokesperson Vishwas Satgar said the DLF made a contribution because rallies have become a vocal point of solidarity.

"[We made the contribution] because we believe in the worker's cause. [The rallies] are a platform to amplify their cause, demands and struggle," Satgar said.
"We've made a modest contribution."

He could not give a specific amount, but said it was anywhere between R10 000 and R50 000. However he emphasised that the contribution was not only from them but also solidarity organisations who supported the miners.

"There's a strong feeling that the violence needs to come to an end."
He said he hoped the rally would send a strong message to mine bosses that a serious offer had to be put on the table.

The Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) also gave its support for the workers.
Spokesperson Mametlwe Sebei told workers the strike effort and strikers were becoming stronger by the day.
"We are strong because each and everyday we are becoming more organised."
He said workers were united.
"There is no compensation on the demand for a decent wage."
Spokesperson for the Marikana Support Campaign Rehad Desai also offered his support and called for miners to close down Amplats smelters.

The lawyer for the families of the killed Marikana miners and Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union in the Farlam commission into the shooting, James Nichol also addressed the crowd. He explained how he witnessed the shooting in his London home and decided to come to South Africa to assist.

"When the miner go down the mine he goes down poor and when he comes up he comes up poor."
In the meantime mine bosses continued to become richer, Nichol said.

MARIKANA SUPPORT CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE

AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL

30/10/2012

Yesterday evening, the Amplats workers had a meeting to discuss the false allegations from the national media that they have signed an agreement with management on their conditions of reinstatement.

The management announced that it expected workers to resume their duties this week and that they have reached a compromise with the worker. Yet none of the strikers have showed up at work, they have crushed and disagree with the terms of the proposal.

Last night, the police disrupted the strikers' meeting outside Jabula village, dispersed the workers with rubber bullets and arrested 14 of them, going into people's shacks and harassing them.
This morning, the strike committee called for a general meeting in response. One of the shafts couldn't make it in time as it had already been dispersed by the police.
About 6000 workers met at the Bathopele shaft.

As they were leaving, the workers were confronted with a massive police blockade of about 40 police cars. The police shot heavily at them, and blasted their vehicles with live ammunition. They shot and wounded a worker in the legs. Most workers dispersed and fled as they were under heavy fire.

The workers are adamant that they will not go back to work unless they at least get a living wage for all of R12 500. After their meeting with management yesterday they called for a peaceful resolution of the issue. Again, the management is showing that they will only end the strike through brute force. This is the second time this week that rubber bullets, teargas and stun grenades are used against the Amplats workers in Rustenburg.

More on South African strikes

We are putting a fair bit of South African stuff up but there really is a critical situation in that country as wildcat strikes in the mining industry continue following public sector disputes and the likelihood of further strikes in  the transportation sector.  The collaboration with international capital on the part of the leadership of the miner's union, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) has led to the formation of independent workers' organizations and rival unions.

The South African working class returns to the forefront of the struggle against global capitalism and its collaborators. They need our solidarity and support.  We are also facing a savage assault on our living standards which is being waged by the same forces that are shooting striking workers in South Africa.

The article below gives an excellent account of the mood and the subsequent turmoil erupting within the traditional organizations.

RM

**********************

This is from the Daily Maverick

Analysis: War is not going to return NUM to the top

• Sipho Hlongwane
• 

  29 October 2012 01:57 (South Africa)
  
  On Saturday, leaders of NUM, Cosatu and the Communist Party marched in Rustenburg to reclaim the territory. The march didn’t exactly go as planned; the tactic of confrontation rather than talks rarely brings lasting results. To find its way back to the top of the mining sector, NUM will have to do much more than just fight. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

On 16 October, several thousand workers gathered on a hilltop inside of Gold Fields’ sprawling KDC West operation just outside of Carletonville. It was the day that the company handed down an ultimatum to all workers: quit striking or lose your jobs. Company reports stated that most obeyed, but about 1,500 didn’t. They were waiting for Senzeni Zokwana, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to come and formally make them an offer.

It was one actually made by the Chamber of Mines on behalf of the company, but the striking workers wanted their union to make the offer. Zokwana had also apparently promised to come and speak to the workers. What he didn’t seem to grasp was that this was Last Chance Saloon for NUM. He didn’t pitch up, but his opposite number – a fierce rival at the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) – did. Joseph Mathunjwa met the miners and managed to convince most of them to join his union.

Then came reports claiming that NUM had been booted from the premises. Management had come around and locked the offices, we were told, and the union was suspended because more than 90% of the staff had joined AMCU. It sounded quite improbable. For one thing, unions are usually given about six months to regain their 50% + 1 majority before losing the status of bargaining partner. Phone calls to the company and NUM quickly quashed that rumour. But the fact that the workers we phoned wanted us to believe that the old union was dead and gone away was telling in and of itself.
In many of the places where wildcat strikes have broken out, we have gone to talk to people, and very few of them are willing to entertain NUM anymore. At Lonmin, the sentiment is one of profound hatred. What had happened is that the old union negotiated a pay rise last year. Then a demand for R12,500 sprang up, and somehow the miners believed that AMCU were the people who could get it for them. Not NUM, whom they thought were a block to a better wage. That’s quite amazing. Things got to a point where people like Daluvuyo Bongo, the NUM secretary at Lonmin, were murdered.

Photo: Cosatu official Billy Zulu is beaten by Amplats strikers at Olympia stadium Rustenburg. 27 October 2012, Rustenburg, North West. Photo Greg Marinovich
The demand that NUM must go is an integral part of many of these wildcat strikes. The atmosphere in the area has been anything but peaceful. The decision by Cosatu to march in Rustenburg was therefore always a brave one, but not necessarily a clever one. Predictably, it didn’t go well. NUM people got engaged in a heavy physical struggle with striking Anglo Platinum workers. The rally only went ahead because of a heavy police presence that forced NUM's way through to the Olympia stadium.

Just before the rally commenced, Cosatu said: “Right at the heart of where the mining crisis began – Rustenburg – on 27 October 2012, we will be convening a Workers Rally, which will kick-start with marches on various challenges that beset our society. Through the Workers’ Rally, we will mobilise our members to stomp the length and breadth of the country, mobilising society towards solidarity protests which will be anchored around the Section 77 Notice, whose primary aim is to achieve radical transformation in the economy through the full implementation of the Freedom Charter.”
From the perspective of the striking Amplats workers, the decision by NUM and Cosatu to march in their newly-established turf was a declaration of war. The union is seen to be on the side of the companies and the government, and thus inherently opposed to the demands of the workers. Can they really be surprised that they were greeted with rocks and jeers?

It would have been a better idea for Cosatu and NUM to try to reclaim their majority and privileged position in the mining sector by negotiating their way back into the hearts of the workers. Exactly the things that they haven’t been doing since the uprising began.

Police pull a Marikana solidarity activist, Rehad Desai, away from Cosatu members who attacked and stripped him in front of SACP's Blade Nzimande, Cosatu's Zwelinzima Vavi & Sidumo Dlamini and NUM's Frans Baleni at Olympia stadium. 27 October 2012, Rustenburg, North West. (Greg Marinovich)

At the rally on Saturday, South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande said, “NUM is the only best capable union to represent mineworkers in South Africa.” But is it for him to say? The rejection of the “only best capable union” has been strikingly clear.
Cosatu’s aggression is understandable in the face of the persecution of its local leaders. The deaths of men like Bongo cannot go unanswered. But the march did not purport to mete out justice. Rather, it claimed the far more difficult task of regaining lost ground by reclaiming jaded and disillusioned hearts. And as such, it couldn’t have been a bigger failure. It simply served to reinforce the narrative of belligerence and arrogance that the workers have written of the mineworkers’ union.

If Cosatu and NUM are serious about reclaiming the platinum belt, then they need to go to the workers hat-in-hand and ask them how they want to be represented. The time for issuing orders and platitudes is over. If they don’t, AMCU will make sure that the workers know that the ANC-affiliated unions called for the police to arrive, rather than for the workers to get what they wanted. The very same way every miner in the country will find out that the NUM is supporting SAPS application to the Farlam Commission.

The truth is that AMCU is untested as a union. But NUM has been tested and failed, and workers are clearly raring for change. It will be almost impossible for NUM to force its way back to the hearts of the miners it lost. DM
Main photo: Police open fire on striking Anglo Platinum miners as they and Cosatu members clashed at Olympia stadium Rustenburg. 27 October 2012, Rustenburg (Photo Greg Marinovich

Democratic Left Front condemns police murders

DEMOCRATIC LEFT FRONT

www.democraticleft.za.net

29 October 2012

PRESS STATEMENT: CALL TO COSATU WORKERS TO UNITE WITH STRIKING MINEWORKERS, AGAINST THE SAPS AND  THE LIES OF THE SACP AT THE 27^THOCTOBER COSATU RALLY

            The Democratic Left Front condemns the police for shooting workers in Rustenburg on 27 October. Two Amplats workers were hit by live ammunition, and one, hit in the chest, is in a critical condition in hospital. Eleven other mineworkers were injured by rubber bullets. The DLF also condemns Blade Nzimande, SACP General Secretary and Minister for Higher Education, for condoning this shooting by the police. This so-called “Communist” defends the shooting of workers in the interests of the capitalist bosses.

            The rally of the Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, SACP and COSATU was called by COSATU leaders supposedly to “reclaim Rustenburg” from the mineworkers who have been on strike against mining bosses since September with a demand for at least R12, 500 living wage. While the workers are opposed to anyone speaking on their behalf, COSATU leaders aimed to try to reinstate the NUM as the mineworkers’ union in the town. This was an extremely provocative action.

            It was well known to the COSATU leadership that the mineworkers had rejected the NUM because of its failure to represent their interests. Through its actions, including shooting workers in Marikana on 10 August and identifying strike leaders to police, the NUM leadership has in fact revealed itself as a union that sides with the bosses against the workers and its own members. The rank and file members of NUM must rescue the union and lead it back to its fighting and anti-capitalist traditions.  Otherwise it will be increasingly be seen amongst mineworkers and the broader working class as a bosses’ yellow union. Already at other mines COSATU General Secretary Vavi had failed when addressing workers to get them to allow an NUM representative to speak.

            Contrary to Nzimande’s lying claims, the mineworkers did not try to disrupt the rally. Some 5000 Amplats workers got to the stadium before COSATU arrived because they wanted to hear Vavi speak, who most still regard as a leader with integrity. They expressed their anger at the government by burning some of the ANC and COSATU banners and posters. When the police asked them to leave the stadium, they complied and waited by an entrance. This was not an “occupation” as reported in the media. Some 600-1000 COSATU members then arrived in a march. As they entered the stadium through another entrance some broke away and attacked the thousands of mineworkers, who were waiting to return to the stadium to hear Vavi speak. The COSATU members ripped off T-shirts, which had the demand for a R12, 500 living wage on them. In the course of this attack one DLF member had his T-shirt and trousers removed by NUM members and was arrested by police. Strikers went to aid those attacked.

            It was clear by this time that the attempt by COSATU to “reclaim Rustenburg” had failed dismally. At this point the police attacked the strikers with live ammunition, rubber bullets, birdshot, tear gas, stun grenades, horses, and water cannon, but left the COSATU attackers unmolested. In the course of this 13 mineworkers were injured, one critically, hit by a live bullet.

            The ANC government and its police once again, as in Marikana on 16 August, has defended the interests of the bosses by shooting workers. Unfortunately COSATU and SACP leaders echo the government. The tripartite alliance, as mineworkers say, are all “mealies of the same bag: if one part of that bag is rotten all the mealies is spoilt”. Workers say that they are done with the alliance, because “they are no longer singing the same song as us.”

            The actions of the police on 27 October go along with a police campaign of harassment of the Marikana community, including the intimidation and arrest of worker witnesses to the commission of enquiry into the events of 16 August. All this indicates that another massacre like that in Marikana cannot be ruled out. Only the most massive popular mobilization can prevent this.

            The DLF calls on all members of COSATU to unite with the striking mineworkers to condemn the provocation of the rally and the actions of the police. In this regard, the DLF salutes the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) for its ongoing support for mineworker struggles. It is time also for all union members to win back their unions from a labour bureaucracy that stands in alliance with the bosses and the state.What is needed is unity against the bosses and the government to struggle for R12, 500 minimum living wage, and against the mass dismissal of workers by the bosses, through the calling of a two or three-day general strike.

             

FOR COMMENTS, CONTACT:

Brian Ashley – 082 085 7088

Ayanda Kota – 078 625 6462

Martin Legassick – 083 417 6837

South Africa: MARIKANA SUPPORT CAMPAIGN

MARIKANA SUPPORT CAMPAIGN

An injury to one is an injury to all

Amplats workers are still on strike. They are fighting for a living wage. The strike has not been supported by the NUM.

The same people who wanted to crush the Marikana strike are now using violence against Amplats workers. They are using the same tactics of blaming the strikers for violence when they are attacked as they did in Marikana.

Over the last few months, striking miners in different mines across the country have been attacked by the police, criticised by the government and the media, and some have been dismissed by mining companies. What is most shocking is that the NUM have joined the chorus of criticism instead of fighting against oppression. This has caused anger amongst strikers who have organised themselves through strike committees.
At the Farlam Commission of Inquiry the Police are trying to cover up what they did on 16^thAugust. Along with Lonmin and the government, they want to blame striking miners for the violence. Last week, the police arrested five strike committee members after they appeared as witnesses at the inquiry. They are using the inquiry to intimidate witnesses. This is not acceptable. Now the government has said that there is no money to pay for the families who have lost loved ones to be present at the inquiry.

We call on all workers and members of the community to support the rights of workers to fight for a living wage without being branded as criminals and placed under attack.

 

What Happened in Rustenburg on Saturday 27th

COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi called a rally at Olympia Stadium to talk about the strikes in Rustenburg.

THEY SAY: Amplats strikers went to the rally to attack the COSATU supporters.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: Over 5,000 Amplats strikers went to the stadium to hear what COSATU had to say. They wanted to explain to COSATU that they do not want anyone to negotiate for them.

 

THEY SAY: The Amplats strikers blocked the entrance of the stadium.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:  Amplats strikers arrived at the rally, ahead of the COSATU march. They expressed their anger at the government by tearing some of the ANC and COSATU banners and posters. They were asked by the police to leave the stadium and wait for the march to arrive. They left the stadium peacefully and waited by one of the entrances. There was a second entrance for the march to enter.

 

THEY SAY: The Amplats strikers attacked NUM members.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: The COSATU march was small, only a few hundred. Several NUM members broke off and attacked Amplats strikers, removing their T-shirts. Other strikers went to defend them.

 

THEY SAY: The police had no choice but to shoot.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: The police started firing rubber bullets and water cannon at the strikers and using nyalas and horses to chase them. Striking miners, under attack, fought to defend themselves. Some NUM members had their T-shirts removed. By the end of the afternoon, 13 Amplats strikers were in hospital. Two of them had been hit with live ammunition. One is in ICU. Not one COSATU marcher was fired on by police.

SACP's Nzimande defends cops at Rustenburg Rally

The South African Communist Party (SACP) continues it's treacherous role in the strike wave that has hit South Africa and the shooting of workers out on strike at the Marikana mine. This report from Eyewitness News reveals the blatant collaboration between the state forces and the SACP.  This rally, an effort to intimidate the wildcats and independent workers' committees that have arisen and reclaim some lost prestige was not well attended at all.

                          *********

RUSTENBURG - South African Communist Party (SACP) secretary-general Blade Nzimande on Saturday said police had no choice but to fire at striking miners who earlier attempted to disrupt a rally by members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

Speaking to a crowd of about 600 people at the Olympia Stadium in Rustenburg, Nzimande said members of the trade union federation would have been attacked, if the police did not intervene.

He called on the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to expel those who took part in today’s protest.The secretary-general said he was at the stadium when police took action to disperse striking Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) miners, using rubber bullets, water cannons, teargas and stun grenades.
“That was an extreme act of provocation that I saw today, and it was correct of police to actually disperse those people because they [wanted] to charge [at] us.”

Ten people were arrested, following the brief unrest.

The commotion started when police stormed into the Olympia Stadium to disperse miners who had gathered there since the morning.

A fight then broke out between a miner and a marching Cosatu member, to which police retaliated by firing rubber bullets - causing the miners to flee to a residential area nearby.
Cosatu members had planned to hold their rally at the stadium.

It was hoped the rally would help resolve tensions between Cosatu leaders and members, following recent tensions and claims that unions under Cosatu had neglected the needs of their members.
Amplats workers have been on illegal strike since 12 September, demanding a basic salary of at least R16 000 per month.

They embarked on a strike shortly after their counterparts at Lonmin Mine, in Marikana, ended a violent wage dispute with management.

POLICE INTIMIDATION OF WITNESSES AT MARIKANA COMMISSION OF INQUIRY

PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release

24 October 2012

POLICE INTIMIDATION OF WITNESSES AT MARIKANA COMMISSION OF INQUIRY

Yesterday evening, four persons who were assisting the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) in our work at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry were arrested, ostensibly on charges of murder. The names of the arrested persons are: Zamikhaya Ndude, Sithembele Sohadi, Loyiso Mtsheketshe and Anele Kola.

These persons were picked out from a minibus taxi transporting a group of 14 people, who had been attending the Commission’s hearings yesterday, back to their homes in or near Marikana. The taxi was stopped by a police armoured vehicle. The four were pointed out and arrested, apparently by, or on the information of, a police officer who had attended the Commission’s hearing yesterday. Hoods were placed over their heads and they were told not to speak, or they would be shot.

The circumstances of the arrest suggest that the police followed the arrested persons from the Commission, where they were identified for arrest. The four arrested persons were present at the inquiry and were assisting SERI, and the team of legal representatives led by Adv Dali Mpofu in our work. They were arrested in the presence of police officers who had been present at the Commission and were on their way back from the Commission at the time they were arrested.

The arrests materially and adversely affect SERI’s ability to prepare for and participate in the Commission’s work. It is no answer to suggest that the arrested persons will be made available for the parties to consult with and to appear at the Commission if necessary. They were providing SERI and the team lead by Adv Mpofu with information and testimony which is adverse to the police. They are unlikely to do so without fear of retribution while in police custody. Furthermore, it appears, prima facie, that the arrested persons were targeted because they were assisting us at the Commission. SERI can no longer, in good conscience, provide to the Commission, or the parties to it, information relating to the identities of potential witnesses who may provide information and testimony adverse to the police.

In the above circumstances, we have written to legal representatives of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Commission today, and requested the following undertakings from SAPS:

1. That the police provide an assurance, through their legal representatives at the Commission, that no further arrests will be effected in relation to charges that may arise in connection with the events under investigation by the Commission, or of persons travelling to, from, or attending the Commission.

2. That the four arrested persons referred to above be released forthwith.

Should we not receive an undertaking in the above terms by the time the Commission recommences its work on Monday 29 October 2012, SERI will apply for a postponement of the Commission until such time as we receive these undertakings. SERI is currently taking instructions from our clients on whether they are prepared to continue to participate in the Commission should such a postponement be refused.

Contact:
Teboho Mosikili, attorney at SERI: teboho@seri-sa.org / 072 248 2199

Progressive Youth Movement on the COSATU Rally

PROGRESSIVE YOUTH MOVEMENT

Khayelitsha Training Centre, Corner Spine and Lwandle Road, Khayelitsha, Cape Town

Tel: 076 731 6157/ 083 886 1831, Fax: 021 447 5770

An affiliate of the Democratic Left Front (http://www.democraticleft.za.net)

25 October 2012

PRESS STATEMENT: A RESPONSE TO THE NUM’S PROBLEMATIC POSITIONS ON MINEWORKER STRIKES AND RESPONSE TO COMING WEEKEND’S COSATU RALLY IN RUSTENBURG

We, as the Progressive Youth Movement (PYM: a social movement which organises unemployed young people in the Khayelitsha township in Cape Town), express our full solidarity with all the mineworkers who heroically fought for a living wage against the bosses, the ANC’s capitalist state and the sellout positions of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Their struggle for a living wage is the same as our struggle for a living income for the unemployed and our campaigns for decent service delivery that meets the needs of the people. Mineworkers in South Africa are undermined by unaccountable trade union leadership, self-enrichment of union leaders, union collaboration with the bosses, and enslavement of worker issues to the priorities of the ANC-SACP-COSATU alliance. As the PYM, we have no choice but to critically engage COSATU in defence of fighting mineworkers and to stand for a revolutionary solution. We declare our class solidarity with our class brothers who work in the mines whose ongoing dismissals add to the numbers of the unemployed. Why is COSATU not taking its side unwaveringly on the side of the fighting mineworkers?

When workers are not satisfied with their union that means a split is inevitable. If labour bureaucrats sellout workers and work with the bosses, workers will find an alternative either progressive or regressive. This happened with the NUM. NUM failures and sellouts caused the formation of Association of Mineworkers Construction Union (AMCU). Instead of properly representing workers, the NUM was concerned in its shares in Unibank which it co-owns with mining companies and its other capitalist investments through the Mineworkers Investment Company. As a result, NUM lost members in the mines especially in Rustenburg. Last week, Zwelinzima Vavi’s convoy was regrettably stoned at Amplats. Vavi thought that he could soften the angry workers whom were with NUM, whom they feel that NUM betrayed them, and he wanted to revive NUM in the area. Unfortunately, things did not go well for him.

Now COSATU has plans to host a rally in Rustenburg this weekend at which they want to convince the workers that NUM is the only union that can protect the interests of workers in the mines. Yet this NUM has failed the workers. There are also extremely worrying allegations about how some NUM members may have been involved in the violence against striking mineworkers in Rustenburg. Given these NUM failures, on which basis can COSATU convince workers to sell themselves out again? COSATU’s rally will also bring the ANC and SACP to put pressure on local Rustenburg communities to continue believing the lie that the ANC is the party that serves the interests of poor communities. Precisely because Mangaung is around the corner and 2014 elections is also knocking at the door.

Doing the dirty work of the ANC, COSATU will follow the logic that if you not in the alliance, you are a counterrevolutionary. Whereas, we, the PYM know that the most real counter-revolutionaries are those in the ANC and its alliance partners who sold out workers and have become capitalists. In these 18 years of so-called ‘democracy’, they have created millionaires and billionaires while we have a jobs crisis, an education crisis, a housing crisis and many other problems. Yet every five they want our votes. Through union investment companies, COSATU unions have shares in various companies: they are benefiting from narrow Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), whilst the majority of black people are poor. 

We as the PYM are not convinced that this rally is about advancing worker interests because state brutality is still the order of the day in Marikana where decisive community and worker leaders and other comrades are arrested daily. The comrades that are supposed to give testimony to the Farlam Commission of Inquiry are arrested while the commission is proceeding. We remain to be convinced that this rally will serve any other purpose other than the political rhetoric of the ANC. COSATU must stop doing this. When workers start to realise that the ANC has failed, the NUM spokes person stand on the side of bosses and do not support illegal strikes. The PYM is very clear that the ANC is representing capitalism. The attack on workers in Marikana was approved by the ANC government at the service of mine bosses. How can COSATU stand in solidarity with that? When are they going to draw the class line?

The less said about the disastrous, Stalinist, anti-worker, pro-capitalist and compromised NUM leadership and spokespersons the better. Instead of representing workers, they pointed fingers to others: attacking workers, attacking the left which acted in solidarity with the workers, and they found counter-revolutionaries under every bed. As long as we do not have independent strong leadership of trade unions in South Africa, the problems of workers will never be resolved.

As the PYM, we also condemn NUM's press statement attacking the Democratic Left Front (DLF). We say the DLF must move forward to build a mass left and working class alternative for South Africa. The PYM calls on all movements of the unemployed to unite against capitalism through a campaign against unemployment, for the right to work to be guaranteed and for a living income for the unemployed. It is very clear now that the ANC government will never change anything, and that its partner organisations are collaborating with this agenda against those who want to build an alternative in South Africa. We


FOR COMMENTS, CONTACT PYM SPOKESPERSONS:

Zama Timbela: 076 731 6157
E mail: timbelaz@gmail.com

Mabhelandile Twani: 083 886 1831
E mail: m.twani@yahoo.co.uk

Marikana prequel: NUM and the murders that started it all

We are a bit late getting this up, but it is an important piece and we have it from comrades in South Africa that the author is an honest and reputable activist. It reveals a great deal about the origins of the conflict at Marikana.

*****************

by Jared Sacks  from the Daily Maverick

The coverage of the Marikana massacre seems to start with the mass killings of 16 August. But that’s not where, or how the violence started, and it wasn’t rivalry between unions, either. Rewind a few days and prepare for goosebumps: you’ll find a web of conspiracy around two murders which were not reported in the media and ended in no arrests, but scared the living daylights out of the workers before the weeks of horror started.

Because the Marikana Massacre marked a turning point in the history of our country, I went to the small mining town in the North West. I wanted to know what truly happened and what it meant for the future of our so-called democracy. I hoped my trip would enable me to answer some of the burning questions left obfuscated by media, government and civil society campaigns alike. 

It seemed it would be difficult, if not impossible, to uncover the cause of the violence at a distance from Marikana because of the complete failure of most media outlets to ask the right questions of the right people. Professor Jane Duncan of Rhodes University has found that journalists rarely interviewed independent mineworkers or residents of Marikana, preferring to quote “official sources” such as unions, Lonmin or the police. Moreover, my experience of previous incidents of repression in South Africa had taught me that such sources are often unreliable, as they have a lot to lose by telling the truth.

Through my investigations I found that, contrary to many media reports, inter-union rivalry was not the immediate cause of the violence. In fact, a significant cause of the violence can be laid squarely on the National Union of Mineworkers and their murder of two of their own NUM members – which until 2 October remained unreported.

Meeting the community
After meeting a community member (whose family did not consist of direct employees of Lonmin) in Johannesburg, I spent a week at the end of September living in the massive Nkaneng shack settlement in the township of Wonderkop. Together, Nkaneng and Wonderkop dwarf Marikana itself, housing the vast majority of the area’s mineworkers. Yet almost all the roads there remain unpaved, and residents are forced to go all the way to the “city centre” for most of their needs. Geographically and socio-economically, Wonderkop is the bastard stepchild of the Marikana municipality, further marginalised by Lonmin, whose corporate social responsibility initiatives remain unnoticeable.
During my visit, I spoke to Lonmin workers who had participated in the strike and others who were not active strikers. I interviewed the wives and children of the miners and I also sat down with unemployed and self-employed residents who did not have family members working at Lonmin.
I began to piece together a more detailed and shocking timeline of the strike and how it eventually degenerated into the horrifying footage played out for the whole world to see.

Revelation
Perhaps the most striking thing I heard repeatedly in Wonderkop was the near-complete hatred that all residents, regardless of their connection to the strike, had towards the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

I had assumed that within Wonderkop there would be a divide between supporters of NUM and those that had jumped ship to their smaller non-Cosatu affiliated rival, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). I assumed there would at least be a significant minority of residents who blamed the strikers for instigating the killings and felt that NUM still remained a relevant and credible force among Lonmin workers.

And yet every single person that I spoke to, without fail, blamed NUM for starting the violence and reneging on its responsibility to represent the workers. This was the case even when people I interviewed expressed dislike for the strikers and their own subsequent acts of brutality. Almost everyone felt more hatred towards NUM than they did towards Lonmin, the police or even the Zuma administration.

Alternative timeline: how the strike began
On Wednesday 8 August, some rock drill operators (RDOs) from various Lonmin mines had a mass meeting demanding a significant salary increase. The NUM leaders present categorically refused to support the strike, despite the union’s stated mission to promote and represent the interests of its members. On the following day (Women’s Day – a holiday for the workers), thousands of RDOs from all Lonmin mines met at the Lonmin-owned football stadium, adjacent to the settlement, where they agreed to approach Lonmin management directly, as NUM was refusing to represent them.
According to Xolani*, an active striker from Lonmin’s Karee mine, RDOs “came together as workers, not as a union.” As the large majority of the workers at the assembly were NUM members, the AMCU was unrepresented at this meeting.

On the morning of Friday the 10th, workers assembled and marched to the offices of Lonmin management. David, a Lonmin mine geologist I interviewed (who was returning from work and was not then part of the strike), decided to join the striking RDOs to see what was going on. David told me that management refused to speak to the workers, who were assembled peacefully, and told them to go back to the NUM leadership.

Xolani and a few other participants in the march corroborated this. He explained that security had tried to stop the march and that after a long wait, the general manager of the mine came out and then went back in to fetch a NUM leader. After waiting for almost an hour, the NUM leader came out and reprimanded the workers, saying they would not get anything without going through the union.
As a result of Lonmin and NUM’s refusal to meet with the workers, more than 3,000 RDOs and other miners decided to go on strike and refused to clock in that evening. This was a wildcat strike organised directly by workers, without any union representation.

11 August: March on NUM
At approximately 07:00 on Saturday, workers, still primarily RDOs, decided to go to the main offices of NUM in Wonderkop and present union leadership with a memorandum. It is important to note that the NUM offices are also the offices of the ANC and SACP in Wonderkop. They are manned by the top five NUM branch leaders from all the Lonmin mines in Marikana. These leaders are senior to shop-stewards and are elected to their position by workers for a period of three years. Interestingly, David explained to me that they get their normal worker’s salary plus a huge bonus of R14,000 per month from Lonmin. They are therefore accountable to management. Both the NUM leaders and Lonmin are “happy with this arrangement”.

As strikers were by and large NUM members, they were naturally angry that their own union refused to listen to them. The memorandum demanded that NUM represent them in their call for a R12,500 minimum wage for all miners. NUM’s stated raison d’être is, after all, to be a democratic organisation that represents its members.

Julius, an RDO from Lesotho employed at Lonmin since 2008, explained that, as a NUM member, he was hoping the memorandum would convince union leaders of the significance of their wage demands.

Only a handful of AMCU members were present during that march, as many workers from the Karee mine, where AMCU already had a membership presence, was far away and not yet participating in significant numbers in the strike. Xolani, one of the few AMCU members present that day, said this protest was really a case of NUM members rebelling against their own leadership, not a case of inter-union rivalry.

The first murders, ‘a different account’ 
Once striking RDOs were about 100-150 metres away from the NUM office, eyewitnesses, both participants in the march and informal traders in and around a nearby taxi rank, reported without exception that “top five” NUM leaders and other shop stewards, between 15 and 20 in all, came out of the office and began shooting at the protesting strikers somewhere in the vicinity of the Wonderkop taxi rank.

Some strikers I interviewed claimed the NUM leaders first threw rocks at them before the shooting started. Others said they were attacked from two different angles of the taxi rank. There is also a discrepancy as to just how many guns were in the possession of the leadership that came out of the NUM office (reports range from between five and 15 firearms).

Despite those discrepancies, the strikers and other witnesses – without exception – claim NUM personnel shot at the protesters without warning or provocation. The miners were clearly ambushed by their union representatives. From that point on, the miners marching towards the NUM office, primarily NUM members, ran in many directions: back along the road in which they had come, through the nearby bond houses and through Lonmin-owned hostel properties. They later re-assembled at Lonmin’s football stadium, deciding there for the sake of safety to move to the nearby koppie, a small hilltop uniquely placed on public land between Wonderkop, Marikana and the various Lonmin mines. Protesters seem to have made no attempt to defend themselves, and there seem to have been no further clashes for the rest of the day.

John, a non-striking Lonmin worker, saw two bodies of strikers not far from the NUM office as he returned home from work. One was lying dead by the bus stop in the taxi rank, the other was just outside the workers’ hostel. The range of people I interviewed corroborated the location of the two dead bodies, but it was extremely difficult to confirm the names of the dead strikers as neither Lonmin nor the police have confirmed that any deaths occurred on the 11^th. Neither have they released any substantive information about what happened on that day.
However, one person I interviewed provided me with the following new names not released by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate: S. Gwadidi from the Roeland Shaft and Tobias Tshivilika from New Mine Shaft. Both were reportedly RDOs and also NUM members.
I was not able to assess if these names were correct or if any other people were injured during this shooting on the 11 August.

Everyone I interviewed agreed on this general timeline of the murders: two deaths at the very beginning of the violence, followed by a subsequent eight deaths and a number of injuries during the following three days, from Sunday, 12 August until Tuesday, 14 August.

It started out as a peaceful strike
I wanted to find out when and why the workers began to arm themselves, and so asked a wide range of residents in Wonderkop why and when striking workers began carrying traditional items such as sticks, knobkerries and pangas.

The consensus, with one exception, was that the strikers went to their homes to fetch their traditional weapons on Saturday, 11 August, after the murder of two strikers. In the words of David, who was present at the march (but still not yet on strike himself), “people decided to arm themselves (after the first two murders) in self-defence”. Xolani and Julius support this assertion: they had nothing in their hands during the march.

Some women leaders from the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), a body aligned to the ANC, SACP and Cosatu, agreed that the miners only took up arms in self-defence after their members were murdered by NUM officials. Many of the informal traders and bystanders at the scene of the NUM shooting were hesitant to speak to me. Yet, after I assured them that they would remain anonymous, all, without exception, said the violence on that day came from the people working in the NUM office. When I asked some young men playing draughts who killed whom, they merely pointed in the direction of the NUM office, saying it was “them”. By all accounts the strikers were unarmed that morning when they marched to their own union office.

Misrepresentations
When I returned from my visit to Marikana, I began searching through all the mainstream and alternative media reports I could find. After reading hundreds of articles, I found none that mentioned the incident on the 11th. Until the Farlam Commission recently interviewed a worker about the events on that day, not a single media report had acknowledged that the first deaths occurred on the 11 August rather than on the 12th.

A single early South African Press Association story placed the first two shootings on the evening of 10 August. But that was all. That story contradicts other mainstream media reports and does not corroborate what people say on the ground. It seems most likely that the reporting is mistaken and those four people mentioned in the article were actually shot on the morning of the 11th during the march on NUM offices, and that two of them later died.

The only other possible explanations for the lack of reporting on the incident would be either (a) that the murders on the 11th did not take place at all, and that everyone I have interviewed were somehow lying or (b) there is some kind of cover-up of the murders of Mr. Gwadidi and Mr. Tshivilika – both unlikely conclusions.

All the other articles I’ve read have told a completely different story: that the first deaths occurred on Sunday, 12 August. These include two of the security guards in the daytime and two other miners in the evening (see for instance, articles: here, here, here, here, here and here.

It is as if no one outside Marikana knows that two people were murdered in broad daylight at the busy Wonderkop taxi rank. This is strange, except when one considers that no one in Wonderkop/Marikana has access to the media except for NUM, Lonmin and the South African Police Service (SAPS). The media, not present in Marikana until later in the week, were relying on these three official bodies for their entire investigation. Not a single community member or worker was actually interviewed during the first few days of the strike.

As Professor Jane Duncan’s analysis of the media coverage of the Marikana Massacre from 13 to 22 August has shown, only 3% of articles about the events included interviews with workers themselves rather than “official” institutions such as government, SAPS, Lonmin, NUM and AMCU. With one exception, journalists that did actually speak to workers were only interested in asking questions about muthi.

What this means is that no eyewitnesses were contacted by journalists and, when a few were eventually contacted (mostly after the 16 August) they focused primarily on the more recent massacre and overlooked the original cause of the violence.

Causes and responsibilities
Many analysts and academics with easy access to the elite public sphere place the root cause for the Lonmin strike and the subsequent violence on the deprivation and exploitation meted out each and every day on RDOs and other miners all over South Africa. Greg Marinovich’s recent interviews with Lonmin RDOs have done a lot to illuminate the lives and working conditions in the mines.
I found, however, that NUM’s actions, undemocratically refusing to represent its own workers and siding instead with Lonmin management in the wage dispute, were a significant contributor to the violence. Even more disturbing, NUM saw its own workers as enemies from within – an uneducated and unthinking mass to be controlled and managed rather than served.

This is why NUM leaders such as Frans Baleni think it is impossible for workers to organise themselves without a “third force” acting from behind the scenes. My interviews have shown quite clearly that workers were acting by and for themselves, regardless of union affiliation, in rebellion against their own union leadership. They were their own leaders.

The paranoid and delusional fear that NUM members were being “remote controlled” by outsiders set on “destroying the union” may have been what led its leadership at Lonmin to respond irrationally and violently to the striker’s peaceful march on the NUM office.

Police response
The police did nothing in response to the two deaths on 11 August. No one was arrested that day, nor was anyone interrogated. This was despite the fact that many strikers present during the murders assert they can identify at least some of their assailants. Xolani, for instance, named two of the shop stewards, one from the Training Centre and one from the fourth shaft in Wonderkop. Others pointed out the Lonmin “Top Five”, one of whom seems to have now been assassinated.

I asked David if he thought there might have been an alternative to the violence if the police had arrested the murderers on that fateful day. He replied, “I think it would be different if police had arrested NUM...if you don’t arrest anybody, then it seems like you are protecting them.”
Whether or not police could have uncovered the full story on that day, the act of doing nothing left workers with the perception that they were isolated. “Worker, you are on your own” could be their rephrasing of Bantu Steve Biko’s famous words. If one is standing unarmed and vulnerable against armoured vehicles, guns and the full might of the South African state, then, as workers may have put it when meeting on top of the now infamous koppie on the afternoon of 11 August: It’s time to get ready for war. DM

Jared Sacks is a Cape Town-based social justice activist and founder of the non-profit organisation, Children of South Africa
*Not his real name. Because of the recent spate of murders targeting NUM leaders in Marikana, the names of everyone interviewed for this article have been changed, though their real names are known to the author.