The massacre of the Marikana/Lonmin workers
has inserted itself within South Africa’s national consciousness, not so much
through the analysis, commentary and reporting in its wake. Instead, it has been the power of the visual images of police armed with
awesome fire power gunning down these workers, together with images of bodies
lying defeated and lifeless, that has aroused a national outcry and wave of
condemnation. These images have also
engendered international protest actions outside South African embassies. In
themselves these images communicate a politics about ‘official state power’. It
is bereft of moral concern, de-humanised, brutal and at odds with international
human rights standards; in these ways it is no different from apartheid era
state sponsored violence and technologies of oppressive rule. Moreover, the images of police officers
walking through the Marikana/Lonmin killing field, with a sense of professional
accomplishment in its aftermath, starkly portrays a scary reality: the triumph
of South Africa's state in its brutal conquest of its enemies, its citizens.
At the same time, the pain and suffering of
the gunned down workers has became the pain of a nation and the world; this has
happened even without the ANC government declaring we must not apportion blame
but mourn the dead. In a world steeped in possessive individualism and greed,
the brutal Marikana/Lonmin massacre reminds us of a universal connection; our
common humanity. However, while this
modern human connection and sense of empathy is important, it is also
superficial. This is brought home by a
simple truth: the pain of the Marikana/Lonmin workers is only our pain in their martyrdom. They had to perish for all
of us to realise how deep social injustice has become inscribed in the everyday
lives of post-apartheid South Africa’s workers and the poor. The low wage,
super exploitation model of South African mining, socially engineered during
apartheid, is alive and well, and thriving. It is condoned by the
post-apartheid state. This is the tragic irony of what we have become as the
much vaunted ‘Rainbow nation’.
Moreover, the spectral presence of the Marikana/Lonmin massacre speaks to
us about another shadow cast by the ‘Rainbow’ fairytale. It forces us to confront the hard edge of
violence fluxing through our stressed social fabric. At one time, violent crime
– car jackings, robberies, rapes, murders – defined our everyday understandings
of violence. Our narration of these
violent events constructed a sense of criminal violence as a major fault-line
running through South African society. Such violence spreads fear, racial
division and a sense of siege. It has been our undeclared civil war. However, the social geography of violence
changes with the Marikana/Lonmin moment. A new faultline is revealed. Such a
faultline has been in the making deep
inside South African society through xenophobic attacks, violent police attacks
on striking transport and municipal workers (over the past few years), violence
against gays and lesbians especially in township communities, and police
complicity in thwarting legitimate protest actions in poor communities and
informal settlements. Through a failure to act decisively (in some instances
like during xenophobic violence or by failing to provide policing in informal
settlements) or through orchestrated violence the South African state is at war
with the working class within its borders; it is a ‘low intensity war’. More
specifically, such a war spans shootings, intimidation, failure to allow
communities to lay charges, failure to investigate crimes perpetrated against
poor communities, failure to be responsive to the safety needs of poor
communities, fabrication and smear campaigns against local leaders, complicity
with goons linked to local politicians (particularly the ANC) and a failure to
act knowing that innocent lives are in danger.
A few examples of police orchestrated low
intensity warfare working in cahoots with ANC goon squads or local politicians against
communities illustrates this more clearly.
This is based on testimony received from activists. First, after Abahlali Basemjondolo (Shack Dwellers
movement) successfully challenged the Slums Act in the Constitutional Court,
ensuring community participation to determine whether there can be relocation
from an established community they became the target of police-ANC violence. In
early 2010 an ANC goon squad violently removes Abahlali from Kennedy Road
informal settlement. This is also captured in a documentary entitled: Dear Mandela. The police carry out
arrests of Abahlali leadership on trumped up charges and public violence which
are eventually kicked out of court. Abahlali is not able to return to Kennedy Road
informal settlement.
Second, a more recent example in Umlazi
township Durban also shows this police-political party nexus working in
insidious ways to suppress community demands. The local Unemployed Peoples
Movement (UPM) and ward 88 residents demanded a recall of their ANC councillor
and a democratisation of the ward committee. In their perception the ANC ward
councillor was corrupt, failing to deliver and engaging in clientelistic
control of development resources. This unleashed a series of reprisals. On 23 July the leader of the UPM was arrested
under false charges. The complainants turned out to be incited by the councillor working in cahoots
with the station commander at Umlazi police station. These charges could not
stick but they held the leader of UPM
for a day. It would seem these trumped up charges were meant to prevent
him from leading a community meeting being held on the same day. This story has
many twists and turns with the police-ANC apparatus constantly trying to
intimidate the UPM and residents of Ward 88 in the course of this struggle.
What is striking about these examples is
there challenge to mainstream academic and media explanations of community
based violence as being merely reducible to intra-ANC battles. In all these
instances a conscious awakening and challenge by communities and movements to the
ANC state unleashes a low intensity destabilisation of these community forces
through the police-ANC state nexus.
Contrary to Zwelinzima Vavi, the General
Secretary of COSATU, who believes South Africa is poised to experience the
shock of a ‘ticking time bomb’ rooted in deep inequality and unemployment, this
bomb is already exploding in various locales. However, the response of the ANC
state has been about a recourse to low intensity violence. The Marikana/Lonmin
massacre merely brings this trend into sharp relief. The challenge to COSATU is
simple: does it want to remain a democratising force, with a proud history, and
take a stand with the wider working class or does it want to be complicit in
the low intensity war against the broader working class and citizenry? At a mass meeting on 22nd August at the
University of Johannesburg the Marikana workers and community passionately
appealed for solidarity. Such solidarity actions are congealing into but not
limited to: calls for a national and
international day of solidarity action with Marikana workers (including 3
minutes of silence on August 29th at 1pm as a symbolic
reference to the 3 minutes it took the callous South African Police Services to
mow down the 34 workers on 16 August 2012); support for
solidarity strike action emerging within the platinum mining industry; a call
for an independent ‘peoples commission of enquiry’ to ensure full transparency,
testimony and justice for the Marikana workers and communities afflicted with
state-ANC violence; calls demanding the
withdrawal of charges and immediate release of miners held in police custody
and calls for an end to the police siege and harassment of the Marikana
communities. Marikana as a defining moment in post-apartheid politics is
essentially about galvanising the battle to reclaim South Africa’s democracy
from below. It resonates with and expresses the desire of the
majority to end the ugly reality of South Africa’s deep seated and racialised class
based inequality that has been widening under ANC rule.
Author: Dr. Vishwas Satgar is a member of the national convening committee
of the Democratic Left Front.
