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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Patrick, how could this be?
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 21:17:17 +0200
From: Patrick Bond <pb...@mail.ngo.za>
Reply-To: Progressive Economics <pe...@lists.csuchico.edu>
To: Progressive Economics <pe...@lists.csuchico.edu>
Well Fred, welcome to uneven and combined development in the extreme...
Here's where Polgren
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/world/africa/south-africa-to-charge-marikana-miners-in-deadly-unrest.html?_r=1&hp
gets it wrong:
"For days, the authorities watched warily as the crowd grew more
militant. Two police officers were hacked to death, and eight other
people were killed in violent clashes. On Aug. 16, the police were given
the order to move in. The police said they tried to chase away the
miners with rubber bullets and stun grenades, but were forced to resort
to live ammunition when the miners surged at them. The police said that
they retrieved six guns from the scene, including one that belonged to
one of the dead police officers."
If I were editing it would be:
"For days, the authorities - closely allied to Lonmin, which for many
years has kept the mineworkers in migrant labour servitude not
substantially different than in pre-1994 days - had intervened against
the mineworkers, who grew more militant. In circumstances not yet
explained, two police officers were hacked to death, and eight other
people were killed in violent clashes, as Lonmin put pressure on workers
to behave, and then on the police to ensure that worker gathering sites
(even off mining company property) were harrassed. On Aug. 16, the
police were given the order to move in so as to assist Lonmin's
strike-busting strategy: the company had announced that workers would be
fired if they didn't return to work that day. The police said they tried
to chase away the miners with rubber bullets and stun grenades, but
could not explain why they would use force against thousands of
mineworkers who were simply sitting on top of a small hill day after
day, not threatening anyone, and not physically blocking any economic
activity. The policy resorted to massacring three dozen workers -
including a dozen caught on most journalists' video coverage. They were
penned in, and apparently in the course of fleeing, they surged around a
barbed-wire fence at a line of police, who mowed them down. Not a single
policeman was injured. The police said that they retrieved six guns from
the scene, including one that belonged to one of the dead police
officers - but the police have lied on so many occasions that it is
impossible to believe anything they say. The bottom line is that Lonmin
has enormous power to influence the local police, the 'sweetheart union'
(National Union of Mineworkers) and extremely important politicians such
as Cyril Ramaphosa (former Mineworkers leader and now a major Lonmin
shareholder). The degree to which crony capitalism has destroyed hopes
for genuine liberation through the African National Congress, was
unveiled yesterday in the charges of murder laid - not against the
police who shot 121 mineworkers (34 fatally), but - against many of the
270 subsequently arrested by the police while fleeing the carnage."
In a Pretoria conference on the Arab Spring's meaning for Africa
yesterday, I had a debate for a couple of hours on the final panel with
Thabo Mbeki's former right-hand man minister, and he simply shut up when
confronted with the word Marikana. I have a feeling that this massacre
has the potential to become as important a break point as was Soweto in
1976. The 1%ers in the ANC, Lonmin and corporatist trade unions must
also sense this possibility.
Even some intrepid journos have cottoned on to the police lies, as you
see from this well-circulated new attempt to piece together the August
16 events:
http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-30-the-murder-fields-of-marikana-the-cold-murder-fields-of-marikana
It is outrageous, eh. And the mobilisations to assure this is not
captured by the right-wing populists (Julius Malema's crew) are gaining
more momentum, as Joburg lefties rapidly learn the conditions and actors
in a place - just 100 km west of the continent's richest metropolis -
that most of us had never heard of before August 16: Marikana.
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