Amandla! Ngawethu!
I, and most people in the anti-apartheid movement in
New Zealand, took part in the boycott campaigns not to simply change the colour
of the faces of those who ruled South Africa. We didn’t face batons and barbed
wire to replace race-based apartheid with economic apartheid. Our intention
wasn’t to stop the apartheid gravy train for the wealthy just long enough for a
tiny number of the black elite to jump on.
John Minto recently made public his
correspondence with the organisers of a conference happening in Wellington this
weekend celebrating NZ’s role in the struggle against apartheid. How tragically
immediate these words are!
Police in South Africa have massacred
over 30 striking miners in the Marikana platinum mine, one of the most violent
attacks on labour since the end of apartheid, and a horrific act reminiscent of
the Apartheid state’s brutalities at the 1960 Sharpville massacre in the
Gauteng (Transvaal).
Amandla, a radical magazine in
South Africa, call this "a brutal tragedy that should never have happened," and editoralise:
No event since the end of Apartheid sums up the
shallowness of the transformation in this country like the Marikana massacre.
What occurred will be debated for years. It is already clear the mineworkers
will be blamed for being violent. The mineworkers will be painted as savages.
Yet, the fact is that heavily armed police with live ammunition brutally shot
and killed over 35 mineworkers. Many more are injured. Some will die of their
wounds. Another 10 workers had been killed just prior to this massacre.
This was not the action of rogue cops. This
massacre was a result of decisions taken at the top of the police structures.
The police had promised to respond with force and came armed with live
ammunition. They behaved no better than the Apartheid police when facing the
Sharpeville, 1976 Soweto uprisings and 1980s protests where many of our people
were killed.
The
aggressive and violent response to community service delivery protests by the
police have their echo and reverberation in this massacre.
This represents
a blood-stain on the new South Africa.
Media
coverage has stressed the complexity of the inter-union rivalries, but the
involvement of the police – and the shooting down of striking workers – makes it
clear what is involved. “The Marikana action is a strike by the poor against the state
and the haves”,
argues Justice Malala.
The
old slogans from the anti-apartheid struggle have a new relevance. Once again,
we say “Solidarity with South African labour!”
Amandla!
Ngawethu!
***
Striking
South African mineworkers were gunned down by police on Thursday. Charlie
Kimber looks at events leading up to the massacre—and the business interests
behind itPolice in South Africa have opened fire at striking workers at the Marikana platinum mine near Rustenburg, leaving at least 18 people dead. Ten people have died over the last few days in other clashes.
This disgusting slaughter evoked memories of how the police acted during apartheid. All the hope at the end of that vile racist regime has come to this.
The recently appointed police chief Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega visited the mine a few days ago and she is believed to have coordinated Thursday’s action.
But the decision by the heavily armed police to use live rounds must have been endorsed at the highest level—perhaps even by the ANC’s President Jacob Zuma.
Zuma said he regretted the killings. But disgracefully he made no reference to the handling of the situation by the police.
There must be justice for the strikers killed at Marikana—and those who ordered the deaths must pay for them...
