As a Malawian, the August 16th Marikana
Mine massacre in South Africa invokes the kinds of questions that Malawians
asked on 20th
July in 2011. Why did the police shoot to kill demonstrators? Was
there absolutely no non-violent action the police could have taken, other than
killing so many protesters? Were the demonstrators so violent that the police
had no option but to shoot to kill? On both 20th July 2011 in Malawi
and 16th August 2012 in South Africa, blame has been apportioned on
both sides, revealing the ideological worldviews that we use to interpret
ghastly events like these. Around the world on 16th August, people’s
memories went back to March 21, 1960. On that day South African police shot and
killed 69 demonstrators. As with Sharpeville, one version of events said the
police had shot at peaceful, unarmed people, while another version said the
demonstrators were armed and had threatened police.
President Jacob Zuma cut short a trip to a SADC summit in
Mozambique, and urged a stop to the fingerpointing to let South Africans mourn
and allow a commission of inquiry to investigate what really happened. At the
risk of making an unfair contrast in unlike contexts, Malawi’s president at the
time, the late Bingu wa Mutharika, blamed 20 July 2011 on the protesters and
the civil society activists who organized the protests, and there was no
official mourning period announced. The contrast is unfair and the contests
dissimilar because the Marikana massacre arose from an industrial dispute pitting
two unions against each other, backed by different interests. In Malawi the
dispute was between civil society and the president himself.
But the loss of life in both cases is shocking. And both
situations have their roots in economic grievances emerging at a time when the
global mainstream media is changing its characterization of the African
continent. Both scenarios warrant questions about the place on uMunthu or uBuntu in the social imaginary of Southern Africa. As a peace
imperative, the quest for uMunthu
challenges the propensity for violence and the underdevelopment of nonviolence
practices.
Despite calls from President Jacob Zuma and others for
parties to desist from blaming each other, the National Union of Mineworkers
(NUM), the largest affiliate of the Congress for South African Trade Unions
(COSATU) is blaming the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction
Union (AMCU). NU M says the AMCU harbors what it calls “criminal elements” and that
the protests have not been based on genuine
industrial concerns. On its part, the South African Communist Party is
rejecting any characterization of the differences between the two unions as
“union rivalry”, calling it an attempt to disorganize the South African labour
movement.
But the most persuasive
analyses of Marikana thus far have come from commentators talking about the
political economy of South African violence and the neoliberal context of the
mining industry in that country. Sahra
Ryklief, Secretary General of the International Federation of Workers’
Education
Associations, finds no justification for why police had to
use lethal violence. She writes that the police have access to non-lethal
weapons such as rubber bullets, teargas, and tasers. She says the police can
cordon off protesters using barbed wire, and they have resources and expertise
to prevent crowds from getting violent and harming others. She cites examples
of cases elsewhere in the world where police have defused volatile situations
without any fatalities.
Ryklief says the blame goes to many parties involved in the
broader outlook of labour relations in South Africa. She includes herself on
the list of who bears blame, as a labour organizer and educator. She says
previously she has glossed over and excused coercive actions and violence
tactics that workers have used against each other, while urging unity and
solidarity. “I will do so no longer,” she declares. She says worker unity now “has
to be based on something superior to violent coercion”. She writes that unity based
on coercion cannot lead to any lasting, positive solutions. Coercion, she says,
has for far too long shaped the way South Africans approach strike organisation.
“As labour, we need to take responsibility for change in this respect.”
Former
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has added his voice to the calls for inward reflection
for everyone. He decries the gross inequality and yawning gap between rich and
poor, but he also asks marginalized South Africans to reflect on their actions.
“When we march, we demand, we destroy and we loot. We care not whether our
demands are reasonable, or what actions we take.”
Gavin
Capps of the University of Cape Town told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, an American TV
programme, that the massacre needs to be looked at from the perspective of the
recent global rise of demand for platinum. He says this new demand started in
the mid-1990s, and its rapidity has caused a lot of social problems for the
people living in the areas surrounding the mines. There has been environmental
damage, expropriation of land, displacement of people, and economic
exploitation of massive proportions. These have been the root causes of what
has culminated into this massacre.
According to a statement issued by the Central Committee of
the South African Communist Party, “all
the major platinum mining corporations have made billions of rands out of the
world’s richest platinum deposits in the Bojanala District of the North West
province, while leaving a trail of misery, death, poverty, illness, and
environmental pollution in the surrounding communities.” The Communist Party’s
statement is quoting a 167-page report, titled “Communities
in the Platinum Minefields”, released just days before the massacre.
Gavin Capps says South Africa accounts for 70 percent of
global platinum production, yet the mineworkers live in desperate conditions
with neither water nor electricity. The disregard for the conditions in which
mineworkers live has been epitomized in the manner in which Lonmin, the company
that owns the mine, treated the aftermath of the massacre. While the rest of
the world was expressing shock and disbelief at the massive loss of life, and
mineworkers were grieving the loss of their colleagues, the company was issuing
an ultimatum for the other mineworkers to immediately return to work, or face
dismissal. It took the intervention of the South African Council of Churches
and the office of President Jacob Zuma to restrain the company from dismissing
the more than 70 percent mineworkers who defied the ultimatum.
In the words of the Socialist
Party of Azania, “profit is always put before the interests of people and
never vice versa.” Activists working for social and economic justice have for a
long time bemoaned neoliberal economics and how it puts profits over people’s
wellbeing. The current rhetoric that is rebranding much of Africa as the new
hub for the next global economic miracle risks burying the inconvenient
questions that dog neoliberal economic thinking. Gone are the days when
development meant equitable growth across an entire country or region.
Most economic development happening across Africa today is
concentrated in narrow straits and benefitting very few people at the expense
of the rest. In South Africa, the development of ultra-modern cities within
cities such as Sandton best exemplifies this. Sandton can stand toe to toe with
Manhattan or any highly advanced city in the world. Yet just on the outskirts
of Johannesburg you have increasing numbers of people living in shanty towns
with no water and no electricity. In the words of former
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “We are a deeply wounded people who are custodians
of a very special country with people and resources that are second to none.
There is enough for all South Africans to share.” The same trend is happening
in Malawi, where the capital city, Lilongwe, has currently no less than four
shopping malls under construction. Yet just a few miles within the same city
hundreds of people live in slum-like conditions.
For South Africa and the wider region, the massacre at
Marikana ought to usher in a new era of critical reflection on the trajectory
of Africa’s economies amidst the renewed rhetoric of latter day optimism. The
optimism is well-intended and holds transformative potential for how Southern
Africans look at themselves and shape their destiny. While it exposes the naked
greed of capital in a neoliberal era, the optimism also risks masking deep
grievances particularly by those being left behind. Tutu’s words are true for
much of the continent and beyond: “Our ‘haves’ have largely failed to share,
our ‘have-nots’ are feeling increasingly frustrated, and our leaders are locked
in seemingly endless contestation for political and economic power.” Marikana should
force African countries to rethink their role and place in the global economic
structure, and to persist in questioning the kind of inequality the world is
experiencing.
