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. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
