Johannesburg - Eighteen years is the age when one transits from being a child into an adult.
At least according to the law of the land. Before then, what one does, even if it may be grave before the society, is considered to be the act of a minor who must be understood and helped to grow up.
It is for that reason that the criminal justice system would still treat a hardened killer or rapist as a juvenile and commit them to a correctional centre that will treat them as such.
The year 2012 marked the eighteenth year since the end of juridical apartheid and the onset of liberal democracy.
August 16 2012, exactly 114 days after the country turned 18 - between April 24 2012 and August 16 2012 – when post-apartheid capitalist brutality came of age. All pretences to the innocence and benevolence of the system that is based on the maximisation of profit through the exploitation of the labour power of the working class were thrown out of the window.
The system pronounced that it did not care for black life. Marikana became the place from where the gory nature of the capitalist system was televised to world audiences.
It is very rare that this writer approaches public debates from a spiritual point of view as Aubrey Matshiqi would do. But, is it a coincidence that an overall 44 people died and around 70 were injured following the events of Marikana in 2012, bringing the total to 114, thus corresponding with the 114 days since the post-apartheid liberal democracy came of age? Let’s leave that to Gogo Matshiqi!
Several books have been written about the August 16 2012 Marikana Massacre. The books may loosely be divided into two categories – those that provide factual accounts of what happened and how it happened, and those that provide analysis of why the massacre happened and the reflections on the broader implications of the massacre.
We Are Going to Kill Each Other Today: The Marikana Story is a collection of first-hand accounts told by a group of journalists who recorded the stories of the mineworkers as they demanded a minimum wage, through to covering some of the funerals of the workers who came from as far afield as Lesotho and the Eastern Cape.
Adding to the ethnographic accounts about the massacre is Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer. While written partially from an academic angle the strength of the book lies in its amplification of the voices of the workers themselves and ethnographic accounts of some of the researchers who interacted with the workers, sometimes at great risk to themselves due to the high levels of mistrust that the workers had for outsiders. Again, the raw emotions, anger and frustration of the workers can be felt as one goes through the book.
The raw emotions expressed by the workers and their families, as well as the empathetic amplifications of these emotions by the journalists will remain a powerful and yet haunting record of the shame of post-apartheid South Africa.
Greg Marinovich’s Murder at Small Koppie: The Real Story of the Marikana Massacre and the multi-authored Marikana Unresolved: The Massacre, Culpability and Consequences are an attempt to reconstruct the events before, during and following the massacre.
The former attempts to reconstruct the build-up to the massacre, what happened on the fateful day, and the handling of the entire episode by the state and Lonmin, the company that owned the Marikana mine at the time.
The latter goes beyond ‘what happened’ and ‘why it happened’ accounts to asking the difficult question around whether there has been any justice for the workers and their families.
What emerges is a disturbing picture of the collusion that preceded the massacre and the obfuscation that followed thereafter. The “concomitant action” taken against the workers was the bloodiest single-day murder scene since the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre. The country is yet to see any consequence for those who were directly involved in the conflict.
As many commentators would agree, had Marikana happened in other advanced countries the entire government would have resigned immediately following the events. Instead, a commission of inquiry was established whose report and recommendations were, to put it frankly, a damp squib.
Those involved continue to hold top positions in the government and the private sector.
Written six years following the massacre Business as Usual After Marikana: Corporate Power and Human Rights presents arguments to the effect that what was at issue is the power wielded by corporations, especially in developing countries.
The recent admission of guilt by Glencore relating to its corrupt practices on the African continent is a demonstration of the devastating damage caused by global mining companies in their ruthless pursuit for profits.
A recent media report confirmed the arguments made in Business as Usual After Marikana by demonstrating that Sibanye-Stillwater, which took over the Marikana mine from Lonmin is literally ‘milking it’ while the condition of mineworkers has not improved much ten years after the massacre.
Lo and behold, the self-same company that is running all the way to the bank was recently involved in a wage dispute with its workers in some of its other mines, refusing to accede to the minimalist demands put on the table by the trade unions.
The accounts, facts, and observations contained in the above books come together neatly in the academic analysis provided in Marikana: A People’s History and The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa.
Both books present complimentary analysis of the events and assist us to understand what is still at stake in the ever-deepening state of capitalist crisis in this and many countries.
In Marikana: A People’s History Julian Brown provides a critique of capitalism, the root cause of the massacre. The interplay of racial oppression, class exploitation, the history of the mining industry, and the migratory labour system receive critical analysis.
The collusion between capital and the state which may involve the repressive apparatus of the state – the police and the army – receives the necessary analysis.
This approach assists in going beyond the narrow and frankly lazy apportioning of blame on poor policing methods. The bitter truth is that the capitalist system needs and uses the police as its private army against citizens.
On the other hand, The Spirit of Marikana considers the necessary counter to capitalist hegemony that may come in the form of independent trade unionism.
It is trite to mention that the struggle for a minimum wage by the mineworkers came about as result in part of the workers shifting allegiances from mainstream unionism and organising themselves, until independent unions came into the scene to occupy the space left by mainstream unionism.
What all these books demonstrate is that at the centre of the Marikana massacre was the ‘coming of age’ of the post-apartheid capitalist order.
The crisis engulfing the system, over which we saw this past week’s ‘national shutdown’, is not about to stop. The crisis will continue to deepen. With that will be the continuing ruthlessness of maximum extraction of profits and exploitation which may be accompanied by “concomitant action” against workers whenever the interests of capital are threatened.
We Are Going to Kill Each Other Today: The Marikana Story (NB Publishers), Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer (Jacana), Murder at Small Koppie: The Real Story of the Marikana Massacre (Zebra), Marikana Unresolved: The Massacre, Culpability and Consequences (University of Cape Town Press), Business as Usual After Marikana: Corporate Power and Human Rights (Jacana), Marikana: A People’s History (Jacana), The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa (Pluto Press) are available from some bookstores and major online retailers.