South Africa - November 21, 2024

Statement of the Workers International Vanguard League (WIVL) of South Africa

Reproduced by the Workers International League (WIL) of Zimbabwe

Stilfontein- another Marikana massacre in the making?

The police have laid siege to the informal mineworkers at Stilfontein, cutting off their food, water and even medication. About 3000 are at risk of dying.
The police are even defying a court order to allow food and water to these mineworkers.
The police unit, Vala Umgodi, is supposedly leading this attack on the mineworkers.
We, as part of the working class, are cognizant that these open shafts were opened under the extreme exploitation of the migrant black labour system. We are also aware that these shafts are on the land which was illegally taken from the indigenous communities without any form of compensation. The minerals obtained under such illegal and brutal forceful removal of the indigenous people were taken to Western Europe and the USA to enrich the colonizers and bribe the European and North American Working class, hence creating a division within the international working class by artificially creating chauvinist schism between the European and the black working class.
We totally reject the bourgeois government of South Africa and the mainstream media houses that the working class efforts to make a living must be considered as illegal miners. The working class have a right to do everything in their power to make a living from these shafts.

We condemn the security forces siege at Stilfontein in no uncertain terms. We call upon the oppressed and working class of all shades to support these workers. We call upon the miners to unite and stop fighting amongst themselves. We call upon these miners to expose those amongst themselves who are used by the ruling glass elites to create conflict amongst themselves, leading to shooting and murdering each other. We call on the mineworkers to unite against the international sindicates. Only our solid unity can win our struggle against the ruling class government and its supporting monopoly capitalist class. Our struggle for a living under the brazen crippling unemployment is both just and necessary.
We, therefore demand the minister of police to immediately remove the police siege at Stilfontein within the next 24 hours. We demand the minister of energy to ensure that all reactionary statements about these miners be stopped. We demand the minister of health to ensure that the already frail workers, because of the police siege at Stilfontein, be admitted in the different hospitals and be treated properly with care until they are on their feet and be discharged to continue their efforts to make a living in these shafts.
We are also aware that there are already many workers(miners) who are languishing in our bourgeois prisons. We demand that they be uncondionally released with immediate effect.

So who is Vala Umgodi serving?

The gold mines in South Africa are under almost total control by US banks and corporates. Take the biggest gold mining group, Anglo Gold Ashanti. 99,99% of their ordinary shares are held in the United States. One of its main shareholders is the infamous BlackRock company. The same Blackrock has shares in Lockheed Martin and Boeing that are the main companies in the US supplying weapons to Israel in its genocide against the Palestinians.
The Journal of Southern African Studies reports (Ben Fine, Sam Ashman, Susan Newman, Amnesty International) that the mining companies in South Africa, including the gold mines, are stealing between 5 and 20% of GDP from the country, each year. These hundreds of billions, trillions, over many decades could have ended poverty and unemployment overnight. Yet the government gives these big-time crooks amnesty while ganging up against informal mineworkers.
There are over 6000 old, abandoned mines where the US and UK corporates took most of the minerals, leaving the groundwater polluted and the land filled with hazardous material that often poisons the air with the dust from these mineheaps. Again, the government has failed to hold these companies accountable. Many billions of Rands for mine rehabilitation which the companies were supposed to pay, the government has allowed them to pocket it. While these imperialist companies are also allowed to steal Africa dry the masses are kept in permanent mass poverty and unemployment by the SA government and the governments in the region. It is this desperation among the masses and the hundreds of thousands of unemployed ex-mineworkers that creates fertile ground for international mining sindicates to operate.
The mining industry has always depended on mineworkers from across Southern Africa. There are hundreds of thousands of families of mineworkers across the region who either lost their loved ones on the mines or at home through mine diseases. Many also have been unable to claim pensions due to the apartheid record-keeping that erased these workers.
Interviews with zama zamas (small artisanal mineworkers) confirm that the sindicates operating on the closed mines are linked to the international American mafia that controls the world minerals market.

So there are 4 levels that the imperialists steal from the mines: 1. Through the official mines where they have permits; 2 through tapping into rock dams, 3 through control of the tailings, and 4 through the sindicates that control the underground operations on the closed mines.
These international mining mafias ( American, Russian, Chinese) have a network of recruiting across Southern Africa; they are given millions of Rands of equipment and money for arms. The arms are to secure the unobstructed theft of minerals from the soil and to terrorise the local masses so that they do not dare to challenge them. No worker would voluntarily stay underground longer than one day in these poisoned mines. The only explanation is that these sindicates are forcibly keeping workers underground to slave for them. By the police cutting water and food to the zama zamas undergound the ones who are most vulnerable, those who are enslaved or working on their own will be affected; the mafia down below have enough supplies and won’t be affected. The sindicate must be targeted, both the official and unofficial, not the zama zamas.
The state and the parties in parliament have been aware of the conditions in the mining industry for many years, yet they allow the plunder by the international mining corporates. The state is complicit in the deliberate starvation of the masses by imperialism.
The wages of the zama zamas is half that of the official mineworker. The international mafia, the US banks, get away with murder as they don’t pay the full wage, nor do they pay for housing or healthcare or pension. They don’t take responsibility for any deaths or injuries to the zama zamas. This system is much worse than the previous migrant labour system. At least then the workers only stayed less than a day underground. In the past we had the migrant labour system where imperialist monopolies directly controlled the extraction of minerals on official mines. Now the international monopolies control both the official mines and the closed mines, through wage labour and semi-slave labour.
The world capitalist system is dependent on this type of barbaric mineral plunder; it is consistent to what is happening in the DRC where the minerals for cellphones and laptops are being plundered through war, rape, and child labour. The different warring groups get weapons from the imperialists in order to terrorise and displace communities living on mineral-rich land. The international mining sindicates are also operating there and zama zamas in the DRC are also living in semi-slave conditions. This is the current state of decay of modern capitalism. This is what Trumpism means (be it under control of the Democratic party or the Republicans- the methods they use in the neo-colonies is the same). The American worker will not benefit. It is only the banking mafias, the military industrial complex mafia, the IT mafia that will benefit.
So Vala Umgodi is actually protecting the big criminal gangs that control the mining industry. Zama zamas are targeted by the police, not the sindicates. They are protecting the American mining mafia and not even allowing the scraps from the mine heaps to be taken by independent workers. So greedy and bloodthirsty are the international mining sindicates and mining mafia. So through the help of the police the international banks control both the formal and informal mining in SA. Vala Umgodi and the border police prop up this new migrant labour system much like the US border police does, much like many capitalist countries have. The working class in many countries are maintained as cheap pools of labour to be used over and over again as ‘illegals’ without rights and with semi-slave conditions. Modern capitalism depends on this type of exploitation to continue to make super-profits. Imperialist democracy depends on the suppression of democracy of the working class in the neo-colonies around the world.

In 2012 the state brought trained tactical units from around the country to shoot down the workers at Marikana. Ramaphosa, then director of Lonmin, called on the police for ‘concomitant action’ before the massacre took place. Zuma had authorised the deployment of the armed forces against the workers on strike.
Today the same Ramaphosa has backed the police in their attacks on the mineworkers. The police are threatening to arrest the mineworkers but shy away from taking on the mining companies that still steal hundreds of billions of Rands each year. The international sindicates that control the informal mining on the closed mines are left untouched. As we pointed out the sindicates and the international mining companies are interconnected. The Minister of Health, who is a doctor, has broken his oath by calling for the mineworkers who have Aids to be denied their ARV medication. Such is the callousness of the ANC -DA government. The ANC is no longer a liberation movement. It is a party that serves the monopoly capitalists gangs from the USA, UK and other imperialists.

Our demands

• Food, water and medicine must be given immediately to the mineworkers currently underground; those who are sick should be taken to the surrounding hospitals for free medical care until they are well again.

• The siege of Stilfontein must be ended and the police should withdraw. All the workers underground must be allowed to come up immediately.

• The mineworkers must receive proper training, equipment and health and safety support to mine safely on all levels (rock dams, tailings, underground). These workers should be allowed to join unions. Workers cooperatives, with state support and involving local communities, should be set up to extract the minerals safely and to beneficiate them. Shifts of 6 hours should be the norm. No worker should be allowed to work overnight underground. Zama zama wages and conditions should be equalised with the rest of the industry. Pensions owed to workers across the region should be immediately paid.

• The international mining corporates should open up all their books. Links to the mining sindicates, their equipment and weapons should be investigated and stopped.

• The Billions set aside for rehabilitating the mines should be taken from the mining cartel; the mining cartel must be brought to book for the hundreds of billions in wealth they stole over the past 150 years. The stolen wealth must be taken back. Failure to return the stolen wealth should result in expropriation of all these mines, without compensation and they should also be placed under workers control. All minerals extracted in Africa must be beneficiated in Africa.

• All mining sindicates and mafias, be they informal or formal, should be disbanded.

• The workers clearly need a new party; we reject the Labour Party under Mathunjwa. They are siding with the police. We reject the calls by NUM for the zama zamas to be arrested again after deportation. We reject the deportation of any zama zama. Workers cooperatives should be encouraged.

Vala umgodi wase Nxowankulu. We call for national and international protests against the pending Marikana massacre. Seize the mines and stop the US banks from their theft of the resources from SA. Expropriate any company with links to Israel. No coal and diamonds for Israel. Vala ama Zionist! The Palestinians and masses in Southern Africa must be freed from imperialist domination and plunder. Let the mineral wealth be used to create jobs and end unemployment; it should be used to provide free, liberatory education for all up to the highest level; decent housing for all close to places of work; disband the apartheid group areas; free quality health care for all.

21 Nov 2024:
International Socialist Movement; Workers International Vanguard League