August 16, 2021: Rally in the 9th anniversary of the murder of the 34 miners of Marikana

We still claim for justice to our martyrs!

On August 16, a rally, organized by the Marikana miners’ union AMCU, was held to mark the 9th anniversary of the massacre of the 34 miners who were on a heroic strike demanding “a 12,500 rand wage or we will kick out the managers" in the Marikana mines (South Africa) operated by the transnational mining companies Anglo American (Amplats) and London Mining Company (Lonmin). The Marikana miners staged a 5-months-long strike and staged one of the largest combats of the working class in South Africa. There, they set up their organizations for the struggle, the strike committees, the strike picket lines, and united the ranks of all the 70 thousand miners who weere not only from South Africa, but also from Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique. Anglo American and its South African ANC police hitmen, its South African lackey government and the Stalinist trade union bureaucracy carried out this massacre in Marikana and killed the striking miners.

AMCU and Malema continued stating to seek justice in the bourgeois courts

At the 9th anniversary rally, this massacre was denounced and it was stated that there is still no justice for our martyrs, and therefore the fight for justice is a pending task. Its organizers,the AMCU leadership, as well as one of the main speakers in the rally, Malema (former leader of the ANC youthand current leader of the party called EFF), denounced the transnationals that enrich themselves at the expense of the workers. They denounced the ANC government for giving the order to kill the Marikana miners, Zuma (which was the president at that time) and the current South African president Ramaphosa, who was manager of the Marikana mining company. They also stated that we must continue to seek justice and compensation for the families of the martyrs, but this must be achieved by pressuring the courts.
That is to say that, despite denouncing the judges who have covered up the murderers, that the greatest murderer in Marikana is today the president of South Africa, and that the commission that investigated the facts gave conclusive evidence of the massacre and was not taken into account in the courts, they continued with the policy that they have been applying of seeking justice by the hand of the South African bourgeois courts. This policy has brought the Marikana miners to court and they have been divided from the group of South African workers, who in previous years had carried out general strikes, as a result of which former President Zuma fell. The leaderships of all the unions, trade union centrals and workers' organizations in South Africa had also isolated the miners when they carried out their heroic strike and were massacred.

The reformist left turned the back on the Marikana miners and the 34 martyrs

For this reason, in this rally for the 9th anniversary there were none of these organizations, neither unions, nor leaders of the working class, nor the left parties that speak in its name. Neither the metalworkers union NUMSA, nor the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP), nor Keep Left (which belongs to the international grouping headed by the British SWP) was present. The latter held an African meeting with all its groups and the CP of South Africa, in which there was no mention of Marikana and they censored the Trotskyists who from the first day and for 9 years have been together with the miners and their families. None of these groups were present at Marikana's event. In it, independent personalities of the black movement participated and expressed their greetings, but all the parties that claim to be for socialism (only to sell it out) were absent. For them, Marikana does not exist.

The Trotskyists of WIL-Zimbabwe and the FLTI were present in the rally claiming for justice for Marikana miners

Those who did attended at the event, as for 9 years we have been together with the Marikana miners and their families, were the Trotskyists of the FLTI, from the WIL of Zimbabwe and the International Workers Organizer. We sent our messages of solidarity, which were reproduced in the transmission of the event, closing it, followed by a minute of silence kept by the widows of the murdered miners and the miners in the Marikana field where their comrades were killed paying tribute to them. As for 9 years, we continue to fight for justice for the Marikana miners, and we warn that it will not come from the bourgeois courts, but that this is achieved with the methods and struggle of the working class, unifying its ranks throughout South Africa and in a joint fight with the workers of the whole Southern Africa and with the black workers of the USA and those who go to Europe and leave their blood in the Mediterranean Sea. The demand raised by the Marikana miners of a decent wage is the demand of the entire workers movement. The fight for justice for the Marikana miners is the same fight for justice for George Floyd and all the murdered black workers. Workers and popular courts to judge and punish all those responsible! In South Africa, throughout Southern Africa, in the US and Europe, the same fight against the same enemy: the transnational companies and their puppet governments!