This comes as the country on Sunday 16th August 2020 marks eight years since the massacre that occurred in the North West mining area. But families have yet to see justice.
34 workers lost their lives in the Marikana Massacre in 2012 in a the mass shootings at two sites around a koppie where workers had gathered during their strike, demanding a minimum salary of R12 500 a month.
Today the COSATU bureaucracy can no longer speak on behalf of the workers. Each time their role as agent of the bourgeoisie becomes clearer. They have sold out the workers of Marikana. It is the working class conquering its own democracy which must sweep away the servile leaders, accomplices and executors of the capitalist slave schemes.
This 8th anniversary of Marikana massacre is taking place when our brothers and sisters, the US workers and black people, are in revolt against the Republicrat regime and his murderous police. George Floyd was assassinated by this repressive forces on May 25 of this year while exclaiming “I can´t breathe” as Eric Garner did years ago. The murders of George Floyd, like yesterday of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray are a continuation of the massacre carried out in South Africa against the Marikana miners. It is Anglo American, American finance capital, that treats black workers in the United States as it treats the miners and workers in Africa: as slaves and killing them. George Floyd is the 35th cross settled in Marikana commemorating the massacred miners. Their murders still demand justice!
Meanwhile, as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across the world. Mining companies claim they have been struggling to recover the losses incurred from more than a month of stalled operations. They say they are not making money producing at 50% at Sibanye-Stillwater, the world's largest platinum producer. We view this is as an opportunity to restructure and use COVID-19 as an excuse to retrench workers
Now workers are worried about job losses. Workers at Marikana are also worried about the possibility of losing their jobs. People are scared and angry, it's not easy to lose a job, said miner. Mine workers are concerned about losing their job than catching coronavirus.
Things are bad, its worse than before. In Marikana workers are hungry, some are so poor they can't even afford face masks or food when under their feet, in their land, is found perhaps the biggest wealth of platinum in the world. Water is also a problem in some areas, making it difficult to respect hygiene measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has plunged world capitalism and society into an entirely new era of turmoil and upheaval. In country after country, as the pandemic has taken hold, it has rapidly exposed everything that is rotten about capitalist society.
Today there is growing concern over police and military brutality in the enforcement of the regulations for South Africa’s since lockdown day 1, soldiers and police beating up and kicking residents in informal settlements, forcing them to do frog jumps and roll in the mud as they arrogate to themselves the right to mete-out justice on the spot.
Ahead of the lockdown Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, addressed a televised rally of police officers. He was careful to pepper his speech with assurances that the role of the police would be to “help, assist and guide” the people of South Africa. But the real heart of his message was the following threat:
But of course there will be those who want to take chances. There will be those who will want to cut corners. There will be those whose intent will be wilful, where they will deliberately want to challenge the state. And for those I have a clear message: this is not the time to play with fire. This is not the time to play with the people of South Africa. We are deadly serious about saving lives. And those who want to take chances, those who want to do wrong things, must of course meet the wrath of the South African state.
Ramaphosa is re-treading familiar ground. In 2012, when he was deputy president, infamous emails revealed the tone of his telephone discussions with the then Minister of Police. He characterised Marikana mineworkers strike as “a criminal act” requiring “concomitant action”. The next day thirty-four mineworkers were shot dead in the Marikana Massacre. In the context of growing police militarisation, and encouragements by ANC ministers to use deadly force against “criminals” while signalling that such excesses would be over-looked, Ramaphosa’s pressure easily translated into the use of deadly force. He has the blood of workers on his hands.
The country has been in lockdown for over four months and government has lost control of the virus. Hospitals are full.
Three million jobs have been lost. There is widespread hunger and desperation in communities. Public sector pay and jobs are under attack. The ANC’s Supplementary Budget promises devastating funding cuts to schools, municipal services and other public services in the years ahead.
The working class needs to take control of the battle against Covid-19.
Worker's must put end to the government of Ramaphosa and the parliament where evil plots are combined at the backs of and against the poor people.
Down with the collaborationist bureaucracy! Out the Ministry of Labor, the state, the employers and their politicians of our organizations! Out the statutes and organic bodies of the bureaucracy and their state-ized unions! That the delegates go to collect the union quota around the workplaces in the factories and establishments! For recallable leaders and delegates elected in the grassroots assembly, which would be dispensed of when the assembly so decides or believes it necessary! Let the leaders, once their term is over, return to work!
To conquer bread, jobs, wages; land, housing; cheap credit for the ruined middle classes: Out with imperialism! Out with the IMF!
Expropriation without compensation and under workers' control of the transnationals, the Anglo-American, the mines, the land and the banks!
Only the working class expropriating both imperialism and the new black bourgeoisie can guarantee an emergency worker's plan and thus remove suffering from the masses.
The true struggle for the socialist revolution is in the embryo bodies of dual power of the masses, which are emerging in Southern Africa. The struggle for proletarian internationalism of the South African workers is side by side with the revolutionary masses who are fighting today in Zimbabwe, and Sudan; those who are resisting in Syria and in Palestine; those who are fighting in the imperialist countries like the Black Vests of France. The mine workers in Peru. The best allies we have in this struggle are our brothers uprising in USA. With them we blow the imperialist transnationals that plunder here in Africa and overexploite and kill us when we are there in USA. From Portland and Washington to Marikana and whole South Africa…. a same struggle!
#NeverAgain #RememberMarikana
#JusticeForMarikana
#BlackLivesMatter
For a Worker's and Socialist Black Republic!
WIL - Zimbabwe |
