South Africa

TUC: considering a General Strike?

The motion that caused the most controversy at this year’s TUC Congress (9-12 September) was from the Prison Officers’ Association, calling on the TUC at “the consideration and practicalities of a general strike”. It resulted in a lively debate. Unite, the largest voting bloc at Congress, agreed to support the resolution. Unite’s Steve Turner argued that it would be a “political strike” (rather than an industrial one). Unison also supported the motion. The union was opposed by more historically conservative unions such as the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, civil service managers’ union...

South African miners' strike spreads

The South African miners’ strike is continuing, and spreading to more and more of the country’s mines. Workers at the Samacor chrome mine in Rustenburg joined the strike on Friday 14 September, demanding R12,500 (before deductions and excluding bonuses), a R1,500 sleep-out allowance and a R1,500 underground allowance. Workers’ action at the Amplats and Aquarius platinum mines in Rustenburg has shut down operations there, and workers at the KDC gold mine in West Rand joined the strike on Monday 10 September. Eight mines in total are now involved in the strike. The strikes have cost South Africa...

The left in South Africa

Ben Fogel, a socialist activist in South Africa who writes for Amandla and is active in miners’ solidarity work, spoke to Martyn Hudson. Most of the historic Trotskyist tendencies in South Africa are dissolved to varying degrees. The two most important were WOSA, which was Neville Alexander’s group, which is now largely defunct, and the Unity movement which is now just a few people, but was important. Otherwise there is Keep Left, which is linked to the SWP in the UK. Most Trotskyists are involved in other movements, rather than being in a specifically Trotskyist group. Most organise under an...

South Africa: miners' strikes spread

The Marikana strike has now inspired a new wave of strikes in the gold mines of the West Rand. 15,000 miners have been suspended for wildcat strike action. There is much support for the strikers across South Africa, and the Marikana massacre is widely perceived as a critical moment for the ANC and its future rule. The split between the ANC old guard and Julius Malema, the former leader of the ANC’s Youth League, is rapidly widening. Malema is leading the solidarity work for the miners and has raised continually the question of nationalisation. His rhetorical offensive against “white capital”...

Soweto Blues

Miriam Makeba's song Soweto Blues, written by her ex-husband Hugh Masekela, is a lament for the victims of the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa. On 16 June, police fired on demonstrations led by high-school students protesting the ban on non-Afrikaans languages. Over 200 protestors were killed and many more were injured. The song's use of the language of black South Africans is itself an act of defiance. More than thirty years since the massacre at Soweto, the post-Apartheid South African state was complicit in another massacre, as platinum miners striking for decent pay and conditions...

Marikana: a defining moment for ANC?

To add unmitigated insult to violent injury, South African prosecutors charged 270 Marikana mine workers with the murder of their comrades at the Lonmin platinum mine on 16 August. After wide protests, the charges have now been “suspended”; but, using the notorious “common purpose” law, prosecutors at first wanted to blame the miners for the deaths because of their involvement in the demonstration. Most of the workers to be prosecuted were unarmed and peacefully protesting. Accounts vary about the massacre itself but it is apparent that the police were trying to kettle the demonstrators when...

Morning Star weasels on Marikana

As socialists, one of our most basic duties is solidarity with workers in struggle. The striking platinum miners of Marikana who saw 34 of their comrades murdered by the South African police should be an obvious case for solidarity. Not so for the Communist Party of Britain or for its daily newspaper the Morning Star . An article in Morning Star of 1 September by John Haylett was subtitled as a look at the corruption in the platinum industry but in fact was a regurgitation of the South African governments smears against the workers and their union, the AMCU. It claimed, without backing it up...

Neville Alexander (1936-2012): struggling against an unfinished revolution

A descendant of East African slaves and an inmate with Nelson Mandela on Robben island, Neville Alexander should best be remembered as perhaps the greatest mind thrown up by the revolutionary left in the South African struggle. Born in Cradock in what is now the Eastern Cape he became a Marxist early in life through contacts at school and university. He was influenced by Maoism in his early political life and by ideas of importing guerrilla warfare into the South Africa struggle. By the early 1960s Alexander, at the beginning of a decade of imprisonment on Robben Island, had become...

The gold mines of today's South Africa

The Socialist Party of Azania argue that when apartheid ended South African bosses “won” the unimpeded right to exploit the working class and to strike-break, locking-out workers as a matter of course when they have a dispute. That settlement, CODESA [Convention for a Democratic South Africa], is in large part to blame for the tragedy at Marikina they say. To help our understanding of the events we reprint an extract from their statement on the massacre. The Marikina massacre is the direct outcome of CODESA, where workers are first expelled from the premises of the mines where they are...

South African miners: murdered for profit

More 34 striking miners were killed when police opened fire at a Lonmin PLC platinum mine, Marikana, South Africa on Thursday 16 August. Nearly 80 have been reported injured. Over 250 people were arrested on the same day. This is a shocking event, reminiscent of how the apartheid police “shot to kill” at protests. It has rightly been condemned by the labour movements around the world. Workers at the platinum mine had been on strike for a decent wage and a week earlier 10 people had been killed (including two police). The strike was initiated by rock drillers, under the leadership of the...

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