The Durban strikes of 1973: Political identities and themanagement of protest

The Durban strikes of 1973: Political identities and the management of protest by TigersEye99

Marikana massacre: police shooting video footage

“Bhele” Tholakele Dlunga & Greg Marinovich on the Marikana Massacre

Notes from a Farmworkers' Strike

by Ben Fogel, Mahala

Politics is not only about the exploits of big men (and the occassional woman); it’s not only about Zuma vs Motlanthe or Malema vs Zille and the rest of this sorry, but entertaining coterie that our political class consists of. Politics begins with people being able to talk and organise in their own communities or workplaces, it begins with ordinary men and women, rather than the latest Manguang related shenanigans.

Western Cape winelands: The strike's over, nothing's solved

December the 4th marked the short-lived resumption of the Western Cape farmworkers’ uprising, after a 10-day break for negotiations which have seemingly come to nothing. Workers across the Boland went back on strike, but only for day, as it appears the strike has been called off by all “stakeholders”. Yet it is clear that it was COSATU's Western Cape branch, chaired by Tony Ehrenreich, that called off the strike without receiving a mandate from most stakeholders or the workers themselves. 

By BENJAMIN FOGEL, The Daily Maverick

The second round of the strike has been a disaster - a major display of weakness that could potentially set back the farmworkers' struggle for years. Disempowering the emergent political agency that has resulted from the unified action of farmworkers, wage negotiations are now to be conducted by unions on a farm-by-farm basis, while also including the unrealistic temptation of a profit-sharing scheme.

Tumi Moloi, striking miner from Amplats, speaks in London

Cape winelands: Why the farmworkers defied Cosatu

Driving through the Hex River Valley after Wednesday’s chaotic protests feels like entering a ghost town. Yet when one manages to find residents and speak to them, it becomes crystal clear that the farm workers are planning to hold out for their wage demands – and that few of them know anything of the well-publicised promises that they would be back at work this week. By JARED SACKS, The Daily Maverick

Entering the Hex River Valley on Thursday morning was a surreal experience. Following Cosatu's well publicised statement on Wednesday, I had expected that most farmworkers would already be in the fields trying to recuperate their lost wages over the past two weeks.

The Farm Workers' Strike: It's Far From Over

by Anna Majavu, SACSIS

The mines and the farms are two enduring symbols of old white colonial theft, of the minerals and land. Because of the monopoly of the National Union of Mineworkers, whose leaders and officials have long preferred compromise and co-determination over worker control, it has been difficult for mineworkers to strike – until the Marikana massacre.

Fire in the Vineyards: The Making of a Farm Worker Uprising in the Hex River Valley

by Chris Webb, The Amandla Blog

As labour tensions continue to simmer in South Africa’s mining industry, farm workers in the Hex River Valley have called attention to the fact that they earn some of the lowest wages in the country. Their voices, so often silenced by the paternalistic relations that still define rural social relations, have once again been dismissed by commercial agricultural interests and their allied political leaders as the voices of mob, directed by shadow ‘third force.’ In reality the deprivations of hunger, poverty and violence are the driving force behind this uprising, as anyone who has visited the shack settlements that skirt the N1 highway in this region and will know. In the township of Stofland workers survive on seasonal work on the farms (often for as low as R65 a day) and rely on social grants and family remittances for the rest of the year. Few trade unions have made inroads in this region, and the firing of live rounds on striking workers by farmers demonstrates the brutal face of modern industrial relations in parts of the agricultural sector.

The Durban Strikes 1973 ("Human Beings with Souls")

In January 1973 South Africa witnessed a momentous chain of events in its political history. The Durban Strikes were a turning point in the confrontation between the country's minority rulers and the worker majority. Motivated by material need and underpinned by principles of democracy and equality, the strikes conjoined academics, workers and political leaders among others, in a struggle that was to redefine the South African political landscape in the years to follow.

Marikana: A Point of Rupture?

by Ben Fogel, Insurgent Notes, 2012

A crisis occurs, sometimes lasting for decades. This exceptional duration means that incurable structural contradictions have revealed themselves (reached maturity) and that, despite this, the political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure itself are making every effort to cure them, within certain limits, and to overcome them. These incessant and persistent efforts…form the terrain of the “conjunctural” and it is upon this terrain that the forces of opposition organise.[1]

Marikana prequel: NUM and the murders that started it all

by Jared Sacks, The Daily Maverick

Because the Marikana Massacre marked a turning point in the history of our country, I went to the small mining town in the North West. I wanted to know what truly happened and what it meant for the future of our so-called democracy. I hoped my trip would enable me to answer some of the burning questions left obfuscated by media, government and civil society campaigns alike.

The murder fields of Marikana. The cold murder fields of Marikana.

The majority of the dead in the 16 August massacre at Marikana appear to have been shot at close range or crushed by police vehicles. They were not caught in a fusillade of gunfire from police defending themselves, as the official account would have it. GREG MARINOVICH spent two weeks trying to understand what really happened. What he found was profoundly disturbing. The Daily Maverick

Of the 34 miners killed at Marikana, no more than a dozen of the dead were captured in news footage shot at the scene. The majority of those who died, according to surviving strikers and researchers, were killed beyond the view of cameras at a nondescript collection of boulders some 300 metres behind Wonderkop. On one of these rocks, encompassed closely on all sides by solid granite boulders, is the letter ‘N’, the 14th letter of the alphabet. Here, N represents the 14th body of a striking miner to be found by a police forensics team in this isolated place. These letters are used by forensics to detail were the corpses lay. There is a thick spread of blood deep into the dry soil, showing that N was shot and killed on the spot. There is no trail of blood leading to where N died – the blood saturates one spot only, indicating no further movement. (It would have been outside of the scope of the human body to crawl here bleeding so profusely.)

Marikana: Avoidable, unconstitutional… and entirely predictable

by Pierre de Vos, The Daily Maverick

The Marikana massacre has been called an ‘avoidable’ tragedy. But given the total misunderstanding of Constitutional obligations by senior politicians and police leaders, it seems nothing short of inevitable. Looking at the way police obligations have been understood in the country over the past four years, it’s hardly surprising that we’ve come to this kind of brutality.

Marikana: Cabinet ministers feel full force of striking miners' fury

by Sipho Hlongwane & Greg Marinovich, The Daily Maverick

The inter-ministerial committee put together by President Jacob Zuma to deal with the aftermath of the Marikana shootings met Tuesday with a group of miners outside of the Wonderkop squatter camp. It was the committee that was told what’s what. After delivering a severe dressing down, the leaders of the miners made it clear that things would be running on their terms, not those set by the Lonmin, police or the national cabinet. By SIPHO HLONGWANE (words) and GREG MARINOVICH (images).

Echoes of the Past: Marikana, Cheap Labour and the 1946 Miners Strike

by Chris Webb, The Amandla Blog

On August 4, 1946 over one thousand miners assembled in Market Square in Johannesburg, South Africa. No hall in the town was big enough to hold them, and no one would have rented one to them anyway. The miners were members of the African Mine Worker's Union (AMWU), a non-European union which was formed five years earlier in order to address the 12 to 1 pay differential between white and black mineworkers. The gathering carried forward just one unanimous resolution: African miners would demand a minimum wage of ten shillings (about 1 Rand) per day. If the Transvaal Chamber of Mines did not meet this demand, all African mine workers would embark on a general strike immediately. Workers mounted the platform one after the other to testify: "When I think of how we left our homes in the reserves, our children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on 12 August. It is better to die than go back with empty hands." The progressive Guardian newspaper reported an old miner getting to his feet and addressing his comrades: "We on the mines are dead men already!"[1]

The 1973 Strikes and the Birth of a New Movement in Natal

by Nicole Ulrich, 2005

In 1973 61,000 African and Indian workers in Natal downed their tools in the space of a few months. These strikes, which took place in various industries, were not coordinated by any organisation and represented a spontaneous upsurge by workers angered by a sharp increase in the cost of living. The unexpectedness of the strikes, and the large numbers of workers involved, prevented employers and police from simply cracking down on workers.

Memory is power, and mandatory reading

Emma Mashini interviewed by Eugene Goddard, Business Day, 5 June 2012

EMMA Mashinini, grand dame of labour activism, is a femme fatale, très formidable in more ways than one. Just read her memoir, Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life (Pan Macmillan).

Published originally in 1989 in the UK but for the first time in South Africa this year, it’s a blaze of a book; a galloping read of one woman’s spirited triumph over the ordeals she endured as a wife, mother, pioneering shop steward and torture victim.

Forward to the New Edition of Emma Mashinini's 'Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life'

by Jay Naidoo, 2012

I clearly remember my first encounter with Emma Mashinini. The indomitable Ma Emma was standing in the hall at Khotso House, the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches – one of the few places we were able to meet – surrounded and dwarfed by workers. She spotted Jayendra Naidoo first, who was then working as an organiser in the Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union of South Africa (CCAWUSA), and she embraced him warmly. She turned to hug me, too, and as she did, I felt her intense compassion and warmth as she whispered, ‘Welcome my son. Welcome to our family.’ It was, and has remained ever since, an intense and powerful connection.

Sembene Ousmane: God's Bits of Wood

Sembene Ousmane's third novel, God's Bits of Wood, was originally written and published in French as Les Bouts de bois de Dieu. The novel is set in pre-independence Senegal and follows the struggles of the African trainworkers in three cities as they go on strike against their French employers in an effort for equal benefits and compensation. The chapters of the book shift between the cities of Bamako, Thies, and Dakar and track the actions and growth of the men and women whose lives are transformed by the strike. Rather than number the chapters, Ousmane has labeled them by the city in which they take place, and the character who is the focal point of that chapter.