Marikana MARIKANA A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer Peter Alexander Luke Sinwell Thapelo Lekgowa Botsang Mmope and Bongani Xezwi Cover photograph: A view from the mountain. Photograph taken from the top of the Contents mountain on 15 August 2012. The area with trees is the hillock. Nkaneng informal About the authors settlement lies beyond, on the right near the top of the photograph. The pylons carry electricity to Lonmin, but none of this goes to the settlement. The area between the 6 hillock and Nkaneng is the killing field, where the first deaths occurred on 16 August. Acknowledgements The following photographs are acknowledged and credited: 7 Greg Marinovich: front cover and p33 Maps of the area Peter Alexander: pp17 and 41 Reuters/The Bigger Picture: p37, bottom photo, and p149 8 Amandla magazine: p37, top and middle photos 1 Introduction: Encounters in Marikana Thapelo Lekgowa: pp49, 59, 63, 141 and 145 13 Asanda Benya: p55 Joseph Mathunjwa: p137 2 The massacre: A narrative account based on workers’ testimonies 23 3 Background interviews 46 First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2012 Revised edition 2013 4 Speeches 61 10 Orange Street 5 Interviews with mineworkers Sunnyside Auckland Park 2092 71 South Africa 6 Analysis and conclusion +2711 628 3200 131 www.jacana.co.za They died at Marikana © Peter Alexander, Thapelo Lekgowa, 157 Botsang Mmope, Luke Sinwell and Bongani Xezwi, 2012 © Front cover photograph: Greg Marinovich © Maps: by John McCann All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-4314-0733-0 Cover design Maggie Davey and Shawn Paikin Set in Garamond 9.5/12.9pt Printed by Ultra Litho (Pty) Ltd, Johannesburg Job No. 001985 See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za Bongani Xezwi is a freelance research fieldworker who has done work on waste pickers, food production, police brutality and service delivery protests. Recently he conducted life history interviews for the book Mining Faces. He About the authors was Gauteng organiser of the Landless People’s Movement and is currently the Gauteng organiser for the Right to Know Campaign. Peter Alexander is a professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg and holds the South African Research Chair in Social Change. In the UK, he gained degrees from London University, was an academic at Oxford University, and held leadership positions in the Southern Africa Solidarity Campaign, Anti-Nazi League, Miners’ Defence League and Socialist Workers Party. He moved permanently to South Africa in 1998. His interests include labour history, specifically Witbank miners, and community protests. He is a co-author of Class in Soweto, published by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press at the beginning of 2013. Thapelo Lekgowa is a freelance research fieldworker working with the South African Research Chair in Social Change. After school he worked for a platinum mine. He is a full-time political activist, who learns and teaches on the street. A co-founder of the Che Guevara Film Club and a member of the Qinamsebemzi Collective, he is a member of the Marikana Support Committee. Botsang Mmope is a herbal healer associated with Green World Africa. Over the past seven years he has worked on various projects with the University of Johannesburg, including research on class, strikes and, recently, the Chair in Social Change’s ‘Rebellion of the Poor’. He is an active member of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee. Luke Sinwell is a Senior Researcher with the Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. He obtained a PhD in Development Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2009. His interests include the politics and conceptualisation of participa- tory development and governance, direct action and action research. He is co-editor of Contesting Transformation: Popular Resistance in Twenty-First- Century South Africa published by Pluto Press at the end of 2012. 6 Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer About the authors 7 Staff at Jacana, especially the editor Maggie Davey, did a superb job, working under considerable time pressures. Most of all we are grateful to the Marikana strikers and community Acknowledgements members we interviewed. They assisted us despite trauma, the watchful eyes of the police, and sometimes hunger. We were also assisted by Joseph Mathunjwa and other leaders of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, and we are indebted to them as well. Many of those we interviewed participated in a reference group, which helped us correct mis- takes, and in this reprint we have addressed further flaws that were drawn This book includes testimony from strikers who were present at Marikana to our attention. Remaining errors of fact, interpretation and judgment are during the massacre that occurred on 16 August 2012. It offers ‘a view from our own. We have conveyed the perspective of workers involved in the mas- the mountain’, from the koppie where workers were sitting when police sacre to the best of our ability, and we hope they will feel that we have done manoeuvres commenced, and where many of our interviews were later them justice. We have done our best to be accurate and rigorous, but slips are conducted. It offers ‘a case to answer’, not the last word, and the judicial com- possible in an enterprise of this kind and we apologise in advance for any we mission of inquiry will doubtless yield new evidence about what happened. have made. Nevertheless, given the predominance of official discourse blaming the strik- ing workers for the killings, it is important that their voice is heard. Funding for our research has come from the Raith Foundation and from the South African Research Chair in Social Change, which is funded by the Department of Science and Technology, administered by the National Research Foundation and hosted by the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. We are grateful to Prof. Rory Ryan, Dean of Humanities, Prof. Lionel Posthumus, the faculty’s Vice Dean for Research, and Lucinda Landen, the Research Chair’s Administration Officer for sup- porting the project. Interviews were translated by Bridget Ndibongo, Mbongisi Dyantyi, Andisiwe Nakani and the research fieldworkers. Mamatlwe Sebei helped us by conducting preliminary interviews. We also received assistance from Marcelle Dawson, Shannon Walsh, David Moore and Fox Pooe. John McCann provided the maps, which add considerably to this book. We are also very grateful to Joseph Mathunjwa, Asanda Benya and Greg Marinovich who kindly provided photographs. The book was peer reviewed, with the reviewers providing supportive reports and valuable advice. James Nichol, Crispen Chinguno and Rehad Desai also read and commented on parts of the manuscript, as did members of Peter Alexander’s family. Encouraging feedback was received at lectures given in Johannesburg, Detroit, Oxford and London. 8 Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer Acknowledgements 9 10 Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer Maps of the area 11 12 Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer Maps of the area 13 1 Introduction: Encounters in Marikana Luke Sinwell, Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope and Bongani Xezwi n a blistering hot afternoon in Marikana just a few weeks after Othe brutal massacre of 16 August 2012, 10,000 striking work- ers carrying knobkerries and tall whips waited patiently in the sun. Four of us, researchers from the University of Johannesburg, found ourselves in the midst of the crowd. The mood was unclear, but seemed volatile. The workers were singing makuliwe‘ ’ [isiXhosa for ‘let there be a fight’]. We felt the force of the movement. One wrong move by the police could shift this peaceful moment into yet another bloody affair. Workers had started moving in tight-knit battalions, using these formations to protect themselves, especially the strike’s leaders. In what has become an emblemic feature of this workers’ resistance movement, the group stopped and kneeled about 20 metres from the police vehicles. At this point fivemadoda [men] stepped forward to negotiate. As the workers explained, ‘we can all sing, but we can’t all speak at once’. The five madoda are the voices of the masses behind them, and they could be alternated at any time depending on nego- tiating capabilities and who they were speaking with. Their plan was to head for the smelter (where the platinum is processed) demanding that it shut down its operations. At this stage, 95 per cent of work- ers at Lonmin, the third largest platinum mine in the world, were on strike. The smelter was the only unit still operating and the marchers wanted the workers there to join the strike. 14 Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer 15 Marikana was in effect witnessing an undeclared state of emer- This is the first book that attempts to understand the massacre on gency. Police and Lonmin were on one side, and the workers were on 16 August. It can only provide a starting point for future scholarship the other. Over the next week, a thousand troops were deployed and and it does not attempt to explain what happened from the perspective orders were given by the police that people must stay off the streets. of all stakeholders involved. Moreover, when framing the raw inter- On this particular day, 12 September, the carloads of local and inter- views that follow, we have extended beyond superficial journalistic national media that had been camping out at the scene sped off accounts, probing into the experiences and lives of the miners. This has quickly. It seemed like an evacuation. We wondered if we were in only been possible because of a concern to build relationships of trust the wrong place at the wrong time.