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South Africa: The Marikana Era?
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Sep 6, 2012 (120906)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
Will Marikana become an emblematic symbol for an era of
post-apartheid plutocracy, as did Sharpeville for the
apartheid era in the decades following 1960? Or will it, as
many hope, serve as a wakeup call for South Africa to
deliver on the promise of the end of political apartheid in
1994?
No one knows the answers. But the parallels are
inescapable, albeit the many differences between the two
eras fifty years apart. The new killings have highlighted
the continuity of an economy and society still resting on
the exploitation of cheap black labor, with the
collaboration of foreign investors. They have exposed the
tendency of the state to respond with violence rather than
with solutions to the structural issues. And in coming weeks
and months, the response will reveal the capacity or
incapacity of the political system and society to prioritize
transparency and creativity rather than the accentuation of
fear and violence.
The bizarre decision by public prosecutors to prosecute the
striking miners themselves for murder of their colleagues,
under an apartheid-era legal precedent, although later
reversed, further highlighted the parallels with the
apartheid era, as well as the incoherence of the state
response. As evidence emerges that many of the miners were
shot and killed away from the confrontation caught on
camera, more and more questions emerge.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin, sent out by e-mail and available
on the web at http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/saf1209a.php, contains two
among the many insightful commentaries that have appeared
since the police shot the striking miners at Marikana on
August 16, 2012, namely an open letter to COSATU by Jay
Naidoo, and a background analysis by Martin Legassick.
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin released today, not sent out by
e-mail but available on the web at http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/saf1209b.php, contains
excerpts from a background report on the platinum mining
industry just published by the Bench Marks Foundation, a
church-related social responsibility organization that has
been investigating the impact of the industry for several
years.
Additional articles worth noting include:
"Marikana: The miners were hunted like beasts" by Greg
Marinovich
Mail & Guardian, 31 Aug 2012
http://tinyurl.com/94fyqdl
Also
http://www.gregmarinovich.com/BLOG/2012/08/murder-at-marikana
/
Most miners shot out of view of cameras at close range, not
while attacking police [for additional reports see
http://allafrica.com/stories/201209050888.html on possible
charges against police. Also search Google on Marikana +
Marinovich]
"Marikana: No common purpose to commit suicide," by Pierre
de Vos
Constitutionally Speaking, Aug 30, 2012
http://tinyurl.com/8etakhn
On the murder charges initially lodged against the miners
"Marikana eyewitness: 'He raised his hands, they shoot him
in the head'" by Mandy de Waal
Daily Maverick, September 6, 2012
http://allafrica.com/stories/201209060906.html
"Marikana is South Africa's turning point" by William Gumede
Guardian, Aug. 29, 2012
http://tinyurl.com/9ncx4ds
"The brutal exposure of South Africa's inequality may at
last shock the governing elite out of its complacency"
"What Went Wrong At Marikana?" by Alex Lichtenstein
Los Angeles Review of Books, September 1st, 2012
http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=902
Background analysis on platinum industry
"Mass Murder of Miners and Neo-Liberalism in South Africa"
Video interview with Vishwas Satga and transcript
Real News Network, September 2, 2012
http://tinyurl.com/8r8vszy
Very useful background analysis by one of leaders of
movement for solidarity with the miners
"Charges against miners raise questions" by
By Jo Seoka
Business Report, September 5 2012
http://tinyurl.com/8f97qny
Rt Reverend Dr Jo Seoka is an Anglican bishop, the president
of the SA Council of Churches and chairman of the Bench
Marks Foundation.
"The rise and rise of Amcu" by Jan de Lange
City Press, 2012-08-19
http://tinyurl.com/8o6pqxx
Background on the independent union involved in the strike
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on South Africa, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/southafrica.php
No Easy Victories Update
As of September 2012, the No Easy Victories website
(http://www.noeasyvictories.org) has a new simplified web
interface, and new resources have also been added.
Additional excerpts from the book are available on the site,
and there are links to newly available Kindle and Google
Ebook editions. In addition to previous supplementary
sections such as interview transcripts, a custom search of
related websites on Southern African liberation history, and
the full text of King Solomon's Mines Revisited, there is a
newly available section with selection of 29 U.S.
Congressional documents on the U.S. and Southern Africa,
principally from the House Subcommittee on Africa, from
1963-1988.
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
Open Letter to COSATU
Jay Naidoo
4 Sep 2012
http://www.jaynaidoo.org/an-open-letter-to-cosatu/
"Government violence can only breed counter-violence.
Ultimately, if there is no dawning of sanity on the part of
the government, the dispute between the government and my
people will be settled by force," said Nelson Mandela. And
his words still apply today.
To my colleagues at Cosatu,
I have no authority to tell you what you must do, I know.
But my conscience as one of your founding leaders begs me to
reflect on the state of our country and nation.
The Marikana massacre is a deadly body blow to the
democratic social fabric, and it leaves my heart heavy with
sadness. The weight of the disappointment is staggering as I
think back to my political initiation as a teenager,
listening to the powerful political narrative of Steve Biko.
"We have nothing to lose but our chains." He presented a
bold, courageous and impossible vision of a free South
Africa. We were inspired as a generation to stand up and be
counted irrespective of the cost.
So where are the courageous leaders of today?
The 1976, the Soweto student uprisings were our Tahrir
Square. We were smashed, but we came back and kept building
on the foundations of the sacrifices of Nelson Mandela and
his generation. We painstakingly nurtured a mass movement.
The eighties saw the flourishing of internal mass struggles
led by COSATU and the UDF that pitched us into battle with a
brutal Apartheid state. It took us 18 years to make our
liberation movement, the ANC, the majority party in our
Parliament and place Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first
democratically elected president.
Now, 18 years later, we commemorate a new massacre under the
watch of the supposedly democratic government we elected. I,
like many South Africans, am devastated.
Yet it can't be denied that the writing has been on the wall
for some time. Why did we choose to ignore the facts staring
us in the face?
I was part of the leadership that led COSATU into an
alliance with the ANC and SACP. It had a clear objective. We
were making a commitment to a profound transformation that
struck at the heart of Apartheid - the cheap labour system
and its attendant diseases of joblessness, poverty, gender
violence and inequality.
But those same diseases remain, and we desperately need a
frank, no-holds-barred clinical analysis of our condition.
It goes something like this: inequality has grown. Formal
employment has shrunk. A single breadwinner supports up to
eight dependants. The content of migrant labour remains as
deeply entrenched as ever, as subcontracted labour and
casualisation continue to marginalise the workers' families.
The education system hopelessly fails the poorest in our
townships as half of our children, mainly of the working
poor, are left with almost no skills to speak of even after
12 years of school. They can't get jobs and many of them are
unlikely to do so at all in their lifetime. Our schools have
become havens to sexual predators: perverted teachers or
male pupils robbing our girl children of their innocence.
The growing majority of this dispossessed youth cannot see
anyone representing their interests.
That's what I've gathered from conversations I've held with
young people throughout South Africa. All they see is the
arrogance of a 'blue light brigade' that believes it has
some divine right to rule. They see a criminal 'Breitling
brigade' that grows fat on looting the public coffers,
stealing tenders and licences, and pocketing public funds
budgeted for textbooks, toilets and libraries.
This is not the programme of transformation for which our
leaders - beacons such as Elijah Barayi and Emma Mashinini -
sacrificed so much. This is not the future for which Neil
Aggett was murdered by Apartheid police. This is not the
future for which Phineas Sibiya, an outstanding shop
steward, died a fiery death in a burning car at the hands of
Inkatha vigilantes in Howick.
Now is the time for fearless debate. Power has to be
confronted with the truth. The Marikana massacre shows all
the hallmarks of our Apartheid past. Violence from any side
is inexcusable, but deadly force from a democratic state is
a cardinal sin. It strikes at the heart of democracy.
The COSATU Congress is important for many reasons, but
mainly because it will draw a line in the sand between
justice and injustice. But it needs leaders with the courage
to hold up the mirror. And it needs to ask the critical
question: whether leaders have lost touch with the
membership and the poorest in our country.
I am reminded of our visit to the Soviet Union in 1990. We
wanted to understand how a powerful state claiming to
represent the working class could fall prey to the crass
corruption that represented the worst excesses of crony
capitalism. It was obvious to us. There was no democratic
participation. The nationalised economy and state
enterprises were simply the feeding troughs of the voracious
elite. The past symbols of socialist solidarity and social
justice were a sham, appropriated by a rapacious class of
party apparatchiks. The labour movement was emasculated. It
had been reduced to a conveyor belt of the political and
predatory party elite. They were the 'yellow unions'.
I realised then that, had I been a militant unionist in the
Soviet Union, I would have died a miserable death in a
Siberian labour camp. There were no real unions in the
Soviet Union. There were just obedient lieutenants who
enforced the orders of their political masters and enjoyed
the minor perks of financial hand-outs. It's a slippery
slope, and one we can't afford to send South Africa down.
So today, let us ask ourselves if splinter unions are just
the work of opportunists. Are we saying that seasoned trade
unionists are so weak, pliant and intellectually inferior
that they will risk losing their jobs and their lives - and
for what?
I cannot believe that. Of course there is the Breitling
Brigade, who will use workers and the poor as cannon fodder,
given half a choice. But the fact is that there is a deep
and growing mistrust of leaders in our country, and the
expanding underclass feels it has no voice through
legitimate formal structures. Violence becomes the only
viable language.
So yes, there has to be trust. I remember more than 30 years
ago when, as a naÃ&hibar;ve student activist entering the labour
movement as a volunteer, I spent a day handing out
pamphlets. That is, I spent the day trying to hand out
pamphlets. I was outside the factory gates for the whole day
and nobody took a pamphlet until an old SACTU activist took
me aside and said, "Sonny boy. You look very committed. But
no-one understands all your rhetoric. Workers cannot eat
promises and political slogans. And if they talk to you here
they will be photographed and victimised. So come home and I
will arrange for some of the leaders to meet you."
I understood then that the co-creation of a vision and
ownership lies in winning the trust of the workers,
especially the poor. Their trust has to be won every day. I
am comforted that COSATU has done a labour force survey of
its members' perceptions of their union leaders, but it is a
striking finding that many of the grassroots members are
alienated from their leadership. This should be the core of
the debates at the upcoming Congress. These perceptions need
to be answered.
COSATU has a proud history. You stood firm when our
government, in its insane denialism, condemned to death so
many people living with HIV and AIDS, or remained silent on
the human rights abuses of Zimbabwean and Swaziland workers.
You mobilised amazing organisations such as the Treatment
Action Campaign to make government accountable.
But where has the social activism gone to in our country?
Has it also submerged below the morass of that the
bureaucratic development industry breeds? You cannot escape
your responsibility any longer - our society is fragmenting
and our state becoming increasingly dysfunctional.
Our Constitution demands an effective government that is
transparent and accountable. Our Constitution has laid the
proud traditions of social justice, human dignity and social
solidarity as the foundation of our democracy. Public
institutions are there to serve the interests of the
citizenry and not the narrow often corrupt interests of a
predatory elite.
That is what we fought for. We need to stop being subjects
and become active citizens. It is now incumbent on us all to
stand up and bring our country back to the path of
reconstruction and development. We promised a better life in
1994, and we need to deliver it.
As our founding father, Nelson Mandela, said, "Poverty, like
Apartheid, is not an accident. Like slavery, it is man-made
and can be removed by the actions of human beings."
The key, now, is for those human beings to take the
appropriate action.
The Marikana Massacre: A Turning Point?
Martin Legassick
The Bullet, Socialist Project - E-Bulletin No. 689
August 31, 2012
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/689.php
[Martin Legassick is active in housing issues in the Western
Cape and a member of the Democratic Left Front, an anticapitalist
united front. He visited Marikana in the
aftermath of the massacre.]
The massacre of 34, and almost certainly more, striking
mineworkers at Marikana (together with more than 80 injured)
on 16 August has sent waves of shock and anger across South
Africa, rippling around the world. It could prove a decisive
turning-point in our country's post-apartheid history.
Marikana is a town situated in barren veld, dry brown grass
in the winter, with occasional rocky outcrops (kopjes,
hillocks). The Lonmin-owned mines - there are three, Karee,
West and East Platinum - are situated on the outskirts of
the town. Alongside two of them is a settlement of zincwalled
shacks festooned with lines of washing called
Enkanini where most of the mineworkers live.
Towering over the shack settlement are the surface buildings
of the mine, together with a huge electricity sub-station,
with giant power pylons marching across the veld. This is
the mineral-energy complex (MEC) which has dominated the
South African economy since the 1890s, basing itself on the
exploitation of cheap black migrant labour. But now platinum
has replaced gold as the core of it. South Africa produces
three-quarters of the world's platinum (used for catalytic
converters in cars and for jewellery) and has dropped from
first to fifth in production of gold. The underground
workers at Marikana are still predominantly from the Eastern
Cape, the area most ravaged by the apartheid migrant labour
system. One third are contract workers, employed by labourbrokers
for the mines, with lower wages and no medical,
pension, etc benefits.
Working Conditions
Platinum rockdrillers work underground in temperatures of
40-45 degrees celsius, in cramped, damp, poorly ventilated
areas where rocks fall daily. They risk death every time
they go down the shafts. At Marikana 3000 mineworkers were
and are striking for a wage increase from R4000 to R12,500 a
month.
The juxtaposition of the MEC with Enkanini, where outside
toilets are shared among 50 people, where there are a few
taps that will only trickle water, where raw sewage
spreading disease leaks from burst pipes, and children
scavenge on rubbish dumps, symptomatises the huge
inequalities in South African society today. (More details
on living conditions can be found in "Communities in the
Platinum Minefields: Policy Gap 6.")
Inequality has increased since 1994 under the post-apartheid
ANC government. CEO's earn millions of Rands in salaries and
bonuses while nearly one third of our people live on R432 a
month or less. The top three managers at Lonmin earned
R44.6-million in 2011 (Sunday Independent, 26/8/2012). Since
1994 blacks have been brought on board by white capital in a
deal with the government - and engage in conspicuous
consumption. Cyril Ramaphosa, former general secretary of
the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), who is now a
director of Lonmin, recently bought a rare buffalo for R18-
million, a fact contemptuously highlighted by Marikana
workers when he donated R2-million for their funeral
expenses. Unemployment in South Africa, realistically, is 35
to 40 per cent and higher among women and youth - the
highest in the world.
The media have highlighted police shooting automatic weapons
at striking mineworkers running toward them from the rocky
kopje where they were camped, and bodies falling to the
ground dead. The police had erected a line of razor wire,
with a 5-metre gap in it, through which some mineworkers
were attempting to return to Enkanini to escape teargas and
water cannon directed at them from behind.
Researchers from the University of Johannesburg (not
journalists, to their shame) have revealed that the main
killing did not take place there. Most strikers had
dispersed in the opposite direction from Enkanini, trying to
escape the police. At a kopje situated behind the hill-camp
there are remnants of pools of blood. Police markers in
yellow paint on this "killing kopje" show where corpses were
removed: there are labels with letters at least up to "J."
Shots were fired from helicopters to kill other escaping
workers, and some strikers, mineworkers report, were crushed
by police Nyalas (armoured vehicles). Within days the whole
area was swept clean by police of rubber bullets, bullet
casings and tear-gas canisters. Only patches of burned grass
are visible, the remains of police fires used to obscure
evidence of deaths.
There are still workers missing, unaccounted for in official
body counts. The death toll is almost certainly higher than
34.
The cumulative evidence is that this was not panicky police
firing at workers they believed were about to attack them
armed with machetes and sticks. Why otherwise leave a narrow
gap in the razor wire? Why kill workers running away from
the police lines? It was premeditated murder by a
militarized police force to crush the strike, which must
have been ordered from higher up the chain of command. This
is further confirmed by autopsies which reveal that most of
the workers were shot in the back (Cape Times, 27/8/2012).
Because of the global capitalist crisis, with a slump in
demand for new cars, the price of platinum has been falling,
squeezing Lonmin's high profits. Lonmin refused to negotiate
with the striking mineworkers, and instead threatened mass
dismissals, a favorite weapon of mining bosses. They were
losing 2500 ounces of platinum output a day, amounting to
more than $3.5-million. It was in Lonmin's interest to smash
the strike. A platinum CEO is quoted as saying that if the
R12,500 demand was won "the entire platinum mining sector
will be forced to shut down." (New Age, 20/8/2012)
But the massacre has rebounded in their face. It has
reinforced the anger and determination of the Marikana
mineworkers to continue striking. "We will die rather than
give up our demand," said one at a protest meeting in
Johannesburg on 22 August. Moreover after the massacre
workers at Royal BaFokeng Platinum and Anglo American
Platinum joined the strike, though now (27/8) at least some
appear to have been persuaded to return to work.
The police chief, Riah Phiyega, visited police in Marikana
in the days before the massacre. On the day of the massacre
a police spokesperson declared "Today is unfortunately Dday
" (Business Report, 17/8/2012). After the killings
Phiyega said "It was the right thing to do" (The Star,
20/8/2012). The ANC government is implicated in these
murders - in defence of white mining capital.
Certainly the massacre has severely damaged the moral
authority that the ANC inherited from the liberation
struggle. Since 16 August President Jacob Zuma has gone out
of his way to distance himself from the killings. He has
deplored the tragedy, visited the site six days later - to a
cool reception from the mineworkers - declared a week of
mourning and established a commission of enquiry. He is
hoping to restore the image of the ANC and of himself before
he has to face re-election at an ANC conference in Mangaung
in December. The commission has five months to report -
which he hopes will cover up discussion of the events until
after Mangaung. "Wait for the report before making a
judgement" will be the watchword of the ANC and its allies
in the next months.
Suspicious of the official commission, the mineworkers have
called for an independent commission of enquiry, and the
dropping of charges against 259 workers who have been
arrested. "The same person who gave the order to shoot is
the one who appointed the commission," said a worker
(Business Day, 23/8/2012).
Expelled former ANC Youth League president, the populist
Julius Malema, has taken advantage of the massacre to visit
Marikana, denounce Zuma, and give assistance to the dead
mineworkers' families. Also all leaders of the parliamentary
opposition went as a delegation to a meeting in Marikana on
20 August to offer condolences - like flies hovering around
a dead body. At the same meeting a procession of twenty or
more priests each sought to claim the loudhailer.
The media have claimed that the violence was precipitated by
rivalry between the NUM and the Association of Mineworkers
and Construction Union (AMCU). This is nonsense. When the
Marikana rockdrillers went on strike they wanted to
negotiate directly with management, not to have any union
represent them. This was made absolutely clear at postmassacre
meetings in Marikana, and (including by the AMCU
general secretary himself) at the protest meeting on 22
August.
The strike was violent. In the week before the massacre ten
people died, six mineworkers, two mine security guards, and
two policemen.
NUM and AMCU
Historically the National Union of Mineworkers, with a
present membership of some 300,000, born in the struggle
against apartheid, has represented mineworkers. It has a
proud history of struggle, including the 1987 mineworkers
strike, led by Cyril Ramaphosa. But since 1994 it has
increasingly colluded with the bosses. At Lonmin it had a
two-year wage agreement for 8 to 10 per cent annual
increases.
When the rockdrillers struck for more than doubled wages,
NUM tried to prevent them. The strikers assert that the NUM
was responsible for the death of two of them early in the
strike. Two days before the massacre NUM general secretary,
Frans Baleni, stated of the strikers, "This is a criminal
element" (Business Report, 15/8/2012). Since the massacre
Baleni has claimed it was "regrettable" but he has not
condemned the police, only "dark forces misleading the
workers" (see the video on the NUM website). Baleni earns
77,000 rand a month, more than 10 times what the
rockdrillers earn. NUM members in Marikana have torn up and
thrown away their T-shirts. At the Johannesburg protest
meeting on 22 August an NUM speaker was shouted down by
Marikana mineworkers.
The beneficiary is the AMCU, which before the strike had
only 7000 members at Karee, a part of the Marikana mine
where workers did not strike. (Its membership there was
drawn in by a disaffected NUM branch leader after a strike
last year.) Now workers from West and East Platinum are
joining AMCU.
AMCU was formed after 1999 when its present president,
Joseph Mathunjwa was dismissed by a coal mine in Mpumalanga
and reinstated because of worker protest, but then faced a
disciplinary hearing from NUM for "bringing the union into
disrepute." He was expelled by the NUM (whose general
secretary, ironically, was then Gwede Mantashe, now general
secretary of the ANC) and formed AMCU.
Today AMCU claims a membership of some 30,000. It represents
workers at coal, chrome and platinum mines in Mpumalanga,
and coal mines in KwaZulu-Natal. It has members at chrome
and platinum mines in Limpopo, and is recruiting at the iron
ore and manganese mines around Kathu and Hotazel in the
Northern Cape. It has focused on vulnerable contract
workers. In February-March this year it gained membership in
a six-week strike of 4300 workers (in which four people
died) at the huge Impala Platinum in Rustenburg, a 14-shaft
mining complex with 30,000 workers. At this stage it is
unclear whether it can build solid organization for platinum
workers, or merely indulge in populist rhetoric.
AMCU is affiliated to the National Council of Trade Unions
(NACTU), rival union federation to the 2 million strong
Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), both of
them also born in the struggle against apartheid. COSATU,
however, is allied with the ANC and partly compromised by
its relationship to government.
The platinum strikes and the massacre take place on the eve
of COSATU's 11th congress to be held on 17-19 September.
COSATU has long differed with the ANC on economic policy,
and in the recent period has been racked by internal
differences over this and over whether or not Zuma should
have a second term as ANC president and hence, in the 2014
elections, as likely president of the country. COSATU's
president, Sdumo Dlamini, supported by the NUM and the
National Health and Allied Workers' Union (NEHAWU) supports
Zuma. General secretary Zwelenzima Vavi, together with the
National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and
the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU), is less
keen on Zuma's re-election. Other unions are divided.
Vavi's political report to the Congress writes of "total
state dysfunction" (concerning the failure of the ANC
government to provide textbooks to Limpopo schools) and
states there is "growing social distance between the
leadership and the rank and file" of the ANC (Mail and
Guardian, 10-16/8/2012).
Workers' Control?
At its June Congress NUMSA passed resolutions on
nationalization of industry and declared "that
nationalization of the Reserve Bank, mines, land, strategic
and monopoly industries without compensation must take place
with speed, if we are to avoid sliding into anarchy and
violence as a result of the cruel impact of... poverty,
unemployment and extreme inequalities in South Africa
today." Under workers' control and management, this policy
could rapidly end inequality and poverty in South Africa.
(Malema and the ANCYL also favour nationalization of the
mines, but this is interpreted as a desire to enrich
predatory black businessmen who could sell their assets to
the state).
NUM is less keen on nationalization. "We are for
nationalization, but not a nationalization that creates
chaos," said an NUM spokesperson recently. In a June
document NUM criticized "populist demagoguery... calling for
nationalization as the solution to... challenges" such as
socio-economic conditions and failures by the mining
industry to adhere to transformation or mining charter
requirements (miningmx, 19/8/2012).
Vavi in his political report also drew attention to "a
growing distance between leaders and members" within COSATU
unions (Mail and Guardian, 10-16/8/2012) - which applies to
the NUM, for example. Recently the NUM general secretary in
a private meeting with Vavi warned him to cease his "one-man
crusade" or face being unseated at the COSATU Congress.
Now the shock-waves of the massacre will reverberate through
the congress. The differences could be magnified, and some
observers even predict that COSATU could split either at or
after the congress. Both factions of the COSATU leadership,
however, are threatened by the erosion of the NUM and the
growth of AMCU and other unions attracting disgruntled
COSATU members.
A COSATU statement (23/8/2012) speaks of "a co-ordinated
political strategy to use intimidation and violence,
manipulated by disgruntled former union leaders, in a drive
to create breakaway 'unions' and divide and weaken the trade
union movement." It says the COSATU Congress will "have to
discuss how we can defeat this attempt to divide and weaken
the workers, how we can ... cut the ground from under the
feet of these bogus breakaway ''unions' and their political
and financial backers." The threat to workers' unity is a
powerful stick with which to temporarily re-unite the
factions in COSATU. This strategy will be backed by the
South African Communist Party, which is influential within
COSATU. In reality, of course, it is the NUM leadership who
are dividing the working-class, through their failure to
represent the workers adequately, causing them to leave the
union.
Were COSATU to split, were AMCU and other dissident unions
to link up with this split, favourable conditions would be
created for the launching of a mass workers' party on a
left-wing programme that could challenge the ANC for power.
It would represent a combination of splits in traditional
workers' organizations and the emergence of new
organizations. But this is not the most likely immediate
scenario.
The consequences for Zuma at Mangaung are as yet
unpredictable. They depend on how reaction to the massacre
unfolds in the next months. Already it is reported that
members of the ANC national executive are incensed at Zuma
(Sunday Times, 26/8/2012). Unless the ANC can manage the
situation successfully, the waves of shock and anger could
catalyse the beginning of the end of ANC rule. Certainly
nothing will ever be the same again. •
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