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| sourced: Alec Thraves addressing workers at Marikana early this year in february |
This historic step was the expression, on the
political plane, of the most significant conflict between the classes since
1994 – the virtual uprising that raged across the minefields of SA over the
second half of 2012. In the worst atrocity since the Sharpeville massacre of
1960, 34 men were mowed down in cold blood by the police of a democratically
elected government.
The Marikana massacre and its aftermath brought
about a profound change in consciousness amongst mine workers and within the
rest of the working class. The dim outline of the conclusions
that had been
drawn from the experience of nineteen years of parliamentary democracy was
brought into sharp focus by this one event on the afternoon of August 16, 2012.
What it clarified was the role of the ANC government, the police, the
prosecuting authorities, the mining bosses and the trade unions.
Over the past nineteen years, the working class has
registered the deterioration of social conditions. Mass unemployment stands at between six and
eight million people, the greatest burden – at 70% – being borne by those aged
18 to 34. The education system is in perpetual crisis with less than half of
those starting school managing to reach matric. Thousands who manage to reach
the last year of schooling are unable to go any further, obstructed by a
combination of academic and financial barriers. The health system, as
fundamentally class-segregated as the rest of society, is still struggling to overcome the genocidal
HIV/Aids policy of the Mbeki administration, in addition to being marred by
corruption and under-spending continued from the apartheid regime. Twelve
million go to bed hungry at night in the richest country on the African
continent. Corruption is so rampant that more than 90% of municipalities did
not get a clean audit in 2012. Alongside the deepening poverty of the masses,
the capitalist elite, now including a smattering of black BEE tycoons, flaunts
obscene wealth. The gulf between rich and poor is so wide that SA counts as the
most unequal country on the planet. From all these facts, a gradual
apprehension had set in in the minds of the masses: that the ANC did not
represent them but governs the country on behalf of the rich.
Until now the discontent of the masses had taken the
form, firstly, of a significant escalation of class struggle. Service delivery
protests in working class communities in townships and squatter camps have
become a permanent feature of the political landscape elevating SA to the
position of protest capital of the world with the highest number of protests
per head of population anywhere. In the tertiary education sector protests
against financial and academic exclusion are now a given fixture of the
academic calendar. In the workplace the number of strikes and work days lost
through strike action exceeded the peak of the struggle against apartheid in 2010,
and has hit new records every year since.
Secondly, the changes in consciousness have also
been expressed on the political plane. In the 2004 elections, when the ANC’s
electoral strength took on the appearance of an unstoppable juggernaut with a
massive 70% parliamentary majority, the alienation of the masses expressed
itself through the fact that twelve million of the eligible voting population
did not vote. Of these five million did not even bother to register; seven
million who registered, alienated from the ANC but with no other party offering
any alternative, could not bring themselves to vote ; protesting passively in a massive voter
stay-away for a democracy so young.
The ANC’s 70% parliamentary majority masked the
reality that it received the vote of only 38% of the eligible voting
population. This electoral bleeding continued in 2009 with the ANC losing votes
in every province except KwaZulu-Natal reducing its vote to 34% and even less
in the 2011 local government elections.
Marikana had the effect of changing quantity into
quality. The mineworkers, assuming the role of vanguard of the working class,
began the process of their political emancipation first in the workplace. They
broke free from the paralysing rules of engagement in the class struggle as
determined by the collective bargaining system and its institutions, overthrew
and evicted the NUM from several mines and, most significantly of all,
reclaimed rank-and-file control of the struggle through the establishment of
independent strike committees thereby laying the groundwork for the emergence
of a new worker-controlled trade union movement.
They followed this by translating the reclamation of
their class independence in the workplace with the reassertion of their
political independence through the establishment of a party representing their
interests as workers. The passive political act of staying away from the polls
is giving way to active intervention on the political plain. This is the
historical significance of the founding of the Workers and Socialist Party.
It can be said that it was as much the actions of
the police, the mine bosses, the government the trade unions and the political
parties of the Tripartite Alliance as well as the opposition on the Marikana
massacre that clarified the most profound political questions that had been
confronting the working class over eighteen years.
The massacre was premeditated and could not have
proceeded without the authorisation of the government headed by Zuma. It was
preceded by discussions between Lonmin management, senior ANC leaders and
government ministers, former NUM general secretaries and shareholders. Cyril
Ramaphosa, concentrating all these manifestations of the ruling elite in one
person, set the tone for the massacre with his denunciation of the strike as
criminal and requiring ‘concomitant’ action.
A vicious propaganda campaign depicted the strikers
as bloodthirsty thugs who had to be brought under control by weapons of war.
The Commissioner of Police stated that there was no need for regret over the
deaths. The fact that most of the workers were killed out of camera view,
execution style, was initially covered up. Zuma refused to condemn the
massacre, refused to take responsibility, refused outright to blame the police,
the Minister of Police, or the bosses. The parliamentary portfolio committee on
minerals and energy would not visit Marikana. The main preoccupation of the
Chamber of Mines and the government was to reassure big business that the
bloody repression was just a minor glitch. SA remained ‘open for business.’
When the uprising spread, a virtual state of emergency was declared on the
minefields. The South African Communist Party (SACP) condoned the massacre
(‘that’s what the police have guns for’), after initially condemning the strike
as led by a ‘Pondoland vigilante mafia’.The Cosatu leadership after the
massacre declared it was ‘againt thuggery’ (of workers, that is). In response
to its members’ revolt for worker-controlled struggles, it launched a
‘hands-off NUM’ campaign to ‘reclaim Rustenburg out of the hands of
counter-revolutionaries’. They joined the capitalists in denouncing the victory
of the Lonmin workers. The mineworkers were well and truly on their own.
The founding of the Workers and Socialist Party is
the conclusion flowing from the lessons of the events described above. But
whilst the Marikana massacre was the precipitating factor in the decision to
form WASP, in fact the birth of this party is not an expression of the
political conclusions of the mineworkers alone but of the entire working class.
Every survey of political attitudes amongst shop stewards Cosatu has conducted
in preparation for its congresses has demonstrated a growing apprehension of the
class character of the ANC as a party of the capitalist class. As early as
1998, during the ANC’s first term in office, 30% of shop stewards supported the
formation of a mass workers party by Cosatu.
That this figure has grown from a substantial
minority to a significant majority is confirmed by the suppression of the
report of the latest survey conducted on Cosatu’s behalf by Moeletsi Mbeki
originally due to be released on the eve of Mangaung.
It confirmed what the DSM had argued since the
adoption of GEAR in 1996. At this time we stepped out of the ANC where we had
operated as the Marxist Workers Tendency and formed the Democratic Socialist
Movement as an independent organisation. We argued that the working class were
temporary sojourners in the ANC which had diverted the struggle for their
social emancipation against capitalism into the safe waters of bourgeois
parliamentary democracy. We pointed out that even the most basic needs of the
working class could not be met on the basis of capitalism and that to be able
to solve the social problems of mass unemployment and poverty the working class
would be compelled to reclaim its political independence.
First published by Izwi La Basenzi, Friday, 01 March 2013 18:07
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