South African miners charged with murder: throwback to apartheid [.. this is VERY sad ..]
Updated 3 hours 22 minutes ago
South African prosecutors have charged 270 mine workers with the murder of more than 30 of their colleagues who were killed by police two weeks ago. The decision has sparked outrage beyond South Africa. And long time of observers of South Africa's progress towards full democracy say the move is a dangerous sign that the bad old days of apartheid are not over.
Emily Bourke
Source: The World Today | Duration: 4min 21sec
Topics: activism-and-lobbying, south-africa
Transcript .. automatic audio in the link below ..
ASHLEY HALL: It's been labelled grotesque, Kafkaesque, and a throwback to apartheid.
Prosecutors in South African have charged 270 mine workers with the murder of more than 30 of their colleagues who were killed by police two weeks ago.
The clash at the Marikana Mine was the worst day of police violence in South Africa since the end of apartheid, but long time of observers of South Africa's progress towards full democracy say the move to charge the mine workers and not the police, is a dangerous sign that the bad old days are not over.
Emily Bourke reports.
EMILYBOURKE: Two weeks after South African police opened fire on striking workers at the Marikana Mine, the arm of the law has now set its sights on the workers who survived the incident.
Around 270 detained mine workers are set to face trial for the murder of their colleagues.
Relatives of the accused are furious.
MINER'S SISTER (translation): All we ask for is for their release, so that we can be able to see them. Why are they being arrested? There's nothing that they have been arrested for.
EMILYBOURKE: Julius Malema is the former president of the African National Congress' Youth League.
JULIUS MALEMA: Police actually killed those people. Not even a single policeman is arrested. Those people are not killed by those police, they are killed by those comrades, their fellow colleagues, ahich is a madness.
ANDREA DURBACH: This is demonstrating just how quickly the old remnants of apartheid can rear their head.
EMILYBOURKE: Andrea Durbach is from the Australian Human Rights Centre at University of New South Wales.
ANDREA DURBACH: I think it potentially is politically motivated. I think, unfortunately, it's a combination of fear on the part of the authorities to be seen to be acting. I would imagine Lonmin mines are very concerned about their reputation and economic profile, and they might have hence put some pressure on the government to act decisively, but in this case erroneously.
Plus to my mind a very ill equipped and poorly trained police force that acted under enormous pressure of course. They've all combined I think now to give rise to a rather ghastly and very unsettling way of dealing with this issue.
EMILYBOURKE: She says authorities have turned to an archaic law known as the Common Purpose Doctrine.
ANDREA DURBACH: It's an old English doctrine that has found its way into apartheid South Africa, in an attempt to criminalise political, legitimate political activity. So it's an attempt to really throw the cloak of criminal liability over the accomplices or the associates of this unlawful purpose.
In this instance there doesn't seem to have been a kind of coming together at all of these people to plan to kill. Certainly to plan to strike for higher wages was one purpose, which as far as I know under South African law is no longer unlawful. But then to extend the doctrine to say that these people came together in order to provoke potentially the police, so that the police might shoot their colleagues and then be held liable for their colleagues' murder just seems Kafkaesque.
EMILYBOURKE: In the late 1980s Andrea Durbach represented 25 black South Africans convicted of the murder of a black policeman who was killed during a riot.
Many were convicted and sentenced to death under the Common Purpose Doctrine. On appeal the sentences were commuted.
She says relying on the Common Purpose Doctrine in this case is a dangerous blow to South African democracy.
ANDREA DURBACH: My concern, and I think that's what's so distressing for so many South Africans, is that the kind of violence that met violence that was so endemic to apartheid, usually at the hands of the police, seems now to have emerged in a new, hopefully democratic South Africa.
And I guess it just shows that that sort of legacy is going to take an enormously long time before the police and the other agents of the state actually understand that to invoke that conduct, which I said is so endemic to apartheid, is so inappropriate and terribly, terribly damaging to a fledgling democracy
ASHLEY HALL: Andrea Durbach is from the Australian Human Rights Centre at UNSW. Emily Bourke had that report.
South African miners strike deal with Lonmin bosses .. [ embedded video and others ]
"Lonmin, the world's third-largest platinum producer, is able to give its chief executive an annual pay package equivalent to what the average rock-drill operator would take home after 400 years on the job."
Striking platinum mine workers have reached a deal with Lonmin's management that includes a 22% pay rise and a single payment of $250 to cover wages lost during the strike, negotiators said Tuesday. The miners are set to return to work on Thursday.
South African media on Wednesday hailed the end to a wildcat strike at world number three platinum producer Lonmin which killed 45, but warned the 22-percent wage hike deal set a dangerous precedent in the sector.
"The end of the Lonmin strike is something we should all cheer, but how the dispute has been settled may provide a template for workers to use elsewhere. That's the contagion threat," a columnist for Business Day wrote, taking a bitter-sweet tone on the end of the five-week standoff.
Workers at London-listed Lonmin's Marikana mine on Tuesday agreed to return to work Thursday after the company upped their salaries by 22 percent, with a $245 one-off bonus.
Mediators claimed this was the highest raise ever negotiated in the country's labour history.
Illegal strikes spread to other platinum and gold mines in the country following the start of the industrial action at Lonmin on August 10, where police shot dead 34 people.
The business daily said other miners may not stand down until their wages are raised in a similar way.
This threatened to destabilise the entire mining industry, which accounts for a fifth of Africa's largest economy.
"What started as a wage dispute... has morphed into something much bigger, posing a number of questions about the future of the mining industry and SA as an investment case."
"Workers at other mines may be encouraged to adopt the same tactics as the Lonmin workers, especially as they managed to winkle out extra pay from a struggling company."
The Star newspaper reported "this could be bad news for the biggest miners' union in the country, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)."
The paper speculated that members of the affiliate of the country's powerful union federation Cosatu -- which is in alliance with the ruling African National Congress -- would abandon NUM.
"There is a strong feeling that NUM members will decamp and move to join the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), the NUM's new rival," it reported.
AMCU has been accused of precipitating the wildcat strikes with unrealistic salary promises to prospective members.
Meanwhile online news site the Daily Maverick wondered over the backroom politics that brought about the deal.
"Even as workers prepare to return to work, questions are now being asked about what exactly happened six weeks into the strike to facilitate the agreement."
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Top global platinum producer Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) said on Monday it would fire all strikers who did not attend disciplinary hearings the following day as an illegal strike continued at 4 of its South African mines.
With no end in sight to a spate of wildcat strikes in South Africa, AngloGold Ashanti warned that an illegal stoppage could lead to cuts in its operations there and said it might also have to fire workers.
Amid the tough talk from mining bosses, another illegal strike broke out on Monday at the Bokoni platinum mine run by Amplats and Canadian-based Atlatsa Resources.
The Bokoni strike is worrying because it is in the far eastern limb of the platinum belt, hundreds of kilometres from the wave of labour strife centred around the cities of Rustenburg and Marikana, where 46 people were killed in a bloody 6-week stoppage at Lonmin.
Police said on Monday another body had been found in the Rustenburg area near an Amplats property and they believed the death was related to the mine violence.
Amplats' four Rustenburg mines have been shut for over 2 weeks at a cost of over 20,000 ounces in lost output and the company will now sack employees who do not report to disciplinary hearings by Tuesday.
"The company will be left with no alternative but to dismiss, in their absence, all employees who do not present themselves," it said in a statement.
In total, there are around 75,000 miners on strike across South Africa's gold and platinum sectors, about 15 percent of the underground labour force. Virtually all of the strikes are illegal.
The chief executive of AngloGold, the world's third largest gold producer, issued a stern warning on Monday about the viability of its South African operations and said the illegal strike by 24,000 of its 35,000 workers could lead to dismissals.
"If the current unprotected strike continues, it compounds risks of a premature downsizing of AngloGold Ashanti's South African operations," Mark Cutifani told a briefing that was webcast to employees.
He added the company could take action, potentially including dismissals, against striking employees.
Cutifani also said there were no immediate plans to scale back on 4.5 billion rand ($540.91 million) in capital investment plans in South Africa this year but the country was becoming a tough sell to investors.
"If we don't resolve the issue then how do I justify to shareholders that we should continue to invest in South Africa," he said.
UNCLEAR DEMANDS
Cutifani also said the demands being made were unclear.
"It's mainly about money, but when you ask people what does that look like, they are unable to tell you," Cutifani told Reuters.
He said it could be 16,000 rand a month or 18,000 rand but the demands did not specify if this was across the board or a basic wage or included the whole package. "It's just a number. We don't even know what that means."
AngloGold's South African operations accounted for 32 percent of the group's production in the first half of 2012 and the company said it was losing around 32,000 ounces of production a week due to the strike.
Gold mining in South Africa is generally on the decline as resources mined for decades run out and shafts have to sink deeper to get to the ore, raising costs.
Labour violence first erupted on South Africa's platinum belt as a turf war between the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the dominant National Union of Mineworkers.
Fueled by glaring income disparities, the strikes have hit also hit AngloGold's rival Gold Fields and smaller mining operations.
Lonmin Mine workers gather at the hill nearby the Marikana Platinum Mine in Rustenburg, South Africa, yesterday. They gathered to pay their respects to 36 colleagues who where shot dead by members of the South African Police Service a year earlier, after workers protested for higher wages.
AFP/Marikana
Comrades and families of 34 miners shot dead by South African police marked the first anniversary of the bloodbath at Marikana yesterday in a rally boycotted by the ruling ANC.
An estimated 10,000 people gathered at the foot of the outcrop where on August 16, 2012, police unleashed a 284-bullet barrage that plunged South Africa into crisis and shocked the world.
The owner of the Marikana platinum mine was among those attending the commemorations and for the first time publicly apologised to the relatives of the slain workers.
“We will never replace your loved ones, and I say we are truly sorry for that,” said Lonmin chief executive Ben Magara.
“It should not have taken so many lives for us... as a nation to learn that this should not have happened and this should never happen again.”
The peaceful crowd, including workers wearing green trade union T-shirts and wielding sticks, chanted and danced, while some of the widows fought back tears as a roll call of the dead was read out.
The ruling party African National Congress did not attend the event, which it said had become politicised when organisers invited a militant mining union and opposition leaders to speak.
With many ANC members serving on the boards of mining firms and the government firmly defending police tactics, observers say members of the party may not have been welcome.
“It’s guilty conscience, that is why they are not here,” said Tshenolo Tshenye, an assistant artisan and one of the mourners.
President Jacob Zuma, who launched a state inquiry into the shooting deaths but has studiously avoided becoming publicly involved in it, was in Malawi ahead of a regional summit.
Populist firebrand Julius Malema, a former ANC youth leader who recently launched his own political party, tore into his former allies at the commemoration event, blaming the ANC and the owners of the Marikana platinum mine for the violence.
“Lonmin and ANC have killed our people. You have blood on your hands,” Malema, sporting a revolutionary red beret, said to loud applause.
Lindile Mbukwana, a 28-year-old labourer, said the ANC’s boycott “shows that our government doesn’t care about us”.
No one has been held responsible for the 34 deaths, and with fury still raw, police in riot vans kept their distance while helicopters circled overhead during the six-hour service.
“We want to know the truth,” said Mzoxolo Magidwana, 24, who was shot eight times in last year’s unrest. “Who sent the police to come and kill us?”
The day of violence at the Marikana mine is seen by many as the worst since apartheid in the country ended in 1994.
In the run-up to the killings at least 10 other people - including two police officers - died amid a highly charged work stoppage over wages at the mining firm.
Lonmin boss Magara said the London-listed firm would pay for the schooling of the slain mineworkers’ 147 children.
Many of those present said the low wages and poor living standards that sparked the upwelling of anger last year remain unchanged.
“These people died for nothing,” said Gabriel Shakhane, 42, a migrant miner from Lesotho.
The Lonmin-sponsored commemoration event was organised by a group linked to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which has fought a sometimes bloody battle for power with the ANC-allied National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
Several assassinations have taken place over the last year, with union leaders from both sides dying amid the battle for supremacy.
AMCU’s leader Joseph Mathunjwa, who had invited NUM’s leaders to attend, said the event was “not about politicking”.
But at the 11th hour, NUM announced that it would stay away because the anniversary has been “hijacked”, shredding hopes that the day could be a way to mend ties.
“Even as we are remembering victims we are quite frankly messing with their memories by playing politics with the commemoration,” said political commentator Eusebius McKaiser.
Police said yesterday’s event passed off without a major incident.
“In the spirit of healing and reconciliation, all parties present behaved in a manner indicative of the respect being paid to all those who passed away over this period in 2012,” said commissioner Riah Phiyega.
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