Platinum and Gold Mining in South Africa: The Context of the Marikana Massacre (original) (raw)
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Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, 2022
Between 2012 and 2014, South Africa witnessed an unprecedented labour movement culminating in a five-month strike at what were then the three largest platinum mining companies in the world. Drawing from ethnographic research and in-depth interviews, this article traces the multiple scales within which mineworkers organised collectively, forging unity outside of traditional trade union affiliations. What began as a 'living wage' demand amongst a small number of a specific category of workers at one shaft, in one company, soon spread across the entire industry capturing the hearts and minds of 80,000 platinum mineworkers. Mineworkers' ability to exercise power was intensified by their decision to jump scale and build bridges across companies and regions and to a lesser extent transnationally. The article also describes forms of solidarity in communities, especially by women, and the broader trade union movement and concludes by focusing on the fragmented nature of the working class in South Africa more generally. With few important exceptions, the extent to which mineworkers were able to exercise power beyond a relatively local or narrow scale is quite limited, despite this large-scale mobilisation.
The Extractive Industries and Society, 2015
The rapid expansion of platinum mining into rural communal land in the former 'homeland' areas of South Africa has caused intensive intra-community struggles. To date, however, there has been limited empirical focus on the character of these struggles at the village level. In this article, I attempt to narrow this gap by drawing on a detailed ethnographic case study of Sefikile village in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditional authority area, North West Province. The analysis illustrates how the post-apartheid mineral policy's reform has failed to grasp the complex character of rural communities found on lands where platinum mining has expanded. The findings drawn from Sefikilea village that hosts one of the oldest platinum mines in South Africareveal intense struggles over land, mining revenues and public services. Such struggles are fought mainly through distinct group identities as social markers to exclusive group rights. The current mineral policy is incapable of adequately addressing the escalating disputes and marginalisation at the village level.
International Labor and Working-Class History No. 83, Spring 2013, pp. 137–142 This note reflects on the August 2012 miners' strike at Marikana, South Africa in light of a century long history of violence associated with worker actions in that country and elsewhere in the Global South. It suggests that the breakaway union's allegedly 'illegal' strike fits within a long tradition of radical worker activism in South Africa, which is best understood in light of anticolonial efforts to short-circuit the chronologies of imperial power. The Marikana strike, like anticolonial rebellions during the early twentieth century and, critically, white worker struggles following First World War, was an effort to speed up the process by which the value of workers' lives and labor might be made equivalent to those in power.
2013
On 16 August 2012, 34 mineworkers were gunned down by police during strike action in Marikana, South Africa, where Lonmin, the third largest platinum mining company in the world, is located. This has been termed the Marikana massacre, described as a turning point in South African history. Drawing from original ethnographic research, the article highlights the origins of the now infamous living wage demand of R12,500 South African (or about USD$500) per month which was more than twice the average worker’s salary at the time. Its origins, which can be traced back to two specific workers, did not involve violence or inter-union rivalry, nor were its initiators militant or uncompromising as has been suggested elsewhere. The article argues that the idea of violent solidarity and the assertion that workers were motivated by interunion rivalry, obscure the independent nature of workers’ resistance and the way in which it was transformed over time. The empirical evidence presented below als...
Law and Development Review, 2018
In the postapartheid South African economic landscape, the idea of “empowerment” has been given special meaning in the concept “black economic empowerment,” or BEE. BEE serves as a vehicle for the transformation of the South African economy in general by promoting, amongst other things, increased black ownership and management of businesses, skills development and rural community development. These empowerment aspirations are also pursued in the mining industry in terms of the Mining Charter. The development of mining communities is one of the main features of empowerment in the mining industry. An analysis of the various versions of the Mining Charter shows a certain progression in the approach to the empowerment and development of rural mining communities: There is an increased emphasis on the poverty still faced by these communities, years after the introduction of the first Mining Charter. The question is whether the increased emphasis will mean much for mining communities. This...
Artisanal Mining and its Drivers in the South African Context
The Extractive Industries and Society, 2023
In South Africa, Zama Zama mining is a colloquial term referring to artisanal mining. This type of mining is illegal, seeing that these mining activities are conducted without a mining license. Zama Zama mining is often associated with several social ills, for example, issues related to the miners’ health and safety, environmental deprivation, child labour and the occurrence of violence and conflict within the sector. South African mining companies and law enforcement officials tend to view the solution to these problems to lie in policing this sector but are achieving little success. This article suggests an alternative, more proactive approach by exploring the drivers of artisanal gold mining in South Africa and ascertaining the responsibilities of mining companies in mitigating the drivers. A re-examination of Zama Zama mining’s marginalisation could replace the current reactive ways pursued through policing and criminalising the sector with more sustainable and proactive approaches to address the sector’s problems.
Review of African Political Economy, 2012
Since assuming power in 1994, the African National Congress has pursued an ambitious policy of ‘modernising’ the minerals and mining sector in line with its overarching goal of developing an internationally competitive, non-racial and socially stabilised South African capitalism. This is a materialist analysis of the measures and evolution of that policy in the critically contested period between the release of the Minerals Development Bill (MDB) (December 2000) and its promulgation as the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (October 2002). Despite its apparent radicalism, the bill's core proposal to nationalise mineral rights is a variant of what Marx termed a ‘Ricardian reform’, here designed to accelerate capital accumulation by eliminating the barrier of private minerals ownership. Yet, the MDB also married this classically bourgeois reform with a nationalist commitment to racially transform the structure of mine ownership, thus embodying key contradictions of South Africa's democratic transition in the era of neoliberalism. The struggle over the final form and benefits of the new minerals dispensation would be centred on the platinum industry, where the established (white) producers had the most to lose from the legal abolition of the old mineral property system in favour of the nationalisation and strategic redistribution of the resource base.
2017
M.A. (Politics)Abstract: The Marikana massacre, together with the 21-week long strike of 2014 in the platinum sector, put the hostile labour relations noticeable in the mining industry, particularly the platinum sector, under the microscope. The Marikana massacre was also sparked by what was seemingly a labour dispute. Beyond exhibiting existing hostile labour relations in South Africa’s platinum belt and the mining industry as a whole, the two occurrences also indicate the prevalence of political risks. The mining industry is a key industry in terms of the country’s economy. The platinum sector, in which the aforementioned events unfolded, is also a key sector. The mining industry accounts for about 17% of the private sector investment and a significant portion of the country’s exports. South Africa, being responsible for amounts exceeding 70% of the world’s production, is the largest producer of platinum. The sector is also the largest employer within the mining industry. In addit...