The trouble with South Africa
September 13, 2012 By
I’ve been puzzled and not a little disturbed by the lack of empathy on South African social media with the horrific events at Marikana, where 34 protesting miners were killed by police on August 16th. Yes, someone has posted a few links here, a few comments there, but given the magnitude of this event, and what it means for the country I would have expected a wave of slogans, a mass of altered profile pictures and so forth expressing collective grief and outrage. Not so. With few exceptions (this is one), I think there was more activity in solidarity with Pussy Riot than with the Lonmin miners. There was more of a social media flurry over claims that retail chain Woolworths refuses to hire white staff. In fact a recent Google search analysis (definitely reflecting how white social media are) on South African advertising site Marklives had the top three searches from South Africa as: the death of actor Michael Clarke Duncan (he did play very large, monosyllabic black men who don’t say much), followed by the fake racism at Woolworths and then the weather.A friend suggests that the relative silence on Marikana is because there is a lot of confusion on who the good guys and bad guys are. Really? Yes, it seems protesters had killed two policemen and two security guards in the days leading up to the massacre (though the context is murky, and the death toll prior to August 16th included three protesters and two other men). Yes, some video footage shows the miners aggressively confronting the police. Nevertheless, a police response that results in 34 deaths and many more injuries is hugely disproportionate. At the very least, it indicates dismal police training and preparedness for dealing with such situations.
But then came carefully researched reports (here and here) by South African journalist Greg Marinovich, positing that even though some miners had died in the confrontation with police, police had subsequently hunted down and killed at least 14 men in cold blood. Marinovich’s own investigation and observation was backed up by research conducted by University of Johannesburg sociologists Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope and Peter Alexander. There were other reports that some of the miners had been shot in the back — while fleeing. If this was not enough, police arrested 259 of the miners and charged them, not with the death of the two policemen, but with the murder of their own protesting colleagues. An outrage and an absurdity as pointed out by University of Cape Town constitutional law professor and prolific blogger Pierre de Vos. (The charges were subsequently withdrawn.)
Subsequent interviews by other media outlets seem to corroborate Marinovich’s allegations.
And yet despite all this, despite many articles pointing out the terrible conditions under which the miners work, and the gaping inequalities and disparities behind their protest, there seems to be inertia — huge reluctance among the public to fault the police and express any kind of outrage — or even sympathy for the miners. First came denial: an article in The Star that appeared shortly after Marinovich’s first article appeared was headlined “Journalist’s Account of Shooting Questioned”. The entire article was based on the comments of a single security analyst who rejected Marinovich’s allegations simply because he couldn’t bring himself to believe the police would behave in such a manner. Another article by Philip de Wet (who previously blogged at The Daily Maverick where Marinovich’s articles were published) asserted that it is simply impossible to ever know what really happened. Which is, as Marinovich has pointed out (in a must read interview), just ‘bullshit’.
So what’s going on? Partly, it’s to do with people’s tendency to believe and react to images over text. The majority of readers commenting on these stories insist on trusting television news footage of the moment over painstaking forensic investigation. But it also has to do with the way most media have covered and continue to cover the strike. This was pointed out by academic Julie Reid, also in the Daily Maverick. Her piece also argues that the day-to-day event-based coverage has also helped obscure a very worrying much larger trend of police violence against citizens. Beyond a lack of investigation and intelligent mining of the data, I have not come across any article that has attempted to get into the lives of the miners, show them to us as individuals, and help us genuinely understand their daily struggles. Much (if not everything) of what has been written lately glosses over miners’ past, dreams, desires, frustrations, etc. Short: their lives. The failure to give attention to those details made it impossible to imagine what it would mean to live a miner’s life, which has allowed the debate to be sucked into a very ordinary South African debate — a spiral of numbers, acronyms, figures, maps and politicking that works as a cover to say: we haven’t got a clue. This opinion piece in City Press (a major Sunday newspaper) by novelist and former university administrator Njabulo Ndebele is one of the few texts out there that at least hints at some sort of identification/empathy with the miners. (This weekend, City Press, also finally published short profiles of all the victims of the police massacre at Marikana — on the website you can read it in five parts: here, here, here, here and here — basic piece of journalism we urged on our Facebook page right after the massacre just happened.)
There have been few reports putting hard questions to the mine owners.
Some newspapers have published the dubious claims of analysts (like the discredited Mike Schussler) that the Marikana miners — who live in a squatter camp next to the mine — are paid too much anyway.
But it’s about more than just the media.
The ANC leadership and its allies in the trade union movement and the Communist Party seem at a loss how to respond, either characterizing the miners as dupes of party rivals of President Jacob Zuma (Julius Malema slots into that role) or as irrational (an interpretation the media dutifully reports). The Democratic Alliance, the second largest political party in parliament, is hardly on the side of the black poor; in the first statement by a DA politician right after the massacre, the party’s parliamentary leader, Lindy Mazibuko (the most senior black leader in the otherwise white DA) said that the massacre presented an opportunity for the ANC to finally deal with the unions. (This is the kind of sentiment which also underpins coverage and editorial comment in the country’s “leading” broadsheet, Business Day).
Many South Africans don’t seem to care at all whether or not these allegations against the police are true. They express sentiments similar to those aired by the new police commissioner, Riyah Phiyega, that the police should not be sorry for the 34 deaths, as “the safety of the public is non-negotiable”. Apparently working class miners, striking for a decent wage and safe working conditions don’t count as ‘the public’. The trouble is, if we are to believe Julie Reid’s well-substantiated argument that police violence is widespread and increasing, this definition of ‘the public’ seems to be getting ever narrower. Will we take notice only when we find ourselves suddenly outside the circle?
* Sean Jacobs and Tom Devriendt contributed to this post.
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The End of South African
Exceptionalism
AUG 27 2012
The Marikana mine killings may show that South Africa's problems are no longer specific to the apartheid legacy, but about more global issues of poverty and inequality.
On Thursday, August 16th, South African security forces shot dead 34 protesters at Marikana, a platinum mine, owned and operated by multinational firm Lonmin, in South Africa's Northwest Province. The dead were rock drill operators on strike for better wages -- most of them reportedly earned around the equivalent of $500 per month -- and a higher standard of living.
Because of the excessive violence (video of the shootings have gone viral), some are making comparisons to the tragic events of March 1960, when South African security forces, then defending the apartheid regime, murdered 69 protesters in Sharpeville, a black township south of Johannesburg. The victims in Sharpeville had gathered to protest the apartheid state's requirement that adult Africans could only set foot in South African cities if they showed a passbook proving they were employed by local whites.
Times have changed -- last Thursday's dead had a right to vote, which many of them doubtlessly cast in support of the African National Congress, the party that has governed South Africa since apartheid's end in 1994. Yet, once again, the South African state has shed the blood of its citizens. The similarities and differences between that half-century-old killing and this month's are a reminder of how much South Africa has changed, and how much it hasn't; how South Africa is singular and how it's susceptible to the same forces of class and inequality as any other democracy.
Marikana presented familiar images -- singing protesters dancing in the faces of uniformed, well-armed police, who deployed with cannon and armored vehicles, and were followed by shots and slowly settling dust. Not surprisingly, the South African government and its defenders reject the comparison. The national police commissioner defended her officers, noting that the strike had been violent -- even deadly -- before the police arrived. On the day of the massacre, miners were armed, some with spear-like assegais and machetes. They had marched on the police voicing "war chants." To be sure, the state had the preponderance of power, but this was not Sharpeville.
Yet, in its catalyzing potential, in perhaps forcing South Africa to confront a serious social ill, Marikana might still prove to be something like the post-apartheid state's Sharpeville.
After the 1960 massacre, South Africa was kicked out of the international community: condemned at the United Nations; eventually excluded from the Olympics. Those killed at Sharpeville had been protesting in the name of freedom of movement and democratic participation in their national future, touchstones of the UN charter and of international human rights. The Cold War complicated the politics, but the world seemed largely to agree that the South African government was beyond the pale. Time and struggle undid the legacy of Sharpeville; a generation later, South African athletes featured prominently at this summer's London Olympics, a clear reminder that South Africa is once more welcomed within the community of nations.
Human rights and democracy are wonderful and the world justly celebrates South Africa for having attained them. But the years since 1994 have demonstrated that poverty and inequality can be far wilier foes than white supremacy. South Africa was white supremacist, but it was also characterized by a particularly brutal form of capitalism, with few or no protections for workers. That latter hasn't changed much. In the days since the massacre, Lonmin has ordered the miners back to work without adjusted wages; the company'spublic statements have fretted about what it means for their shareholders' bottom line. In the years since 1994, state violence against protesters has been frequent -- witness the 2011 police killing of schoolteacherAndries Tatane during a protest calling attention to squalid conditions in townships. In post-apartheid South Africa, Marikana was not aberrant; it was just excessive.
South Africa is now essentially a "normal" democratic country dealing with issues that, however extreme they sometimes appear, are not actually so unique: economic inequality, labor rights abuses, corporate irresponsibility. These are not South African issues, they're democratic issues. Because South Africa was the last hold-out among the 20th century's legion of racial and colonial states, and because its liberation movement took place after the international consensus on human rights and non-racism had already emerged at least at a rhetorical level, it is often treated as an exceptional case. This may have been true under apartheid, at least to some extent, but it is no longer.
The practice of treating South Africa as so different has been compounded by the myth of the rainbow nation, the singular celebrity of Nelson Mandela, and the much-touted reconciliatory nature of its transition to democracy. While there are certainly aspects of the South African story that are distinctive, Europeans and Americans have their own shameful racial histories. Aspects of South Africa's political economy are, relatively speaking, globally commonplace: neoliberal economic policy, the predominance of multinational corporations, privatization and the weakening of labor are all issues that South Africa is not alone in facing.
Yet many of the mainstream op-eds and editorials have attempted to make sense of the violence byinterpreting it, and South Africa, in a way that emphasizes the country's particular history, rather than considering the ways in which the killings at Marikana speak to larger international trends. The narrative of South African exceptionalism has limited our analysis of this massacre by making it difficult to see it as anything other than further evidence of the failure and disappointment of South African liberation. Yet Marikana is bigger than South Africa. That's not to bash those particular writers or outlets, of course, but to note the tendency to perceive South Africa in the specific, limiting context of apartheid and its aftermath.
What can we learn from the dead in the dust in Marikana? Maybe the lessons are not so much about fulfilling the promise of post-apartheid as they are the less particular but even more daunting challenges of poverty and inequality, those faced by the entire international community. It was a great day when South Africa ended apartheid and joined the community of democratic nations, but that community has problems of its own.
Rather than judge South Africa in the wake of this 21st century Sharpeville, the rest of the world ought to ask what kind of community post-apartheid South Africa has joined.
>via: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/the-end-of-south-afr...
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Nairobi, Kenya
August 27, 2012 Last week was unique for our brothers and sisters in South Africa.
It was the moment the Marikana police murders of over 40 striking miners reminded us of South Africa of Apartheid era. The shooting of miners easily reminded the world of the 1960s Sharpeville Massacre or better still the 1976 Soweto massacre of school children by the police. The three incidents in 1960, 1976 and 2012 spanning nearly 50 years had one thing in common- state sanctioned murders by the police. The one glaring difference was that unlike the Sharpeville and Soweto massacres over four decades earlier, this time round, there was no racist apartheid to blame. The government that murdered its people for the sake of foreign investors was a Black government- a Black President, a Black Police Minister and a Black Police Commissioner! On the day these chilling state murders were taking place, something else was happing in the South African judiciary that equally perplexing. Chris Mahlanga, a black farm hand earlier accused of killing Terrence Blanche, a known White Supremacist over a pay dispute was jailed for life! And who was the presiding judge in this case? It was none other than Justice John Horn, a White South African! As an observer from Nairobi, I may not have all the facts to ascertain where the blame lies in both cases. May be in the Chris Mahlanga case, he confessed to killing a known Nigger hater, may be out of frustration for continuously being exploited with nowhere to turn. And looking at Mahlanda, it would appear like he hadn’t gone to school much and maybe he didn’t even know his basic legal rights and channels for redress. Now he has to rot in jail for the rest of his life for killing the man who might have abused him for a long, long time. The Marikana murders beg more questions than answers. If indeed the Marikana miners were armed with guns and crude weapons, how come on this particular day they did not return fire and wound at least one policeman?
If indeed the police felt threatened, why didn’t they shoot into the air or even use rubber bullets that can equally disable rioters so that they could make arrests? The behavior of Jacob Zuma, Police Minister and Police Commissioner was shocking even to outsiders like us in East Africa. Here was a national tragedy where over 40 lives had been lost, with equal number of families widowed and orphaned. Yet, even before investigations were carried out, the Police Minister and his commissioner were busy defending this apartheid era brutality. Was it necessary to defend the police action so early in the day? Wouldn’t it have been better PR for the Zuma government if the Police Minister and commissioner resigned over this fiasco? At least this cause of action would have mollified the grieving Black families. Alternatively, why didn’t the police commissioner or even the police minister order the immediate suspension of the squad commander and his team to allow for thorough investigation? In civilized societies like South Africa, this is what is considered being accountable and taking responsibility for actions of your office. But the most interesting twist to the whole tragedy was Jacob Zuma’s behavior. Indeed he cut short his official trip to Mozambique following the Marikana murders. However, after he visited the scene and declared a day of mourning, he chose to skip the memorial service. This was not withstanding the claim by Julius Malema earlier that it was Zuma who ordered the police to shoot to kill the miners. As a popularly elected president, it was curious and baffling why a sitting head of state would stay away from such a sensitive national tragedy. Obviously his absence from the Marikana Memorial Service must have easily lent credence to Julius Malema’s wild claims. More importantly, as a head of state, it is on such national tragedies that the sitting president must have the courage and provide leadership by leading from the front. He needed to be at the memorial service to mourn with the nation, console the bereaved families and trash Malema’s claims. He did none of the above. Press reports coming out of South Africa do not seem to indicate that the police that shot dead the miners have been reprimanded. And as anxiety continues to grip the South African mining industry, not to mention the entire COSATU workers’ fraternity, it is anybody’s guess what the future holds for South Africa. However, one thing is for sure. These grisly murders have rekindled the notion that the change of guard in Pretoria has not changed anything for Blacks in that country. The poor South African workers will continue to live in hovels earning a poor man’s wage and get killed like animals should they raise their head. Worse still, the Apartheid era White boss is still the owner of the mines. The Chris Mahlangas of South Africa must prepare to take over from Nelson Mandela by serving life sentences in South African jails for either threatening the comforts of the landowners or killing their tormentors. May be South Africans had better embark on the Second Liberation if they want to attain true freedom this time from the ANC that has betrayed them.
Simphiwe Dana:
Dear Steve Biko
In these times of open letters I have decided to pen one to you, and I feel it is long overdue. That we can write open letters without fear or favour should make you proud as one of the bringers of our freedom. So thank you for walking that path so we, your progeny, may never have to walk it. And may we never abuse these freedoms.
I must say I miss your voice of reason. Since you've been gone the gains have been very little and the sacrifices plenty for this freedom of ours. Do not worry I have no intention of whining but rather I seek answers that will propel us into action, because you're a hands-on kind of a guy and this is the depth of your passion.
I remember your calculation of what the apartheid state would do were they to be forced to cede power to the rightful owners. You spoke of a buffer zone that would help protect their ill-gotten privileges. How did you know?
South Africa is the richest economy in Afrika. This is true and it is beautiful – but who are these rich people when two thirds of the country lives on under R2 500 a month? And who are these poor people living such miserly lives?
Why has every state initiative to alleviate poverty and balance the scales of justice failed? Why has the face of our oppression become so invisible? The elite who have no intention of being hands on discuss it over tea.
You spoke of a separation of powers. Today I see the effects of the separation of political power from economical power spanning the last 18 years. I also see the overzealousness of the buffer zoners in pursuit of excellence in buffer zoning. I see the advent of neo-colonialism because the buffer zoners have been duped into doing nothing for their people, playing into the stereotype that we are not capable of governing ourselves, and playing into the hands of our oppressors. Of course you cannot govern without passion and love for your constituency. And when you have passion and love you have vision.
The truth is we are a defeated people. You knew that and you planned for it. You planned our revival and put it to paper so it would outlive you. How could we have got it so wrong?
We bent over backwards for the idea of freedom and in the process lost the right to raise our fists in the air in salute of the people's power. That power had been swindled right under our feet in secret meetings while we were caught up in the euphoria of a free Mandela: in secret meetings that would create a buffer zone to lull us into a rainbow slumber.
How much of a sacrifice do we require of our leaders? Is 27 years enough? Is your death enough? Did you even choose to be a leader for us to have all these expectations of you? Or was it a matter of circumstance?
As has become obviously apparent, the outcome of the secret meetings was not the desired one for us. What should happen now?
I'm asking you because you connected people, got them on the same page. The ball game is slightly different now. The fight is to now inspire. Our leaders lack the will to do right. Our people have given away power over their lives.
See, you were right. This freedom has to start on the inside. I can believe that despite the skewed negotiations of 1992, you would still have pushed a rigorous education campaign because education trumps all oppression. Education is initiation into life, it teaches us how to fish. Skewed negotiations or not we would have made strides that would have equipped us with enough knowledge to dismantle this system that has such a chokehold on our everyday existence even in the days of our 'freedom'. This knowledge in the hands of a few becomes either a weapon to be used against the masses or it is used to give reason to ridicule those who dare impart it to the masses. They become ostracised by a society well experienced in policing itself.
Now education has become a class symbol. I remember walking barefoot to school in a uniform two sizes too small and on a stomach filled with sour milk or sweet water and umphokoqo (pap). I remember my teachers were not so well equipped, what with Bantu Education and all – but I remember their passion. I remember the books that were available to me at school. I remember Michael Jackson's soy mince and pap lunch meal donations. The feeling in the air was that education was the way out. Most of us never bunked school. Those who did bunk had to hide from the whole community because everyone was your parent and had a right to spank you all the way back to school. It was more about the quality of the knowledge and education than it was about whether we were freezing our buttocks off, barefoot in winter, or in windowless classrooms. This knowledge gave us the tools to break our oppression so that no other child would have to go through that.
I remember also that your understanding of the freedom that education brings stems from being shaped by a similar environment. This environment shaped most of our leaders as well.
That is why I fail to understand the disconnect that exists between our leaders and us, the people, today. How have they failed to use those tools to implement change? How could they feel better than the rest when they were once where the majority of our people are stuck in? How did they get to those positions if they are so uninterested in the plight of the people? Or what has changed?
I believe that, overwhelmed by the weight of concessions made at the negotiations, our leaders decided to save themselves and their families rather and do what they can for the rest. So our wellbeing became a job for them instead of the next stage of our liberation. That is why they are so hard on us and are even slightly disgusted when they see the true face of blackness in our stark poverty. Then they will say things like: "Pick up your socks, no one owes you anything." This can only be a show of their disgust at their own failure, again playing right into the hands of our oppressors. I can imagine that this weighs heavily on those within the power structures who do not see governance as a job but phase three of liberation. I feel for them.
Now 'blacks are lazy' has become the mantra of the privileged and those who aspire to privilege, even as our broken-backed mothers and fathers are serving them on, hand and foot.
This is what makes me sad 'Ta Biko. We have become agents of our own demise. We no longer have a common vision. Individualism becomes a trap if not understood within the concept or context of Ubuntu. Unfortunately it is a trap that ensnares not only those who fall into it but anyone else within reach. We have become victims of individualism, populism and of our leaders' short-sightedness. These leaders, rather than put their heads together and draft a way forward after The Deceit, squabble over positions and ideals. They divide us – and the people lose. At election time they bring our people bags of mealie meal, T-shirts, and remind them who pays their social grants. Do you think a revolution is necessary to bring everyone back to the fold? Or is there a chance we can still talk to each other?
Afrika has always had royalty, and in fact has thrived on royalty. This has been our system of governance from time immemorial. It is all we know. So I have no issues with political royalty, because royalty status could be withdrawn from one family and given to another if the people deemed this to be the best course of action. Yes, we had our National Executive Councils even then. I only take issue with royalty when it does not realize that the people anointed it to serve the nation, not the other way round
Why do we need governance if not for this?
Unfortunately, unlike in the olden days, we cannot break away from this mother tribe called South Africa and form a new tribe because the rules have changed. We have to stand our ground and fight for a better life. What must we do with all this brokenness? Tell me.
Could it be that it is only now that we are truly defeated? Because I find that the symbol of our oppression is being blackened everyday, while the true perpetrators lurk in the shadows. Could it be that now we will deliver ourselves willingly to neo-colonialism because it was right, we are like children, simple minded and incapable of governing ourselves? I ask because this sentiment is growing out here. There is no cohesion in South Africa; there is especially no cohesion within the black community. It is dog eat dog out here. Our centuries' old fear of being irrelevant and less haunts us, making us trample over each other's heads to get to the top. It is brutal.
The ultimate goal is to be a white black person with your own minions: The boss who's posterior everyone kisses. Yes we want the car, the suit, the job, and the farm. And that is ok - but we don't enjoy it unless there are others below who can envy us - and that is not ok. This is the individualism and lack of vision I am talking about. It breeds greed and classist superiority. These are traits of a defeated people not comfortable in their own skin. Surely in a country riddled by racist oppression we cannot afford that. It is a vicious cycle and will not end well. Why is our happiness and contentment dependent on being better than others? Is this not how societies break down? Why can't we work towards equality?
Our society is a reflection of who we truly are. The crime, hate, rape, anger, greed, powerlessness, poverty and lack of empathy is a reflection of a rot in our society. I foresee either a revolution or a police welfare state unless we, the people, engage on these questions truthfully.
I have so many questions. And the answers are mapped within the questions. I know it is not a single individual that can answer these questions, but all of us. The answers lie within. However we could do with guidance; someone to just plonk us on the right path and shake us out of our slumber.
I miss your voice of reason.