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Jason E Cooper

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Jason E Cooper

Tag Archives: south africa

South African miners continue to resist and refuse to fade away.

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by spideysaves in Politics, World News

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miners, south africa, strike

More than 1,000 striking South African miners are demonstrating at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, where police shot dead 34 of their colleagues last month. Dozens of police have arrived at the scene while a helicopter hovers above the protesting rock-drill operators.

One man at the front of the column waved a placard reading “We want 12,500 or nothing else” Another protester said the demonstrators were heading to Lonmin’s nearby Karee mine to “take out the people who are working in the mine shaft”. 

Surely Lomin must realise that increasing wages is cheaper than fighting a strike and the business disruption it brings. As comrades have already died for this cause this will not or should not simply fade away.

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Miners charged under ‘common purpose’ law from Apartheid era.

31 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by spideysaves in Social History, World News

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apartheid, miners, south africa

270 miners have now been charged with the murder of 34 of their colleagues who were shot by the police two week s ago in what has become known as the “Marikana  massacre”.

The best known case of the use “common purpose” doctrine was that of the “Upington 14”, who were sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder of a policeman even though the judge acknowledged that they did not carry out the killing.

We will wait and see what the backlash from this will be.

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South African Mining Dispute: I hope the following makes you want to go and smash things

30 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by spideysaves in Politics, World News

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south africa, striking miners

David Bullard got sacked from the Times under allegations of racism.

 

Mining, the leftie media and Marikana

David Bullard

29 August 2012

 

David Bullard says his sympathies do not lie with strikers when armed to the teeth

 

When the 21st century clashes with the 15th century

Some years ago I was invited during the quiet post-holiday January period to go down the TauTona gold mine near Carletonville. It was then, at almost 4kms deep, the world’s deepest mining operation and probably still is. I’m hesitant to make that claim because somebody out there in cyberspace probably knows of a Chinese mine that’s 5kms deep and will chide me for poor research in the comments column below. This is the enormous personal risk we Politicsweb columnists take every week just to keep you amused.

Anyway back to what I still think is a pretty deep mine. It took ages to get to the bottom in a series of lift shafts that travel rather slower than the lifts at Sun City. Everything that is underground at that mine has gone down that one shaft because there is no other way down. At the lowest point of the mine it is rather like a large underground station.

Trains take workers off to the rock face and the place is well lit and spacious. It’s only when you wonder what would happen if all the lights went out or if there were some seismic activity that you begin to feel uneasy. The return trip to the surface took over an hour (on a VIP visitors pass) so this is not a great place to be when the earth begins to rumble.

The visit to the mine included a look at the stopes. These were diagonal tunnels barely two foot high into which men crawl and lie on a thick protective blanket while they operate rock drills. The protective blanket is to lessen the discomfort of lying on jagged rocks but it certainly doesn’t make the job comfortable. So the rock driller spends most of his 8 hour shift lying on his side in sweltering heat drilling away at the rock face with a very unwieldly tool. It’s a wretched way to have to make a living.

Putting a price on a job like that is impossible but R12 500 a month certainly wouldn’t do it for me. In fact I can’t think of any price that would tempt me to spend a couple of hours going underground every day to drill rock for eight hours before taking another couple of hours to return to the surface at the end of my shift. But that’s because I am lucky enough to have choices.

The men at the Marikana platinum mine aren’t so fortunate and if they don’t go underground to drill rock then they don’t have too many other career choices. It’s not as if they can hand in their resignation letters and go off and become BMW car salesman. Which is almost certainly why the tension levels have been as high as they have been at the mine over the past few weeks.

The right to strike is recognised in South Africa as it is in most civilised parts of the world. What isn’t recognised is the right to turn up at the picket line armed to the teeth with weapons and a clear intent to draw the blood of either fellow (non striking) workers, management or the police.

The leftie media have, rather predictably, placed the blame for the Marikana “massacre” on the police and those wicked capitalists who take such delight in exploiting poor workers. Lefties would be the first to complain if the police didn’t respond immediately to their own distress calls but the police become fair game when it’s a matter of what is portrayed as the poor, downtrodden worker versus the establishment.

The reality is rather different. For starters, while the job of a rock driller probably ranks as a semi skilled underground job it’s not one that is difficult to teach. So in a country like South Africa with high unemployment the supply of potential rock drillers exceeds demand which is why the price for the job is relatively low. Every employer “exploits” workers because the aim of the game in capitalism is to run an operation as cheaply and efficiently as possible and maximise profits. The platinum mining industry is no different and if the cost of digging the stuff out of the ground and refining it exceeds the market price for platinum then it’s time to shut up shop.

That means that a rock driller is unlikely to be worth R12 500 (net) in the current market. It’s nothing to do with exploitation and everything to do with economic reality. Take the argument to a less emotional level and ask yourself whether a nicely brought up white girl can expect to keep her job in a cosy bookshop if people no longer buy books? Obviously not.

To coin the phrase “massacre” for what happened at Marikana may help sell newspapers and give talk show hosts something to froth over but it ignores the fact that the police were hideously outnumbered and in great personal danger. To compare it to Sharpeville is a disgrace. If the police had been overrun then the media would have undoubtedly been reporting a large number of police deaths and agonising over that.

The blame for the killings at Marikana quite clearly lies with the unions and the barbarous behaviour of some of the strikers. I have every sympathy with the police and with Lonmin management who have inevitably been portrayed as the bad guys. The problem is complex: how on earth do you negotiate rationally with people who still believe that smearing animal fat over their bodies will protect them from bullets?

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Tensions as South Africa miners continue strikes

27 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by spideysaves in Politics, Social History, World News

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miners, south africa

Hundreds of defiant miners have regrouped for a protest near the spot where South African police killed 34 of their colleagues, as platinum giant Lonmin said less than a quarter of employees had shown up for work.

Preliminary figures are 13 per cent average attendance across all shafts this morning. There have been incidents of intimidation towards bus drivers overnight as well as intimidation of… workers this morning, preventing them from coming to work

– Platinum giant Lonmin

This comes as Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, is under increased pressure to manage the situation amid calls from some sectors that he should not be re-eleted to the head of the country’s ruling party in December.

Strikers gathered on Monday in an open space, just metres from where police shot dead 34 of their colleagues on August 16. Earlier strike violence in the area had claimed the lives of 10 other people, including two policemen.

Police in armoured trucks kept a close watch over the crowd, as tensions and fears remained high following the deadly unrest. A miner from Lesotho told the AFP news agency.

We are aware that some people have gone back to work, we have noted that behaviour, and we need to come up with a plan to deal with them. By going to work they are say[ing] the murder that happened here was in vain, and they are fine with it.”

South Africa’s police watchdog on Monday was probing complaints that officers had beaten and injured platinum workers arrested after the police shooting.

 

Autopsy reports on most of dead meanwhile showed they had been shot from behind, a local newspaper reported on Monday.

The post-mortem reports indicate that most of the people were fleeing from the police when they got killed A lot of them were shot in the back and the bullets exited through their chests,

 

via Tensions as S Africa miners continue strikes – Africa – Al Jazeera English.

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Solidarity to striking miners in South Africa

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by spideysaves in Economy, Politics, World News

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labour movement, picketing, south africa

Despite Lonmin threaten all those who do not return to work they will be sacked, over 70% of workers remain defiant and have continued to picket the mine entrance. Whilst the police shooting has led to worldwide condemnation the mining firm are standing fast with their hardline against the strikers.

Which side are you on boys, which side are you on? 

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Capitalism has failed!

07 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by spideysaves in Politics, Social History

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capitalism is dead, politics web, south africa

A friend at work pointed the following article in a South Arfrican news report out to me, which I found quite interesting:

We will continually tell the world that both communism and capitalism have failed equally with the same catastrophic consequences in the lives of the poor. Until the poor can learn to stand up and fight an exploitative system which economically oppresses them, they will continue to play second fiddle and be regarded as the second economy.

To read the full article it can be found here:

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=265270&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389

Thanks to Ashen for pointing this out.

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