- Former African National Congress youth leader Julius Malema addresses miners Saturday at the Lonmin mine in South Africa, where 34 miners were killed this week. He said police had no right to shoot them. / Themba Hadebe/Associated Press
By Michelle Faul
Associated Press
August 19, 2012
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Miners and their families welcomed expelled politician Julius Malema on Saturday as he told the thousands who gathered at the site where 34 miners were killed last week that South African police had no right to fire the live bullets that killed them.
Malema, the former youth leader of the governing African National Congress, arrived as family members continued to hunt for loved ones missing since Thursday’s shootings. Women said they did not know whether their husbands and sons were among the dead, or among the 78 wounded or about 256 arrested by police on charges from public violence to murder.
“They had no right to shoot,” Malema said, even if the miners had opened fire first.
Malema is the first politician to address the miners at the site during a more than weeklong saga in which 10 people were killed before Thursday’s shootings — including two police officers butchered to death and two mine security guards whom strikers burned alive in their vehicle. He said he had come because the government had turned its back on the strikers.
- South African President Jacob Zuma
Strikers complained earlier that President Jacob Zuma had not come to hear their side of the story when he flew to the Marikana platinum mine on Friday, cutting short his part in a summit in neighboring Mozambique so that he could visit wounded miners in the hospital.
Zuma said he was organizing a commission of inquiry to get to the truth about the shootings.
Malema, who was expelled in April after accusations that he sowed divisions in Zuma’s African National Congress party, charged that some top-ranking ANC members had shares in the Lonmin platinum mine and implied that they had no interest in seeing miners earn higher wages. About 3,000 drilling operators at the mine, 40 miles northwest of Johannesburg, have been demanding an increase from the minimum wage of $690 a month to $1,560.
Malema called for Zuma and his police minister to resign or back the striking miners’ wage demands — a call that brought cheers from the rally.
“President Zuma presided over the massacre of our people,” Malema said.
When Malema arrived, the women ululated their welcome, and men who had been sitting stood and clapped. There were more cheers when Malema persuaded police at the scene to withdraw several hundred meters with their armored cars.
South Africans are in shock over the killings. The police said they acted to save their lives after a group of miners armed mainly with machetes and clubs charged at them, and at least one miner shot at them.
Police responded with automatic gunfire and pistols.
Video replayed by TV stations reminded South Africans of apartheid-era scenes of white police officers opening fire on black protesters. This time, the police were black, but the scene has South Africans debating the failure of the ANC to deliver on basic promises to provide better lives with homes, jobs, health and education.
The Lonmin miners live in corrugated iron shacks without running water or electricity. Some ask why their government, running Africa’s richest nation, has not been able to improve their lot nearly 20 years after the ouster of apartheid.
The ANC’s youth wing, which Malema once led, argues that nationalization of the nation’s mines and farms is the only way to redress the evils of the apartheid past. Zuma’s government has downplayed those demands.
In video above, the CEO of Anglo-American Platinum (Amplats), which owns the Marikana platinum mine, strongly opposes South Africa’s declared intention of nationalizing the mining industry, despite the utter squalor in which miners have been forced to live for decades.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2012/08/19/decades-of-squalor-on-a-south-african-mine
Industry leaders have been fighting militant unionists’ demands for better wages and working conditions for months, as indicated in article below.
http://mg.co.za/article/2012-07-23-amplats-loss-making-shafts-labour-militancy
According to the company’s website, “Anglo American Platinum Limited is the world’s leading primary producer of platinum group metals (PGMs) and accounts for about 40% of the world’s newly mined platinum. The Company is listed on the JSE Limited and has its headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa.”
http://www.angloplatinum.com/default.asp
The miners’ deaths, which Amplats is blaming on “inter-union” violence, actually result from Amplats’ greed for profits. While complaining of falling profits in the platinum industry, it is buying out the Oppenheimer family’s shares in the De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer.
http://uk.fashionmag.com/news-212716-Anglo-American-to-buy-Oppenheimers-out-of-De-Beers
