The killing of 34 striking miners by police at the Marikana
mine in South Africa
last Friday is a tragedy that touches more than just the families and
communities of the dead. It also highlights the failure of post-apartheid South Africa to
improve the lives of a majority of its citizens.
The incident has opened up wounds and exposed the bitter
ironies and contradictions of the country almost 20 years after the end of
apartheid. Graphic TV coverage filmed just behind the police line went round
the world and recalled memories of massacres from the Apartheid era –
Sharpeville, Shell House, Boipatong and Bisho.
Trouble at the mine had been brewing for some time. A
report by the church-backed Bench Marks Foundation last year revealed
that local communities at the Marikana Mine were “frustrated and angry with the
mining company… levels of fatal incidents were unacceptable… residential
conditions under which Lonmin employees live are appalling”. The report said
that last year the company sacked 9,000 workers.
Lonmin, the London
based company that owns the mine, is the reconstituted Lonrho which was
described in 1973 by the then Conservative Prime Minister, Ted Heath, as “the
unacceptable face of capitalism”. Its internal procedures at that time broke
company law and Lonrho also ignored sanctions against white-ruled Rhodesia. Its
chief executive, Tiny Rowland, spread corruption throughout Africa,
and systematically exploited the continent’s workforce. That era has thankfully
passed. But ironically, one of its current non-executive directors is Cyril
Ramaphosa, the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers and the key
negotiator for the Africa National Congress in the talks that led to the end of
apartheid. Evidently, not even his status and skills could create a deal that
would have avoided these deaths.
We will have to wait for the government inquiry to report
on the causes of the fatal clashes, but I have seen no clear analysis of what
led directly to the confrontation. Most agree that the strike was led by a new
militant union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMC),
which was spreading a militant message and edging out the 30-year-old National Union
of Mineworkers (NUM). The NUM is now in an uneasy alliance with the ANC
government and subscribes to its broad policies and strategies. It seems that
the new AMC Union and some of the miners at Marikana saw an opportunity of
getting higher wages by striking and using violence. It is also possible that
it was a one-off incident caused by unfortunate misunderstandings.
Somewhat confusing is the fact that although almost a third
of the workforce at the mine are ‘sub-contractors’ – casual labour, recruited
and paid by gang masters – the strike was led by the rock drill operators: an
elite workforce who do tough, dirty, dangerous work but are not badly paid by
South African standards. They, like most workers in the formal sector, got
above inflation pay-rises last year.
It’s possible that something deeper is happening here. The
success of the new South
Africa has always depended on the ability of
the government to rebalance society after apartheid by creating jobs and
providing health, education and other benefits to the mass of people. On the
whole, South Africans have been very patient. At first, the poorest were
encouraged simply by seeing black ministers and civil servants in government.
They would wait their turn.
Like two lines tracking across a graph, the expectations of
the people and the delivery of the state narrowed, widened, and narrowed again
over the years. But they have still not met. The clock has always been ticking
and it is clear after nearly 20 years, the gap has actually widened. And now a
new generation is coming through who never experienced explicit apartheid
and the struggle against it. They are exposed to all the consumerism and
celebrity lifestyles that the rich world produces. They want it and they want
it now.
The deal struck in the early 1990s between the last
apartheid government, the ANC and the mining houses was that the free market
policies be allowed to continue (under apartheid this was, of course, an
un-free market) but with three changes. Firstly all negative discrimination had
to end. Economic opportunity as well as the franchise would be extended to all
South Africans as would services such as health, education and pensions.
Secondly, black people should be given an ownership stake in South African
business and a greater role in managing it. This positive discrimination became
known at Black Economic Empowerment; a huge panoply of rules and regulations,
tax break and contracts to incentivise or force companies to give stakes and
employment to non white people. Thirdly, the mining houses, which are the major
source of South Africa’s
wealth, were allowed to de-list in South Africa and ship their capital
off to other countries and tax havens.
Has the deal worked? A short book published this week by
the veteran South African economist, Professor Sampie Terreblanche, spells out why
is hasn’t. He points out that for most of the last century 20 percent of the
South African population owned 70 percent of the country’s wealth, while 70
percent of the population owned only 20 percent of the wealth. Put another way:
in 1993, the year before Nelson Mandela was elected President, the richest 10
percent of South Africans owned 53.9 percent of the country’s wealth. In
2008 the richest 10 percent owned 58.1 percent. During the same period, the
income of the poorest 50 percent declined from 8.4 to 7.8 percent. This growing
imbalance makes South Africa one of the most –
if not the most – unequal society in the world, says Terreblanche. “Since the early 1970s the poorest 50 percent of the
population has been exposed to a vicious circle – or a downward spiral – of
growing poverty, growing unemployment and growing inequality” he says.
Terreblanche blames this growing poverty on the historic
political, economic and social compromise agreement between the last apartheid
government, the ANC and the South African Communist Party. He writes: “When it
was decided that taxation and expenditure would remain a fixed proportion of
GDP, it was not possible for the ANC government to implement a comprehensive
redistribution policy. The elite compromise created the space for a black elite
formation, but not for a policy that would alleviate the poverty of the poorest
50 percent”. In fact, he says, it has made it worse.
Was the explosion at Marikana the first sign that people
realise the pact has not worked?
