The appalling conditions under which miners live highlight the need to share wealth through giving substantial shares to workers, says Max du Preez.
The worst thing we South Africans could do to the memory of the miners and policemen who died at Marikana two years ago is not to understand how that tragedy became possible and not learning its lessons.
The Farlam Commission of Inquiry will hopefully give clarity when it issues its report in the next few months, but there are some political and societal issues such a judicial commission can’t really pronounce on.
It seems clear that the political restlessness bubbling under the surface in the post-Mandela era just needed a trigger to burst into the open. The Marikana massacre was that catalyst.
The governing ANC was drifting away from ordinary people, becoming more elitist and enjoying the trappings of power too much.
The transition to democracy was smooth, but the symbolism of liberation was wearing thin and the working class, the poor and the unemployed looked around them and found that too little had changed from the apartheid era.
That sentiment made it possible for the SACP, Cosatu and the ANC Youth League, marginalised by Thabo Mbeki, to stage a palace revolution and unceremoniously replace him as president with Jacob Zuma.
Now the “Left”, the “champions of the poor and the working class” were in charge and expectations grew of a shift to more fundamental change and pro-poor government.
There was going to be a second transition, a real one this time.
Citizens were in for a shock.
Cheap populism became the new culture and corruption, nepotism and weak governance grew to new heights.
Zuma was a massive disappointment: his private life was messy and embarrassing; his family and clan suddenly became very wealthy; his party became more divided; he spent more time trying to stay out of jail and building his private billionaire’s villa at Nkandla than boldly leading an initiative to correct the path his country was on.
The dream was deferred once again.
And as Mbeki’s favourite poem by Langston Hughes goes: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? … Or does it explode?”
We can blame Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union leader Joseph Mathunjwa’s relentless attitude or Julius Malema’s reckless rhetoric all we want. We know today that the mineworkers had a strong case.
We have seen under what conditions the people in Marikana and other mines live. We have been reminded that the century-old migrant labour system is still largely in place.
The ANC’s arrogance and disregard for the marginalised had spilled over to its alliance partner, Cosatu, especially the once proud National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
NUM leaders became closer to the ruling elite and mine owners than the workers. That was why the workers abandoned them and sided with Amcu.
Cyril Ramaphosa, in my view one of the best leaders in the ANC, became the symbol of what had gone wrong in the ANC. Despite his background as a trade union leader, he seemed to care more for the profitability of the mining company he had shares in than for the workers.
Everything I know about that fatal day – August 16, 2012 – tells me that the police were more than just badly trained; they were ruthless and in a killing mode.
Would they have acted like that if the strikers belonged to NUM or another Cosatu union? I suspect not.
They were, knowingly or unknowingly, mirroring the prevailing attitude in the ANC: if you’re not one of us, you are free game.
The ANC leadership demonstrated this callous attitude with their cool reaction to the massacre and at the first and second anniversaries of the event.
The ANC’s recent statements that the mining charter would have to be reviewed to increase black ownership should be welcomed, but not if that means handing shares to an elite few BEE beneficiaries.
We know through the events at Aurora mine and other examples that the race of mining bosses doesn’t determine how workers are treated.
It is imperative for South Africa to move into a new way of doing business through, among other things, substantial workers’ shareholding of mines and businesses.
Marikana changed South Africa forever. The genie is out of the bottle.
The goalposts have shifted significantly. The EFF and Numsa’s (National Union of Metalworkers of SA) militancy reminds us of that day.
The white middle class, the new black middle and upper classes and the business sector should not have any illusions that their survival depends on a fundamental shift in how we view the structure of our economy and how we share wealth.
The ANC should take the lead.
* Max du Preez is an author and columnist.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Pretoria News