It began in Marikana, in the North West province, outside of the country’s economic province, Gauteng, but located in the platinum capital of the world, Rustenburg. In almost the same cultural expression as the Maji Maji Rebellion at the turn of the 20th Century, in what was then called German East Africa, toilers of the Rustenburg mines embarked on a strike for a wage increase of up to R12 500 per month on August 2012.
This script was partly written for them: with worker demands directed at major global players such as Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin, the strike was set in an international setting in which platinum mining in South Africa is supported by the country possessing, by some estimates, over 80% of the world’s platinum group metal reserves. Accordingly, a range of embedded players were ready to protect their interests.
Coupled with the African National Congress’s (ANC) business friendly Cyril Ramaphosa’s stake in Lonmin, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the striking miners had an uphill battle ahead of them.
Indeed, between 14 August 2012 to 16 August 2012, a total number of 34 deaths and 78 injured striking miners passed through what appears to have been the vengeful artillery of the South African Police Service (SAPS), also under pressure from their handlers.
A massacre had taken place. One must thus infer that the actions of the police and these handlers sent a chilling message of fear to the surrounding communities and AMCU.
That was 2012.
On 23 January 2014, AMCU and the platinum miners, having wrestled National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) out of the platinum sector, embarked on yet another strike for that very same R12 500. The result, as Andile Mngxitama put it, “they starved and bled for it”.
Interestingly, the poverty and wreckage brought about by the strike was met with a national response among pockets of citizens who offered all sorts gifts, food and money to sustain some semblance of dignity for the striking miners and their families.
For a brief moment during the strike, as a result of SMS’s sent by Lonmin to striking miners to return to work, coupled with the ANC’s declaration of the strike being of a political nature, actions which had the potential to place the strike back on a purely legal footing, the specter of another massacre seemed to loom large. While miners deaths trickled in the mining community of Marikana, the security establishment was “eager” to just enforce peace and security.
But the striking miners and AMCU held on.
On 12 June 2014, after the strike can officially be recorded as having been the longest strike in South Africa’s mining history according to David Van Wyk on his Facebook page, AMCU declared the strike over.
The deal, in a Business Day article titled Amcu says platinum strike is finally over, deal to be signed today, provides for a R1000-a-month increase which is said to be signed. In the same article, AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa received a hero’s welcome with workers chanting “Sign! Sign! Sign!” as he read out the agreement at the Royal Bafokeng stadium, in Rustenburg, packed with thousands of striking miners.
Poignantly put, Andile says that “Amcu is now established in the hearts and souls of workers… they have broken a tradition to create a new radical trade unionism”. And this, precisely at this point, AMCU has begun to eclipse the struggle leverage that the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has always held. It remains to be seen how NUM responds to this.
Secondly, this has far reaching consequences for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa’s (NUMSA) ambition outside the flagging COSATU.
For one, politically, NUM seems to have been displaced. At least in so far as AMCU has carved itself out as a workers organizations in that part of the country. During the strike, in a strange but explicable alignment to the ANC NEC position and Lonmin, NUM made the call for workers right to return to work amidst the violence. It also expressed its concern the damage the strike will have on the economy.
This was an open indication that the union had no appetite to shake up the industry.
Secondly, NUMSA’s ambition of a “United Front” comes amidst a growing radical awareness represented by two poles: the EFF, which officially has presence in all provinces, and AMCU, which has sealed its standing in the platinum belt.
These ambitions might just have to find home in one of the two, but, because of the Left opportunism signaled by the idea of a worker’s party, that home might be with AMCU unless NUMSA wants to go at it alone. The problem with the latter is that it has the potential to divide the call for Black liberation.
David van Wyk concludes that “a radical demand would be the nationalization of the mines, a less radical demand would be an immediate commission of enquiry into mining in this country”. These two options describe the lines of division drawn between ‘revolution and reform’ emerging between political forces and sown in particular political moments.
But its foolhardy to talk about the undoing of ANC hegemony, as Stephen Grootes contends in his recent article titled “End of South Africa’s platinum mine strike signals end of ANC domination” written for The Guardian.
Firstly, the ANC has no hegemony but electoral dominance, which does give it weight in government. It is, however, a powerful social and political force. Secondly, the project of Black liberation is bigger than government. If it has not become apparent yet, a large part of the attacks on the ANC from these forces (AMCU, EFF and NUMSA) has been focused on the party’s relationship with white capital and consequent slow level of transformation.
This is not a simple issue of regime change as some would like.
AMCU and the EFF have not only amplified the ANC’s historic call for all of society to share in the wealth of the country, but have begun to carve a paradigm shift in the political and economic arrangement of the country, at least ideologically.
Because paradigms are vulnerable to the accumulation of “anomalous” findings, as Thomas Kuhn reminds us, “social change is begun by works that breakthrough the limitations of the current paradigm and accommodates the new information”. The jury is still out as to whether, and how, the ANC will respond to this. However, the business shrewdness of Ramaphosa does not bode well for the ANC in this regard.