South Africa bloodbath exposes frustration

Discontent has been brewing for months in South Africa’s mining industry. What started with a demand for higher wages ended on Thursday in a massacre that reveals the extent of the frustration and anger. Our correspondent Elles van Gelder has been talking to people about their reactions.
The miners gathered over a week ago on the hill next to the third-largest platinum mine in the world. Wrapped in blankets against the winter cold and armed with machetes, sticks and knives they demanded their salaries to be tripled. Their protest has now ended in tragedy with a total body count of 44 .

They struck illegally because they feel abandoned by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The NUM supports President Jacob Zuma and his ruling ANC - a party that is increasingly seen as filling its own pockets at the expense of South Africa’s poor. The discontent is fuelled by a more militant union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) which is trying to get disgruntled mineworkers to join their ranks.

Shooting in self-defence
The police claim they had no choice and say they were defending themselves. But a lot of South Africans are outraged about the tragedy. "The police should have been able to handle this differently than shoot and kill," says 33-year-old marketing manager Gosebo Mathope from Johannesburg. It’s not the first time the police’s inability to control unrest peacefully has been exposed. A protestor was shot last year at a demonstration against poor living conditions.

Miners not alone
Mathope hopes that something good will come out of the tragedy at the Marikana Mine. ‘This is not an issue that will go away. Unemployment is high and people work for slave wages. This could have happened at many other places.’

His comment that it could happen elsewhere is important as the mine workers are not alone in their disappointment with the progress that’s been made since the end of apartheid. There have been an increasing number of protests in recent years in various sectors. "And these protests in South Africa are becoming more and more violent,’ says Quinton Mtyala (34) from Cape Town. ‘When the police are met with violence I can’t expect them to respond any differently. Two of their colleagues already died earlier this week." [In an earlier incident at the mine ed]

Soul searching needed
The strike at the mine wasn’t unexpected. It follows strikes and disturbances at other pits were people were killed earlier this year. Mtyala feels there has been too much silence around the conflict. ‘The government should have stepped in. It is sad that people got killed like this.’

The main concen now is that it doesn’t become a blame game but that all parties involved do some soul-searching, says project manager of micro-enterprise start ups Hilton Johnson (31). "We need to go past pointing fingers. We need to take collective responsibility. We shouldn’t stick our heads in the sand about the level of inequality in our country and the fact that people have had enough. The political machine has to understand that it can’t go on like this."