One year after the Marikana massacre

Both capitalists and working class prepare for unforeseen turmoil Liv Shange, DSM (CWI South Africa) On August 16, 2012, at Marikana, a bloody line was drawn in South Africa’s political sand when police in cold blood shot dead 34 workers and wounded 78. The few seconds of the massacre that were shown on TV tore down decades of carefully nurtured illusions about the ANC government and the capitalist state. The state’s resort to the most brutal form of reaction against the striking Lonmin workers set in motion a new period of revolution and counterrevolution in South Africa. A year later, a mining bosses’ offensive against jobs and worker rights is gathering pace. With the lessons of Marikana imprinted on the consciousness of millions of workers and youth, the scene it set for further mighty upheavals centred on the mining industry. The massacre on August 16, 2012, was a carefully orchestrated operation calculated to crush the Lonmin workers’ deadly challenge to the government and the capitalist order. Provoked by days (and years) of repression, the thousands of workers gathered on the hill, ‘the mountain, outside Marikana were fenced in with razor wire, attacked from behind and from the air with water bombs, and automatic gunfire. Chased towards the five-meter opening in the fence, in front of TV cameras, a first group was shot down. The majority of those killed and wounded were hunted down, out of sight of the cameras, among the rocks and bushes at another small hill. Many were shot at close range, in the back or with their arms stretched up to surrender. Police deliberately destroyed the faces of the dead by running over their skulls with armoured vehicles. Less well-planned, perhaps, was the police ‘investigation’ of the scene which has been revealed as a clumsy cover-up attempt. The true story of Marikana was forced out in the open by the Lonmin workers’ defiant continuation of the struggle after the massacre and the industry-wide strike that followed. In the days immediately before and after the massacre, the public was washed over by a virtual flood of vicious propaganda against the Lonmin workers and their struggle. The workers who had been left, by the National Union of Mineworkers’(NUM’s) betrayal, with no choice but to take the fight for a decent wage into their own hands and for this crime were subjected to brutal repression were painted out variously as bloodthirsty criminals and murderers, muthi-possessed savages or hapless victims of manipulation by a ‘third force’. Jeremy Cronin of the South African ‘Communist’ Party (SACP) took the prize by publicly condemning the strikers a ‘Pondoloand vigilante mafia’. While the state and its appendices continue to hammer the refrain of police ‘self-defence’ at the Farlam Commission, this just shows how detached from reality this farcical show trial is since in the rest of society, these initial ‘truths’ were long overturned by the workers’ struggle. Bloody repression of working class struggles in general, and mineworkers’ struggles in particular, of course did not begin at Marikana. Just two weeks earlier, on August 1, 2012, for example, five protesting workers were shot dead by police at the Aquarius K5 shaft outside Rustenburg. Their murders warranted no more than a paragraph on the business pages. The scale and publicity of the violence meted out on the Lonmin workers, which shook SA and the world, were no accidents. This was the calculated response to the, up until then, most serious challenge to the foundations of the African National Congress’ (ANC’s) rule – a mineworkers’ uprising against the NUM, which throughout the democratic era has been the key to control the mineworkers and thereby the mining industry, the backbone of the SA economy; by so doing also becoming a bearing pillar of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the ANC-led Alliance. The threat was not just to NUM’s authority but to the ANC’s ability to maintain the capitalist ruling class’ confidence in its ability to ‘control the black working class’ (as a recent Business Day editorial so helpfully defined the ANC’s reason for being). ‘Concomitant action’, the expression used by ANC leader and Lonmin shareholder Cyril Ramaphosa to urge the crack-down, therefore had to mean asserting the state’s power through the barrels of automatic rifles. The attempt to drown the worker-led strike in blood, instead of shoring up these relationships, exposed them to millions with blinding and instant clarity. One of the key lessons of Marxism – that any state at its core consists of ‘armed bodies of men and women’ defending the ruling class, while also relying on ‘softer’ institutions (such as parliament as a means to reinforce illusions in the system on regular basis) and extended arms such as the trade unions, political parties and the media to justify the oppression of the many by the few – was suddenly understood way beyond the reach of committed socialists. Marikana spelled out that the ANC government is a party that exists to defend the interests of the capitalist bosses, that the NUM is the main tool to carry out this task, and that the supposedly neutral police, courts and media are in fact little more than the private securities and praise singers of big business. Flowing immediately from these conclusions is the search for a working class alternative. Mineworkers, first in the Rustenburg platinum belt and then throughout the country’s mines, immediately followed the Lonmin workers’ example of setting up independent strike committees. The NUM fulltime shop stewards, often earning ten times the wage of ordinary workers, were chased out of the union offices. Through the spreading, unification and coordination of the strikes the mining houses and the government were forced to instead recognise the workers’ committees. In the minds of the striking workers this was right from the start linked to the need to also take the government bosses out of their Union Building offices, and put in place a workers’ government. As workers regained the confidence in the ability to organise, fight and win, the idea of building a new party, a working class alternative to the ANC and all the established parties, took root as an urgent necessity. The development of the strike committees into the National Strike Committee by October 2012 and the formation of the Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) by December 2012 came out of these realisations. Marikana registered a new level of class consciousness within the SA working class, which is forced to fight on several fronts – in the workplace, in the community – on daily basis. When battles are now escalating again this is against the backdrop of the recognition that things cannot continue as before – both within the working class and the capitalist class. Again, SA’s political and economic contradictions come to their most concentrated expression in the mining industry. While the R15bn in lost sales as a result of the strike wave August-December 2012 is certainly an irritant to the bosses, this is not the cause of the looming onslaught on jobs. It is the relentless downturn in the world economy which have seen prices of e.g. platinum and gold plummet and eaten into the profits and room to manoeuvre of the mining multinationals. Their major objectives are to cut the ‘over-supply’ of minerals such as platinum and gold to restore profitability and to shoot down the workers’ newfound confidence in struggle. Already before Marikana, the mining houses were testing the waters for reducing over-production by attempting the closure of some shafts around Rustenburg. Having been forced to retreat by the strike movement, they resumed the offensive immediately after the strikes were over, starting with the lock-out and eviction of 6000 workers at Harmony Gold’s Kusasalethu shaft in Carletonville on New Year’s Day 2013. Amplats, the world’s biggest platinum producer, followed two weeks later announcing the so-called moth-balling (closure with the possibility of re-opening later) of four shafts in Rustenburg, the closure of one mine and the retrenchment of 14 000 workers. Under pressure from government and the continued combativitiy of the mineworkers, the numbers have been reduced to three shafts and 6000 workers, for now. While the AMCU (Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union) is still busy with the company’s ‘consultation on this ‘strategic review’, the bosses are already acting on the plan and count on its finalisation within the second half of 2013. Anglo Gold Ashanti has announced a 300 000oz cut out of its total 920 000oz global production – in just one year, most likely concentrated to SA. Like Amplats, Glencore Xstrata is a pilot case for the ruling class. They too understand the working class truth that an injury to one is an injury to all. Throughout 2013, brief spontaneous worker-led strikes have continued to break out throughout the mining industry. At Glencore-Xstrata’s Eastern Chrome mine in Tubatse, Limpopo, 2000 workers struck in May in protest against the company’s protection of a white supervisor who had racially assaulted a black worker. The company acted immediately by having the strike declared illegal and dismissed the 2000 workers. Backed by SA mining bosses and international speculators united, the Glencore Xstrata bosses are hell-bent on consolidating a defeat for the workers, who are fighting for their reinstatement supported by the Workers and Socialist Party and the Democratic Socialist Movement. Bourgeois analysts speak of a possible cut of 200 000 mining jobs in the next five years (or three?). At the same time, the falling Rand, falling GDP growth rate, falling tax revenue and rising inflation, unemployment and government debt has the SA economy overall balancing close to a ‘tipping point’ which pro-capitalist commentators fear may trigger an all-out social crisis. In addition to the attacks on mining jobs, the ruling class is responding by pushing for the rolling back of the collective bargaining system and for the cementation of the repression to which they resorted in Marikana. A series of ‘peace accords’, under various labels, have been branded about in the aftermath of the massacre. The latest is the ‘Framework Agreement for a Sustainable Mining Industry’, developed in talks government-industry-union talks led by deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe (a former NUM GS). Just previous, completely ineffectual agreements, it contains vague promises to improve the standard of living in mining communities and more concrete undertakings to enforce law and order, e.g. through the permanent stationing of police and ‘other security forces’ at all mining operations. Workers and unions are made to take responsibility for maintaining ‘peace’ while the bosses are preparing for war. Meanwhile, threats and assassinations against worker leaders associated with AMCU have continued, often provoking bloody retaliation. The ‘Framework’ is part of the ANC government attempts to assure the mining capitalists and the ruling class as a whole that it can re-establish the grip on the situation after Marikana. It is of course no accident that it was drafted just at the start of wage negotiations in gold and platinum which are the most polarised in decades – e.g. a 120% increase demand versus a 5% offer in the gold industry – and the onset of the possible mass retrenchments. The attack on the Democratic Socialist Movement, attempting to scapegoat DSM EC member Liv Shange for so-called anarchy in the mining industry and effectively deport her from SA, also forms part of the efforts to undermine the fighting capacity of the mineworkers. Despite the ANC’s efforts, its ongoing internal rifts are evidence that its big business handlers are yet to be convinced that ‘the centre can hold’. While the Zuma-faction appears all-powerful for the moment, its paranoia indicates a recognition that others, e.g. around deputy ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa, may be biding their time. Increasingly however, the ruling class is shopping around for political ‘Plan Bs’ outside of the ANC. The formation of Agang-SA, a new political party led by former mining magnate and World Bank director Mampela Ramphele, is one such experiment. The right-wing opposition Democratic Alliance is aggressively attempting to swallow other parties into a ‘super-opposition’. Expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema is now the ‘commander-in-chief’ of the Economic Freedom Fighters hoping to capitalise on the new situation with a programme of radical demands. The ANC is widely expected to suffer big losses in next year’s elections to national and provincial parliament. A year after Marikana, on the threshold of turmoil that could shake SA to its core, the SA working class has only just begun the reconstruction of its class-independent organisations. AMCU, the union which took over the Rustenburg platinum belt and cut out a large chunk of NUM membership also in the gold industry in the wake of the strikes is yet to show how it will fare in the test that is already beginning with dismissals and retrenchments. So far, the lack of any apparent fight-back strategy is a great cause of concern. Cosatu, the trade union federation to which NUM belongs, appears unable to recover from its historical capitulation to the bosses at Marikana. Since the Cosatu leaders effectively condoned the massacre, and went on to endorse the directly responsible ANC leaders for re-election, the federation has not displayed any effective organising or campaigning work. Instead it stoops to new lows in bitter infighting on weekly basis. It is high time for workers, the unemployed, youth and students to act on the key lesson of Marikana – that there is no more powerful force than the working class independently organised and united in action. Izwi labasebenzi/ the Democratic Socialist Movement calls for the mineworkers National Workers Committee to work for a joint fight-back plan, coordinated across the different mining sectors and trade unions, to stop the mass retrenchments and fight for living wages and jobs. We also call for a national day of action against the job cuts, for the nationalisation of the mines, banks and big and big business under democratic control and management by workers and communities, for jobs and decent living conditions such as housing and education for all. Izwi labasebenzi/ the DSM campaigns for working class unity and urges all genuine working class fighter to come together in the building of the Workers and Socialist Party. The best honour we can pay to those comrades who were mowed down at Marikana is to craft the political weapon we will need to defeat their murderers once and for all – a mass workers party armed with a socialist programme. http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/6433

Thatchers brutal "them and us" legacy

Alistair Tice, Socialist Party regional secretary, Yorkshire Millions have been waiting for this day, 8 April 2013. Margaret Thatcher will never be forgiven for the devastation that her Tory governments' policies wrought on working class communities in the 1980s - and is still being felt today. "I would suggest as a memorial to Mrs Thatcher that instead of the usual headstone or statue, a dance floor should be erected over her grave". This was proposed by a writer to the Observer paper from Durham, a former mining area, on the 30th anniversary of her coming to power. Seeking to avoid the anger and opposition that a state funeral for Thatcher would invite the government is nonetheless planning a state funeral 'by any other name'. Having spared no venom to attack millions of low-paid, unemployed and disabled people forced to subsist on benefits, Downing Street discovered it had a delicate side and has declined to say how much the 'ceremonial funeral' will cost the public purse. No doubt it will be in the millions. Nonetheless many ex-miners and their families, trade unionists and socialists are now dancing - in celebration of her demise. The Guardian reported on the response in Orgreave, a town famed for the major attack on striking miners orchestrated by Thatcher in the 1980s. One veteran "said he was thinking of getting t-shirts printed saying 'Thatcher's in hell - she's only been there a few hours and she's already closed down the furnaces'." The Guardian described responses to her death: "Propping up the bar, the men compared text messages they'd received throughout the day. A typical example: 'I enjoy a good swim. But if someone asked me what my favourite stroke was I'd say Maggie Thatcher's.' Another proudly brandished a text message he'd received just after 1pm saying simply: 'Parteeeeee time.'" Myths 'By your friends shall ye be known' is a well-worn cliché but in Thatcher's case it is insightful. Many have taken to social media to remind us of who Thatcher counted among her pals - murderous Chilean dictator Auguste Pinochet and former US president Ronald Reagan, her co-architect of brutal neoliberalism. But at the same time, politicians, press barons and editors are fawning and flattering in the praise they spew out for her as the prime minister who they say made Britain great again. She was nothing of the sort. Tory MPs and right-wing commentators on the BBC and elsewhere also use the opportunity to attack the trade unions. In analysing her role and legacy, we must start with de-bunking some popular myths. The film industry tried to sell the Iron Lady as a feminist icon. Thatcher was the first female prime minister but her reactionary policies set back previous advances towards women's equality. Her commitment to 'Victorian values' and belief that "there is no such thing (as society)" were the ideological justification for cutting public services and pushing the burden onto the family, which in most cases meant women. She opposed 'subsidising' mothers to go out to work saying it would have discouraged them from staying at home to look after their children. Over half of Britain's working women were denied the right to maternity benefits, paid maternity leave and shorter working hours. Publicly funded childcare fell to the lowest level in western Europe. While being a grocer's daughter from Grantham rather than an aristocrat or millionaire may have made Thatcher more determined to succeed as a politician in an old-boys club, it was the economic and political conditions in Britain in the 1970s that allowed her right-wing policies to come to power rather than any personal qualities. Economy Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary, has previously remarked that: "Friedrich Engels, alongside Karl Marx, the originators of the ideas of scientific socialism, commented that each era calls for personalities required by objective circumstances. But if they do not exist in a rounded-out form, it 'invents' them. Thatcher, without any of the scruples or hesitation of the aristocratic Tory grandees, was the brutal face of British capitalism required by the situation. She not only polarised society but the Tory party itself." Twenty years earlier during the post-war economic upswing and mixed economy consensus, she would not have become Tory leader or, if she had, not as a Thatcherite. But the economic stagnation and industrial strife of the 1970s meant that the ruling class abandoned the post-war settlement of mildly re-distributionist and Keynesian policies in favour of attacking the living standards and rights of the working class in order to restore the profitability of an ailing British capitalism. Thatcher, a convert to the monetarist, free-market ideology of Hayek and Milton Friedman, replaced the defeated prime minister and Tory 'wet' Ted Heath in 1975, and won the general election in 1979. However, it was the Labour leadership that prepared the way for Thatcherism by starting to implement neoliberal policies in the 1970s. Thatcher won three general elections and stayed in power over eleven years, giving the appearance of being both popular and impregnable. However, she was neither. According to opinion polls, she was, during her time in office, actually the second most unpopular post-war prime minister. But the Labour leadership failed to take advantage of this. On the one hand it had failed to tackle the problems of the working class and on the other hand it had directed its energy against challenging the left, particularly Militant. In this it revealed its degeneration from a pro-workers' party at bottom to what it is today, indistinguishable from the other pro-capitalist parties. After the 1981 inner-city riots her personal approval rating was only 23% and a Times headline read: "The most unpopular prime minister since records began". After defeating the miners' strike in April 1985 the Tories were 5% behind in the polls and in April 1990, when the poll tax was introduced in England and Wales, they were 24% behind Labour! Popularity? In other words, at the height of class struggles which polarised society, Thatcher was clearly seen as fighting for her class against the majority of society, the working class. Much of her perceived strength was actually the reflected weakness of the trade union and Labour leaders. While her 1983 election victory owed most to the so-called Falklands Factor, Thatcher jingoistically wrapping herself in the union flag to defeat the "enemy without" at the cost of hundreds of lives, the right-wing Social Democratic Party (SDP) split-off from the Labour Party and the beginning of the witch-hunt against Militant supporters (the forerunner of Socialist Party) meant that Labour was divided and seen as unelectable. Had the pit deputies union NACODS acted on their big strike ballot, had the docks and railway solidarity strikes lasted longer, and if the TUC leaders had called a general strike in support of the miners, then the Thatcher government could have been brought down in 1984/5 like the Heath government was in 1974. Even then, Labour leader Neil Kinnock lost his party's poll lead by attacking NUM president Arthur Scargill and the Militant-led Liverpool City council in the run-up to the 1987 election. But Thatcher was beaten. Her government was forced to retreat in 1981 when the South Wales miners threatened to strike against pit closures. Liverpool Liverpool City Council, by mobilising mass support for its policies of building houses and creating jobs, forced the Tory government to concede an extra £60 million funding in the summer of 1984. This was heralded as "Danegeld" by the Times - Danegeld was the tribute in gold demanded from the English rulers in the 13th century by the invading Danes in exchange for not engaging in pillage and plunder. Thatcher then used these retreats, although forced on her, to prepare more thoroughly to defeat first the miners and then 'left-wing' Labour councils. Poll Tax After winning the 1987 general election, Thatcher made the mistake of attacking all the working class at once by introducing the Poll Tax, a punitive and regressive charge on all adults for local services. She declared the 'Community Charge' as her flag-ship policy. Militant warned it would be her Titanic. Starting in Scotland in 1989, where the tax was to be introduced first, Militant helped initiate a campaign of mass non-payment organised by anti-poll tax unions, which spread to the rest of Britain in 1990. At its height, 18 million people were refusing to pay the poll tax, the biggest campaign of civil disobedience ever. Just after the so-called poll tax riots in Trafalgar Square (caused by the police attacking a 200,000 strong demonstration) the Tories were 24% behind in the opinion polls. Despite courts, bailiffs and jailings, non-payment grew making the tax un-collectable. It was this mass opposition and unpopularity that persuaded the Tory Party to sacrifice their heroine, and with her the poll tax which was immediately scrapped by her replacement John Major. Thatcher herself was later to lament in her memoirs: "The eventual abandonment of the charge represented one of the greatest victories for these people [the organisers of the anti-poll tax demonstrations on 31 March 1990] ever conceded by a Conservative government." [Margaret Thatcher, 'The Downing Street Years', p661.] What this showed is that all Thatcher's perceived strengths, as a resolute, determined, single-minded strong leader, epitomised in her famous "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning" speech, turned into their opposite when her divisive policies completely undermined social support for the Tory government. Decisive was the leadership offered by Militant in the campaign of mass non-payment. Then she was seen as arrogant, stubborn, pig-headed, and unwilling to listen to her cabinet, leading to Tory splits and her removal. In sinking the retreating Argentinian battleship Belgrano and in her year-long "civil war" against the miners, the "enemy within", Thatcher displayed the brutal cold-heartedness of British capitalism. But she herself became the victim of the ruthlessness of her own ruling class. We'll shed no tears for her demise. She will be remembered forever for destroying manufacturing industry and causing permanent mass unemployment. Her monetarist policies of high interest rates and slashing public spending turned the recession in 1979-81 into a depression. Manufacturing output fell by 30% by 1983. Industries like steel, coal and engineering were decimated and whole communities with them. The former 'workshop of the world' became a net importer for the first time since the industrial revolution. Unemployment rose by over a million in just one year, peaking at 3.3 million in 1986 with a 'lost generation' of young people thrown on the scrap-heap. Thatcher, representing finance capital, believed that de-regulation, especially of the City, would lead business to prosper and wealth would "trickle-down." Combined with the proceeds of the selling off of council housing and mass privatisations of public utilities, there was the appearance of growing prosperity reflected in the 'yuppie' and 'loadsamoney' culture but this was superficial and only ever benefited a small minority. Her much-vaunted "share-owning democracy" never materialised, as workers quickly sold their shares and the financial institutions became the 'masters of the universe'. Legacy By the end of the 1980s, 12.2 million people, over a fifth of the population, were living in poverty, and the gulf between the richest 20% and poorest 20% had widened by 60%. This increase in inequality was to widen further under Blair's New Labour government as it continued Thatcherite policies of curbing the trade unions, privatising state resources and deregulating the City of London. In 2001 Labour's Peter Mandelson tellingly said: "we are all Thatcherites now", before enthusing that he was "intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich". Thatcher herself claimed that New Labour (Labour's conversion to capitalist neoliberal policies) was her greatest legacy and Labour leader Ed Miliband has praised some of Thatcher's key policies, stating: "Some of what happened in the 1980s was right. It was right to let people buy their council houses. It was right to cut tax rates of 60, 70, 80%. And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on ballots before strikes. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time." This complete capitulation to the market has now led Labour to accept the Con-Dem coalition cuts and pay freeze, making the need for a new mass workers' party even more urgent. It is fitting that Thatcher should die at the very time when free market capitalism, in the middle of its worst economic crisis for 80 years, has so spectacularly failed. She sought to "roll back the frontiers of socialism" but it is now those very ideas of socialism that will make a comeback as increasing numbers of workers and youth look for an alternative to the austerity, war and environmental destruction that is global capitalism today.