Lonmin Massacre - South African Police Shoot Striking Mine Workers

August 16, 2012, will go down in history for one of the bloodiest crimes ever committed against the workers movement in South Africa. About 100 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg, at the Marikana mine of the London-based company Lonmin—the world’s third largest producer of platinum—the cops of the capitalist Tripartite Alliance government carried out a gruesome massacre of striking black mineworkers, killing at least 34 and injuring 78 others, many of whom remain in critical condition in hospital. The blood-drenched scenes aired on TV recall the most infamous apartheid-era slaughters: March 21, 1960, in Sharpeville; June 16, 1976, in Soweto. They provide a bloody, stomach-churning picture of the brutality inherent in this neo-apartheid capitalist system, where workers are gunned down like wild animals by police automatic rifles for the “crimes” of fighting against starvation and trying to defend themselves. Make no mistake: the blood of these massacred workers is on the hands of the leaders of the ANC/SACP/COSATU Tripartite Alliance and their government, who have demonstrated yet again their reliability to the Randlord rulers and their imperialist senior partners.

This slaughter was clearly pre-meditated and deliberately carried out by the capitalist state. In the week leading up to it, the capitalist media mouthpieces, together with the Lonmin owners and government ministers, whipped up a hysterical frenzy denouncing the mineworkers as violent “thugs” and calling for a clamp-down to end their “illegal” strike. By the day of the massacre, the police commanders were speaking of a “D-Day” which would crush the strike. The hill next to one of the mine shafts, where thousands of striking workers had gathered, was cordoned off with barbed wire by the cops. This was accompanied by a massive mobilisation of repressive force, including police units mounted on horseback, armoured vehicles, SANDF (army) soldiers, and a deployment of up to 3000 police thugs in the Marikana area. The aim was clearly to teach the striking miners a bloody lesson, especially as “pay back” for the two police officers and two security guards killed during the week-old strike. That the cops were out for bloody revenge is absolutely clear from the comments made by Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega (recently appointed by President Jacob Zuma) following the massacre, telling the cops she commands that they should not regret what happened