Archive by Author | selcoolie

South Africa: Politics, profits and policing after the Marikana Massacre

Lover of fast cars, vintage wine, trout fishing and game farming and the second richest black businessperson in South Africa (global financial publication Forbes puts his wealth at $675 million or £416 million), Cyril Ramaphosa (left) celebrates his election as deputy president of the ANC with South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. Ramaphosa demanded that police break the Marikana mineworkers’ strike; police massacred 34 minerworkers and wounded 78 others.

read article @ http://links.org.au/node/3154

December 20, 2012

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The struggle for democracy within the ANC, by Paul Trewhela

The struggle for democracy within the ANC

Paul Trewhela

20 December 2012

Paul Trewhela says the Mangaung elective conference was determined by fraud

“Widespread irregularity” within the ANC – and the “forces of change”

An important analysis has been published by Professor Pierre de Vos – professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Cape Town and deputy dean of the Claude Leon Chair in Constitutional Governance – on the landmark judgement of the Constitutional Court last Friday (14 December), which found lack of internal democracy within the ANC in Free State province in choice of delegates to the ANC elective conference at Mangaung.

The judgement carries major implications relating to the government of South Africa.

Writing in the Daily Maverick online, Professor de Vos concludes that the Court found “widespread irregularity, if not fraud, involved in the Free State elective conference.” (“Elective processes: Something is rotten in the kingdom of the ANC”, 20 December)

He adds: “These irregularities include the failure to provide ANC members with an opportunity to lodge objections about the accuracy of the preliminary audits of branches, despite the fact that the ANC rules itself provided for such a process.”

Members in one branch were “disallowed from participating in the elective bi-annual general meeting in breach of the right to participate in the activities of the ANC.”

In another branch, no audit was conducted, “thus disqualifying members of that branch from being represented” at the provincial elective conference – on the basis, it was stated, that they “supported the so-called forces of change.”

In yet another branch, the official ANC audit admitted in effect – in the Court’s own words – that “this branch and its members were not entitled to and did not participate in the conference,” a process “inconsistent with the requirements of the ANC’s constitution.“

With other branches, members of the national audit team (who were also members of the ANC’s National Executive Committee) simply failed to attend auditing meetings, thus “denying the affected branches representation at the Provincial Conference”, while other individuals who did attend the provincial conference had not been “elected at a properly constituted branch general meeting.”

Professor de Vos continues: “Reading through these lists of irregularities, it is difficult not to conclude that those in charge of the Free State ANC and some NEC members who supported the re-election of the PEC (and perhaps President Jacob Zuma), at best turned a blind eye to serious irregularities and pre-conference vote rigging and at worst participated in it.”

He adds that “given the systemic nature of the irregularities in the Free State in an elective conference which took place just a few months earlier, given the fact that Kgalema Motlanthe did not manage to receive the support of a single Free State delegate at the Free State nominations conference, and in the absence of evidence that the irregularities were dealt with properly by Gwede Mantashe who, in any case, had a vested interest in the outcome of the process, it might not be unreasonable to question the legitimacy of all the Free State delegates represented at Mangaung.”

Professor de Vos concludes that the judgement “does raise questions about the manner in which internal elections within the ANC are managed” and about whether the outcome of such elections can, without further evidence, “be deemed as being legitimate.”

There is no way at this stage of getting similar clarity about internal ANC processes in other provinces – say, in KwaZulu-Natal, where the ANC’s national auditing process somehow blithely annouced a miraculous jump of 35 percent in party members in only five months prior to its audit.

The single most important conclusion a non-jurist might now make about the centenary ANC elective conference at Mangaung is that it was determined by fraud. There is further evidence of the use of improper state violence in the interest of Zuma’s candidacy, as shown in a disturbing report from Mangaung by Greg Marinovich and Thapelo Lekgowa. (“ANC North West: Cops allegedly detain and beat ‘Forces of Change’ delegates in Mangaung”, Daily Maverick, 19 December)

A great struggle on the nature of democracy within the ANC has now opened up, as shown in an article by Niren Tolsi, “Free State ANC members to challenge legality of Mangaung” (Mail & Guardian online, 18 December)

But as the ConCourt judgement indicates, and as Professor de Vos affirms, lack of internal democracy within the ANC now proposes a major question about the character of democracy – or lack of it – within South Africa itself, given the absolute system of proportional representation set in place by the Interim Constitution of 1993 and the Constitution of 1996.

Given the colossal role of the ANC central administrative body in a political system run almost exclusively by PR, the “systemic” lack of democracy within the ANC in Free State suggests also a systemic lack of democracy obstructing the electorate as a whole.

In this way, the Mangaung conference has opened up a further struggle for democracy, requiring a review of the nature and effect of the electoral law.

With the ANC’s internal irregularities exposed to full view by the Court, Zuma’s re-election has placed electoral reform on the national agenda.

His political task team, with its headquarter in Gwede Mantashe’s secretary-general’s office at Luthuli House in Johannesburg – the real administrative centre of the country, a vast party-bureaucratic apparatus extending into almost every ward and municipality, much as in the Soviet Union and in China – has shown itself to run the ANC, much as it did in exile.

The manner in which ANC members were deprived of their constitutional rights at Mangaung recalls how, at a stroke, in December 1989 the entire body of ANC exiles in Tanzania were deprived of the committees they had democratically elected three months earlier, by the party high command based in Lusaka.

The issues of the exile have come full circle. The struggle for democracy goes on.

That is the real meaning of “the forces of change”.

@ http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=348083&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389

December 17, 2012

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AN ALTERNATIVE TO MORE CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION? by Terry Bell

AN ALTERNATIVE TO MORE CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION?

The promises and the policies, the personalities elected, even the potential political punch-ups at Mangaung are basically irrelevant.

The centennial conference of the ANC will doubtless end with the usual fanfare and pledges of unity despite obvious deep-seated divisions promoted as diversity.

There will also be the usual slew of promises about policies to cure poverty and the lack of jobs.

And all of this will not really matter because the ANC will have missed an opportunity to take a major step into its next century.

This could only have been by seriously discussing a radical move toward a new political dispensation; without a move in this direction nothing will change and the ANC will cease to be a way to a better future.

And, unless a new and more democratic formation emerges, the social fabric of the country will continue to fray and tear, causing further moves towards repression.

Because it is only through repression that political parties and the governments they control in the present dispensation can keep eruptions of popular
dissent in check.

It is these “unrest incidents”, manifest most dramatically in recent times at Marikana and on the farms of the Boland that have increased the widespread calls for “social
cohesion”, and for citizens to become more involved in in the affairs of the country.

But such involvement requires democratic control that is impossible under the
present dispensation.

Because it is a simple fact that we do not have a democratic political system.

Placing a cross on a ballot paper every five years in order to hand over political control to a party bureaucracy is democratic only in that voters willingly forgo the potential power they, collectively, have. It is, in effect, fraudulent democracy.

A constituency system is marginally better, but unless the authority is vested, on an ongoing basis, with the majority of citizens, what we have, at best, is limited or partial democracy.

The interests of politicians, many of whom move seamlessly from political office to the boardrooms of big business, lie not with the voters, but with party bureaucracies.

These bureaucracies, in turn, rely for much of their funding on the financial elites whose fundamental interests are diametrically opposed to those of the majority of the population.

And they who pay the piper tend always to call the tune.

So, in order to have the best chance of achieving egalitarian goals such as those set out in the South African Bill of Rights, democracy should be realised to its fullest extent; rule by the people, the definition of the term given to the world by Athenian
Greece, should be implemented. In simple terms: let the people decide.

The only questions that arise, are: is this possible and, if so, how can it be achieved?

Since systems of direct democracy have existed in the past, usually on a village level, both in Africa and elsewhere, the possibility exists.

Co-operative governance, ithout chiefs or hereditary rulers, has been practiced in areas as diverse as the
Eastern Cape and Iceland. Regular assemblies, in many cases admittedly only of
men, would be called to discuss and decide, as equals, policies to be implemented
and on actions to be taken by the community and for the community.

Where necessary, representatives, wholly accountable to, and recallable by, the
community would be elected to carry out specific functions. Their pay and
conditions of employment would also be decided by the community. This is real
democracy in action and should be the goal aimed at by every person laying claim to
be a democrat.

Communication is obviously the essence here and it is readily pointed out that
millions of people can hardly be gathered together on a regular basis to discuss and
make decisions; that the partial democracy we now see around the world, in one
form or other, is the only answer.

It is not. Courtesy of the very technology, that has made increasing millions of men and women redundant as workers, rather than
freeing them from drudgery, it is perfectly feasible for every citizen to be kept
informed, to discuss all issues and to decide on appropriate actions.

As we are constantly reminded: we live in a world village. But it is a village in
ongoing crisis where the management structures — the governments — of a system
based on competition and the pursuit of profit as an end in itself pay lip service to
democratic principles.

Solutions are sought in economic policy, in greater or lesser regulation of national or international economies. But without changing the political
framework, this amounts only to variations on the same theme that has now clearly
outlived its usefulness to humanity.

Yet the technological advances that are now proving harmful could equally be
immensely beneficial. Cell phones and the internet connect even the most remote
communities — and South Africa is no exception. The latest survey, published this
month, has revealed that more than 12 million South African adults regularly access
the internet.

These are people who are members of various organisations such as trade unions,
religious communities, stokvels and other groups — even political parties — that
come together regularly. There is also, especially in the Eastern Cape, a move toward
community “hubs” in the form of community schools. So units large and small of
what could be a coalition of citizens already exists, along with the technology to link
them.

What is required is organisation within an agreed framework and on the basis of a set
of goals and code of conduct. The goals and the principles of conduct — effectively
a political programme — exist in the Bill of Rights. Using existing social structures
or setting up new ones in neighbourhoods or wherever, citizens can come together as embers of a coalition of equals to debate and decide on all matters concerning
them.

This will require that elected representatives of such groups, at all levels, should be
both accountable to, and recallable by, their constituencies. In the case of parliament,
for example, this would mean each nominated candidate signing a legal agreement to
accept the conditions imposed by the constituency.

Ideally, constituencies should be clearly defined and candidates for office should be
selected by coalition members in each constituency. However, because we are
constrained by the present list system, with constituencies arbitrarily defined by
political parties after the event, it will be necessary to adapt to this until change can
be introduced.

This means a “citizens’ coalition” putting up candidates for office who are broadly
acceptable to voters in different regions and who are prepared to sign “constituency
agreements” whereby they agree to be wholly accountable to, and recallable by, the
constituents to whom they are allocated.

The proportion of votes for such a citizens’ coalition in various regions should determine the boundaries of “constituencies” and
who should represent them.

Because every individual has an individual ID number, there can be little chance of
duplicate membership or voting. A trade unionist, for example, may choose to be a
member of a trade union unit of the coalition or of a religious, community or other
grouping. Only in the unit where the coalition member is registered may a vote be
recorded.

To get such a system underway in the present conditions will perhaps require
representatives from major social organisations such as trade unions, religious groups
and community structures to come together to finalise the organisational details.

These could be presented to the public at large for comment, criticism and eventual
implementation.

The basic structure would probably require a computerised “hub” that would have no
political authority and would collect and collate the membership details of those
subscribing to the coalition. It would also act as a “switchboard”, passing on debates,
requests and arguments from various regional groupings to every coalition member
using perhaps a specially tailored social media platform.

Such a system should be wholly transparent and, to ensure this, checks and balances
would have to be put in place. What these should be and how they should operate
should be one of the subjects for debate should a national gathering come together to
seriously discuss this proposal.

Since the ANC, as the largest political organisation has not moved in this direction, perhaps the numerically larger groups such as osatu, the South African Council of Churches or other large trade union, religious or
community organisations, either alone or together, could arrange such a dialogue.

It seems vital that this is done because it seems that only an extension of democracy
will avoid still more suffering and desperation as the present, fundamentally
undemocratic, system attempts to claw its way back to stability.

It can do so, but only
at terrible cost to millions of people and to the further destruction of the natural
environment. The choice seems clear: an alternative is possible. Let’s build it.

Terry Bell

writing, editing, broadcast

@ Blog: terrybellwrites.com

December 17, 2012

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Jacob Zuma’s political report to Mangaung conference

Jacob Zuma

16 December 2012

ANC President says alien tendencies need to be eliminated from the movement

REPORT BY PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA TO THE 53RD NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE ANC ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEEBLOEMFONTEIN 16 DECEMBER 2012

UNITY IN ACTION TOWARDS SOCIO-ECONOMIC FREEDOM

National Chairperson, Ms Baleka Mbethe, Deputy President Comrade Kgalema Motlanthe,

ANC Officials and Members of the National Executive Committee, Our Alliance partners and other representatives of the mass democratic movement, Representatives of fraternal parties in Africa and the world,

Members of the diplomatic corps and other observers;

Traditional leaders and religious leaders,

Delegates,

Comrades and friends,

Comrade Chairperson,

It is a great pleasure to welcome all delegates to this 53rd National Conference of the African National Congress, taking place at the birthplace of the ANC, Mangaung.

Present here are 4,500 delegates representing thousands of branches, located across the length and breadth of our country.

The ANC has grown phenomenally since the last three conferences.

In 2002 at the Stellenbosch conference membership stood at 416 846. In 2007 at the 52nd National Conference in Polokwane, the total membership was 621 237 members.

It has now grown to 1 220 057 audited members in good standing, thus meeting the directive of the 1942 conference, that the ANC should have one million members. The ANC remains very popular with the masses of our people, not only to vote for it, but to join it as members….

@ http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=347446&sn=Detail&pid=71616

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December 9, 2012

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COSATU Trade unions shut down South African farm workers strike!

Trade unions shut down South African farm workers strike

By Iqra Qalam and Jashua Lumet
8 December 2012

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) called off the strike of farm workers in the Western Cape Province on Tuesday, even though none of the demands of the farm workers has been met.

COSATU’s provincial secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, made the announcement following a one-day action December 4, the deadline given by farm workers for the government to respond to demands for an increase in the minimum wage to R150 a day.

Before Tuesday’s action, the African National Congress government made clear that it would do nothing in response to the farm workers’ demands, instead relying on the services of COSATU and a network of pseudo-left organizations to suppress the strike and get them back to work for the remainder of the grape harvesting season.

Ehrenreich declared, “An agreement put forward by Agri SA contains the basis of the accord that temporarily ends this strike,” He said Agri SA, which represented farm owners, “essentially commits” itself to negotiations to be held farm-by-farm. Talks would be about the wage demand of a R150 per day and a profit-sharing scheme.

By trying to contain any discussion over the conditions of workers to a farm-by-farm process, COSATU is seeking to prevent a unified struggle. ANC Agricultural Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said Wednesday that the farm-by-farm negotiations would be followed by government discussions on an overall minimum wage later next year.

Grateful for the intervention of the government and the union, Gerhard de Kock, chairman of the Cape Orchard Alliance which owns 12 farms in the valley, said labour relations on Normandy farm had improved in the wake of recent strikes. “All change is painful, but to resist change can be more painful. I have tried to see the unrest as an opportunity for better relations rather than a tragedy,” he said.

There is widespread scepticism among the workers. Commenting on the demobilization of collective action, Moos Arries, who works on the Mooigesig farm in De Doorns, told the World Socialist Web Site, “It looks like we will now be negotiating on every farm for a better living and we don’t know when this process will be finished.”

Willem Koopman from the Morgenson farm noted that while Agri SA and the government have shown a willingness to negotiate, nothing has effectively changed in their lives “because we have not seen any increase in our living conditions and therefore it looks like we are in for the long haul.”

The ruling class was shocked by the eruption of the farm workers’ strike, which began independently of the unions. The initial eruption of working class opposition, inspired by the struggles of mine workers, quickly spread to dozens of towns. As with the miners, farm workers have been regularly attacked by the South African Police Service, with two workers killed in confrontations.

The ANC, together with the Democratic Alliance (DA), which governs in the Western Cape province, responded by calling on the services of COSATU. This was combined with the threat of force, with DA Premier Helen Zille urging the intervention of the military.

On November 19, the strike was temporarily suspended after a series of meetings involving farm workers, COSATU, the ANC and the DA. This served to remove all initiative from the workers, paving the way for this week’s agreement.

On November 20, representatives of the farm workers told the ANC and the DA they had until December 4 to institute the minimum daily wage of R150 or face renewed protest. It was on this basis that COSATU, in order to head off the development of an insurrectionary movement, moved to present itself in a more radical guise and supportive of the strike’s extension, the better to keep it under control. To this end COSATU sanctioned a single day of action in the agricultural sector for December 4.

Speaking about the decision, Ehrenreich said COSATU had done all they could to avert further stoppages and threatened, “This strike … can set back labour relations on farms by decades and could see a reversal to the low-level civil war we all witnessed on farms a few weeks ago.”

Ehrenreich is a time-served bureaucrat and member of the ruling ANC that sanctioned the brutal massacre of striking platinum miners at Lonmin, Marikana in August. Last week the DA charged him with inciting violence. This was due to his image being used on the poster of a COSATU-affiliated trade union, under which was written the slogan, “FEEL IT!!! Western Cape Marikana is here!!” This was a reference to comments Ehrenreich had reportedly made earlier in the dispute: “The ill treatment and underpayment of workers by some farmers must stop, otherwise we will see a Marikana in De Doorns.”

In response to the DA’s charges, Ehrenreich spoke candidly about his and COSATU’s role in the dispute, aimed at strangling a movement of workers outside of the control of the trade unions and in opposition in the ANC. He stated, “I used Marikana as a parallel to what’s happening at the farms because workers went ahead without the guidance of unions and the danger for things getting out of hand is greater, without unions.”

The unions now hope to utilize the prospect of an Agri-SA deal to try and establish their control over an increasingly restive section of the working class. Union membership in the agricultural sector is currently estimated at less than 3 percent. “This agreement means that workers will return to work and join any union of their choice,” said Ehrenreich. “These unions will negotiate with the farmers on the different farms.”

In addition to COSATU and the ANC, a crucial role in sabotaging the strike was played by a network of organizations, including the United Democratic Front, recently relaunched by Mario Wanza, a former leading ANC activist. Wanza and the UDF have postured as a more militant opposition, while seeking to pressure COSATU and the ANC and prevent any struggle against the capitalist system. Wanza’s attempt to revive the UDF is part of an effort to establish a new organization to contain and channel growing mass hostility to the establishment parties in South Africa.

At the height of the anti-Apartheid struggle, the UDF had around 3 million members. Seeking to unite conflicting class forces, its slogan was the “UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides.” This political perspective subordinated the working class to a pro-capitalist perspective and a movement dominated by the ANC and a leadership whose aim was to secure their own advancement into the ranks of the bourgeoisie that proved instrumental in the survival of capitalism in South Africa.

Another organization involved in the strike is the South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO). It is the umbrella group for many social sector non-government organizations. They are beholden to the capitalist class for donations and grants to finance their activities and are obliged to protect the interests of large farming corporations. SANGOCO has been actively promoting the idea that the farm workers must simply try to “influence national development policy.”

The interests of farm workers and other sections of the working class in South Africa cannot be realized within the framework of these organizations. The basic rights of workers—including for a decent wage and quality housing—can be realized only through their independent organisation in a political struggle for socialism against the ANC, COSATU and the capitalist profit system that they defend.

@ http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/dec2012/soaf-d08.shtml

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Even billionaires pay farmworkers badly

December 8 2012
By HENRIËTTE GELDENHUYS

photo: Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale.

BUSINESS DAY EDITORIAL: Anarchy in the workplace

06.des.2012

The truths offered by Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll that anarchy in the workplace benefits no one ring especially true with regard to the recent farm sector unrest

ALTHOUGH directed at the mining industry, the truths offered by departing Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll in a speech at the Gordon Institute of Business Science last week ring especially true with regard to the recent unrest in the Western Cape farm sector.

In an inspirational speech on the future of the mining industry after the violent strike and deaths at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, Ms Carroll said anarchy in the workplace benefits no one and that there is no future for any society without law and order.

This week, most striking Western Cape farm workers and Agri-SA reached agreement to cease strike action and start farm-level wage talks, a welcome move that follows several weeks of protests that have resulted in two deaths and R15m in damages.

Sector-wide minimum wages and an attempt to extend these to annual wage agreements in the farm sector have been criticised for not taking into consideration differences in profitability between different types of farms.

Minimum wages cannot be set in an arbitrary manner — pay must be at a level that ensures industry profitability or there will be job losses.

This is best done farm by farm.

Yesterday’s agreement comes just days after Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies punted collective bargaining as the solution to the conflict.

But one only has to look at the domestic clothing and textile industry to see the damage sector-wide wage agreements that are imposed on firms can do.

The downside of the deal is that, in the course of negotiations, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich promised that unions, together with the Department of Social Development, would distribute food parcels to the families of workers who had been on strike.

If the strike resumed next year, workers would be able to use their food parcels to sustain themselves, he said.

Mr Ehrenreich said the food parcels were part of a “public-private partnership”, yet it seems they are to be supplied by the South African Social Services Agency under the banner of the national Department of Social Development.

These temporary social relief or distress grants take the form of a food parcel or voucher and are usually made available to individuals who are unable to meet their families’ most basic needs, and then only until permanent social assistance is made available.

There is no question that families in acute social distress should be given state assistance.

However, it is not acceptable for a union to encourage workers to strike in the first instance and then appropriate the resources of a national government department to mitigate the consequences of this action.

When those food parcels are handed out, Mr Ehrenreich will no doubt do his utmost to ensure that Cosatu gets the credit.

The Department of Social Development already provides for families and individuals in need through a wide range of social grants and services.

Extensive means testing ensures that these grants target the most needy in society.

For Cosatu to step in and attempt to supplant the role of a national department is cheeky at best, and undermines the law and order that Ms Carroll rightly asserts is so necessary.

There may be an argument that, on a pragmatic level, offering food parcels as a bargaining chip to negotiate a suspension of the strike prevented further upheaval in the industry.

It is highly likely that, if an agreement had not been reached on Tuesday, the strike would have continued and there would have been destruction of property and further loss of life.

That said, offering state support to striking workers sets a very dangerous precedent and creates a perverse incentive that undermines law and order and promotes anarchic labour relations.

@ http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/editorials/2012/12/06/editorial-anarchy-in-the-workplace

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December 7, 2012

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An Alternative Perspective to the farmworkers´ strike: “Reflections on the WCape farm workers strike”, by William Dicey, Terry Bell on the “Bill of Rights” and news on “The Protection of State INformation Bill”

Reflections on the WCape farm workers strike

by William Dicey

06 December 2012

William Dicey says there were no winners, and the politicians generally disgraced themselves

There Were No Winners in the Farmworker Strike

There were no winners in the farmworker strike.

Tractor driver Michael Daniels lost his life to a police bullet.

Seasonal worker Bongile Ndleni lost his life to a private-security bullet.

Farmer Tienie Crous, 81, almost lost his life when strikers accosted him (his hearing aid had to be cut out of his skull).

Towns were ransacked and property destroyed.

Sheds and bulk bins and tractors and vineyards went up in flames.

Farmers are jittery and angry and scared.

Many are talking of selling their farms and emigrating.

Farmworkers in permanent employ are likewise jittery and angry and scared.

They don’t have the option, however, of packing up their lives.

They have to ride out this storm and see whether they still have jobs come April.

The strikers who resorted to violent protest were losers too.

They took their share of rubber bullets, and no doubt a good dose of police brutality.

They also had to face the wrath of workers they’d intimidated into staying at home.

The first day of protest might have been kind of fun, but after four days without pay people were desperate.

The politicians were clear losers.

Helen Zille, premier of the Western Cape, was the best of a bad bunch, but only because she didn’t blatantly put her foot in it. She dithered, failing to show decisive leadership, most likely because she didn’t wish to antagonise either the farmers or the coloured workers, both traditional supporters of the DA.

Her party’s statements to the press, however, were indistinguishable from those of farmer organisations such as Agri SA.

Zille’s opposite number, Marius Fransman, provincial leader of the ANC, made an aggressive start, telling farmers ‘julle gaan kak’, before wisely taking a back seat.

Tina Joemat-Pettersson, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, put on a disastrous show.

Addressing a large crowd of strikers in De Doorns, she congratulated them on their ‘victory’.

None of them, she said, would face disciplinary action or criminal charges.

It’s difficult to say which of these two statements is more bizarre: a Minister of Agriculture congratulating farmworkers for an illegal strike in which vineyards were torched; or a minister from a non-judicial portfolio promising immunity from prosecution to people who have taken part in an orgy of criminality, including barricaded a national road and stoning passing vehicles.

To cap off her performance, the minister announced that the sectoral determination for agriculture (the minimum wage) would be reviewed within two weeks – something that wasn’t constitutionally possible.

Joemat-Pettersson has since become embroiled in a scandalous decision to further deplete the country’s ailing fish stocks. And the Public Protector has accused her of unlawful use of state funds.

But perhaps I’m being too hard on Joemat-Pettersson.

She’s so ineffectual and bungling it’s difficult to blame her.

She doesn’t seem capable of something as demanding of the intellect as malicious intent.

Whereas the villain of the piece is the very embodiment of malicious intent: Cosatu’s razor-sharp provincial secretary, Tony Ehrenreich.

Before discussing Ehrenreich’s role, however, I need to say a few things about the genesis of the strike.

Many aspects of the strike are more complex than they would appear, and issues differ from region to region.

Even a simple word like ‘strikers’, for instance, is not at all straightforward.

‘Farmworkers’ and ‘strikers’ and ‘protesters’ are distinct groupings of people.

These groupings overlap somewhat in De Doorns, but less so in Ceres.

When the strike started in De Doorns in early November, the protesters – that is, the people burning tyres and stoning vehicles – were farmworkers.

There’s some disagreement as to whether these protesters were seasonal workers from Lesotho whose work permits hadn’t been renewed or whether they were a broader coalition.

Either way, they were disgruntled seasonal workers who then intimidated the valley’s permanent workers into joining them.

A friend of mine farms in De Doorns. His permanent workers received threatening text messages: ‘We’re coming to get you,’ read these messages (in Afrikaans), ‘we know which vineyard you’re in.’

My friend spent the day transporting terrified workers from one corner of his farm to another. He then told them to stay home.

The seasonal workers in De Doorns probably had just cause to strike.

Over the past decade or two, growers of table grapes in the Hex River Valley have seen their margins shrink dramatically (thirty per cent of farms in the Hex have changed hands in the past five years).

As a result, many farmers have taken on a greater proportion of seasonal labour and have paid them close to the statutory minimum. While it’s difficult to condone this course of action – R69 is an appalling wage – it’s easy enough to understand it.

In Wolseley and Ceres (two regions of which I can speak with some authority: my brother farms in Wolseley, I farm in Ceres) the situation is very different.

Farmers grow apples, pears and plums. Despite a number of challenges, margins are healthier.

This reflects in the wages. The farms around me all pay between R85 and R90 a day to their lowest-paid workers.

In addition, workers are paid a piecework rate per tree pruned or per bag picked. This averages out, over the course of a year, at around R25 a day.

In addition, workers receive an annual bonus, free transport, subsidised visits to the doctor, free créche facilities and paid school fees.

Workers who live on the farm pay no rent and their electricity is subsidised.

If one attaches a value to these benefits, then the average live-on worker receives R140 a day, and the average live-off worker R120.

Workers who choose to exert themselves earn significantly more. As do skilled workers such as team leaders, administrative staff and tractor drivers.

Similar rates of pay would apply to many farms in Ceres and Wolseley, and elsewhere in the Boland too.

It’s not a whole lot of money, but with labour accounting for forty per cent of costs, it’s as much as a well-run fruit farm can reasonably afford to pay.

And given the national context, where sixty per cent of households earn less than this, it’s certainly not a rate of pay that lends itself to violent protest. This is where the politics comes in.

The coordination and efficiency with which the strike spread from De Doorns to fifteen other Boland towns on a single day speaks of careful planning and significant mobilisation of personnel and resources.

There is little doubt that the ANC in the Western Cape and its alliance partner Cosatu were behind this roll-out.

A pamphlet on ANC letterhead was distributed in Villiersdorp, and there were reports, throughout the Boland, of intimidation by Cosatu members (despite the fact that there are very few unionised farms in the Boland).

This would explain the strangers disembarking at Wolseley train station, and the buses arriving in Nduli, the township outside Ceres, in the middle of the night.

I’m no fan of the DA’s reactionary politics, but their spokesperson for agriculture, Pieter van Dalen, was probably close to the truth when he characterised the strike as ‘simply the latest instalment in the African National Congress’s campaign to make the Western Cape ungovernable’.

Not a single worker on my farm wanted to strike.

Those who live in Nduli were informed that their families and their houses would be at risk if they went off to work.

Those who live on the farm received threatening telephone calls and text messages.

Whether these threats would have been carried out is moot. The workers were terrified and retired to their homes.

Tony Ehrenreich turned fifty last year. It is a dangerous age for a man. An age at which he might be tempted to look back over his life and ask what he’s achieved so far, and what he might yet achieve.

In Ehrenreich’s case, he ran for mayor of Cape Town in 2011 and was badly beaten by Patricia de Lille.

He is clearly an ambitious man, not content with his job as provincial secretary of Cosatu, an organisation he joined over twenty years ago.

Ehrenreich’s role in the strike has been nothing short of despicable.

To announce that ‘Marikana is coming to the farms in the Western Cape’ is not only extremely irresponsible, it is also callously opportunistic.

When Ehrenreich invoked Marikana for a second time – on a poster that featured his photograph above the gleeful exclamation ‘FEEL IT!!! Western Cape Marikana is here!!!’ – the Democratic Alliance laid a charge of incitement to violence.

Ehrenreich is also on record as saying: ‘The strike … could see a reversal to the low-level civil war we all witnessed on farms a few weeks ago.’

The only conclusion one can draw from these inflammatory utterances is that Ehrenreich wanted to see the Western Cape burn.

Why?

To please his political bosses, most likely.

And also, no doubt, to raise the profile of Tony Enrenreich Inc., mayoral candidate and champion of the poor.

Only, he’s far from a champion of the poor. One of the sad ironies of the strike was that the majority of protesters – in Ceres and Wolseley, at any rate – were either unemployed or occasionally employed.

Had they achieved their goal of getting the minimum wage increased to R150 a day, they would have locked themselves out of a job for a long time to come.

Ehrenreich’s political pawns were the very people who stood to lose the most had his strike achieved its stated goal.

Ehrenreich, lest it appear to the contrary, was also a loser in the strike.

He’s been the subject of more hate mail than I’ve ever seen in the blogosphere; he raised workers’ hopes only to disappoint them; and, judging by Cosatu’s limp showing in the second round of the strike, he was hauled over the coals by the ANC high command.

The North West Marikana dealt the economy such a crippling blow, the government had little appetite, it would appear, for a Western Cape instalment.

Despite the fact that there were no winners, the strike wasn’t all bad.

The incitement and the intimidation and the violence and the destruction were obviously bad.

The cynical deployment of thousands of poor people to further the personal ambitions of a handful of politicians was equally bad. But the principle of a widespread strike in the agricultural sector has merit.

For too long now labour relations have been the elephant in the corner of the orchard, so to speak.

The strike gave us a chance to talk, to let off some steam, and – hopefully – to take action.

Personally, it has long bothered me that workers living on my farm get free housing, while those living off the farm don’t; the strike has prompted me to look into ways of subsidising off-farm living.

Come April, I would like to see the minimum wage for farmworkers increased substantially.

It’s certainly not the solution to rural woes, but exploitative farmers should feel the heat. Most of them can afford to pay more.

Those who can’t need to face up to the fact that they’re subsidising the inefficiency of their operations with cheap labour.

Leaving aside the question of who lit the match, there’s no denying that the strike spread like wildfire.

There is deep dissatisfaction in rural areas, and farmers would do well to take heed of it.

But government should take heed too.

This dissatisfaction, I would argue, has more to do with poverty, unemployment and the lack of any prospects for a better life than it has to do with labour relations on farms.

This strike wasn’t all strike, it was part social unrest.

‘If Minister Joemat-Pettersson and Mr Ehrenreich really want to benefit farmworkers,’ writes economist Johan Fourie on his blog, ‘they should rather worry about another legacy of Apartheid – the poor performance of rural schools, especially in those provinces where many of the migrants come from – and less about government policies to change the minimum wage.’

Unfortunately, however, as Fourie points out, adjusting the minimum wage is easier to do, and it’s a more popular sell.

William Dicey is a farmer and a writer.

@ http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=345486&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389

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TIME TO FIND A NEW WAY FORWARD

by Terry Bell

The Bill of Rights is rightly hailed throughout the labour movement and beyond as
perhaps the finest exposition of the desire of the bulk of humanity for a world that
guarantees the maximum level of dignity, equality and freedom for all.

It is also the greatest legacy of the late chief justice Arthur Chaskalson. At the time it was adopted
in 1996, he paraphrased the first sentence, noting: “The Bill of Rights is the cornerstone of our democracy.”

Words along similar lines have been uttered throughout this week by the likes of
trade union leaders and politicians — all the great and the good and not-so-good —
who paid tribute to a man who laid that cornerstone on which so little of substance
has been built.

However, lip service is continually paid to the principles of dignity, equality and freedom for all that should form the practical foundation for a truly democratic society.

The blueprint — the programme — for such a society exists in the schedule of Rights
contained in Chapter 2 of Act 108 of 1996.

It would certainly have the support of most people everywhere since it proposes a world that would change utterly the situation of islands of obscene wealth surrounded by an increasingly volatile and growing mass of poverty and degradation.

The responsibility for this, say the unions and their allies, lies with a system that promotes gross inequality. So they demand a change of political direction; for economic policies and greater regulation to ensure more fairness and equality within the system.

However, as some critics are prone to quote, this might be seen as hoping that “the
nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all”.

But the blame for the mess we are in has also been laid at the feet of the majority of
people.

According to political leaders ranging from reserve bank governor Gill Marcus to
planning minister Trevor Manuel and basic education minister Angie Motshekga, a
largely apathetic populace is responsible for the fact that the cornerstone of
democracy is not being built on.

Speaking about the Limpopo textbooks debacle at a National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) conference last week, Marcus noted: “If textbook weren’t delivered, why didn’t someone fetch them? You talk of action: that’s action.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by Manuel at a conference in Cape Town in September. He stressed that the Constitution could not be blamed for the slow pace of change in South Africa.

“The Constitution empowers and enables, but beyond that, actual change requires human actions,” he said.

It almost seems a case of politicians wishing to dissolve the people and elect another.

Because the same politicians, sometimes in the same speeches, castigate actions by
unions and others that are clearly aimed at bringing about change that is in line with
the Bill of Rights.

In an often messy and muddled way, this is precisely what has been witnessed in
many of the countless “unrest incidents” around the country and, most dramatically,
in the platinum-rich lands of the Bafokeng and the fruit and wine farms of the
Boland.

However, few of the participants in these strikes may be aware of — or have read — the Bill of Rights; they are merely trying to claw their way to greater equality and freedom.

Most tend to see this in terms of better wages, an understandable reaction in a society
where material wealth determines degrees of equality, freedom and even access to
formal justice.

But in the process, there have been glimpses of the egalitarian order envisaged by Chapter 2 of Act 108.

These are examples of direct democracy in action, of democratic committees, electing a first among equals to speak for the group.

These are practical manifestations of the hollow, “Let the people speak” rhetoric of
most politicians.

As a result a few voices, mainly within the labour movement, are continuing to ask: Why not establish a system that, within the bounds of the Bill of Rights, truly lets the people not only speak, but also decide?

After all, the argument goes, technological advances, leading to greater automation
and mechanisation, are making more and more of humanity redundant, in the process
causing hideous social and environmental harm.

This was highlighted again last week with reports about Japanese scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro who has made a robot double of himself that can deliver lectures.

Mining companies and farming interests have also, in recent weeks, made it clear that
increased wages will mean greater mechanisation and fewer jobs, accelerating a
process that is probably unstoppable.

But, as some labour activists agued in this column in June, the very same technological advances have turned the world into a village in terms of communication.

That makes South Africa a small region of that village and, despite gross disparities of income and minimal home internet connections, more than 12 million South African adults now regularly use the internet.

This figure comes from a major survey published last week. It reveals that these
internet users access this means of almost instant communication by means of cell
phones, computers based at schools, universities or other institutions and at internet
cafes.

In other words, the means now exist for citizens en masse to hear about, discuss, analyse, and make decisions about their lives.he missing ingredient is organisation.

Because, on the basis of available technology, union locals, religious communities, schools and communities could be transformed into democratic hubs where citizens debate, discuss and vote on all matters concerning them — and instruct recallable members of government to
implement majority decisions.

This is an idea that will not feature at Magaung, but one that may become much more
prominent within the labour movement, especially in the wake of the recent wildcat
strikes.

These have been a wake-up call to unions: in order to remain relevant, they should look to their democratic roots and assess how best to return to them.

The technical resources exist.

Only imagination and political will are missing.

Terry Bell

Blog: terrybellwrites.wordpress.com

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Right2Know campaign voted newsmaker

December 6 2012
By Carol Hills

INLSA: The Right2Know campaign protested in front of Parliarment earlier this year. File Picture: Courtney Africa

Johannesburg

The Right2Know campaign has been voted Johannesburg Press Club 2012 newsmaker of the year.

“It’s a victory for people’s power,” Right2Know (R2K) Gauteng spokeswoman Jayshree Pather said on Thursday, accepting the award at Wits Business School, in Johannesburg.

“What lies ahead is, I think, many other struggles and as Right2Know we’re committed to… eternal vigilance,” she said.

Johannesburg Press Club chairman Mixael de Kock said the R2K coalition, comprising more than 400 organisations with 30,000 members, had “relentlessly pursued the public’s right to understand the full scope of the Protection of State Information Bill and how it would impact the media and every citizen of this country”.

It had shown “extraordinary courage, commitment and consistency” in ensuring the issues it tackled received news coverage.

“Access to information, as well as freedom of expression and association, are hard-won rights which are enshrined in the South African constitution.

“These values were continuously reiterated, restated and reported by the coalition,” he said.

Pather said every single committee meeting in Parliament had been full to capacity with R2K people monitoring “every single step of the way what happened with the Secrecy Bill”.

The amended Protection of State Information Bill, known as the Secrecy Bill, was adopted by 34 votes to 16 by the National Council of Provinces at the end of November and will go back to the National Assembly in the new year, where it is likely to be passed with ease by the ANC majority

At the time, R2K and opposition parties vowed that, if this happened, they would ask the Constitutional Court to overturn the legislation,

Pather said when R2K started two years ago, it was considered at best alarmist and at worst, a traitor.

“Right2Know has been accused of being counter-revolutionaries, agents of western imperialism, but the reality is all that we’ve achieved in the two years has been achieved, really through the tireless and selfless energy, passion and commitment of hundreds and hundreds of people,” she said.

“I think what we’ve seen unfold… has proven that we’ve been right to say there’s a real threat to our democracy, that there’s an increasing veil of secrecy descending upon all aspects of our lives….

“I mean its unbelievable, and much of it we don’t even know, but what we’ve seen again is the increased attack on civil society.”

She said mainstream civil society organisations were now being accused of many of the things only Right2Know had been accused of in the past.

“… Organisations that are working to support the state in a range of different areas are now being attacked because we’re independent, because we’re critical.”

The award was for a strengthened civil society, said Pather.

“It’s to acknowledge the work of all of these organisations, who work against great odds, under very difficult circumstances and so it’s a very important… thing for all of civil society.”

Other nominees for the award were Public Protector Thuli Madonsela and her team, and Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.

A Special Mention Award was made to Madonsela, who received the newsmaker award in 2011, for being the second person ever to be nominated twice in consecutive years.

The other double nominee was former president Nelson Mandela. – Sapa

@ http://www.iol.co.za/news/special-features/right2know-campaign-voted-newsmaker-1.1436715#.UMHu_uMSVlQ

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December 6, 2012

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BEHIND THE FARMWORKERS´ STRIKE: The failure of the ANC´s land reform in South Africa

The failure of land reform in South Africa

By Iqra Qalam and Joshua Lumet
6 December 2012

Almost two decades after the end of apartheid in South Africa, the failure of the agrarian reform policies of the African National Congress (ANC) has exposed the bourgeois nationalist liberation movement’s inability to resolve the land question.

The land reform promise was encapsulated in the ANC’s 1955 Freedom Charter, the movement’s main statement of principles and program. It was advanced in order to garner the political support of the rural poor. The ANC claimed that “all the land (would be) re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger” and that “the state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers”, and that the rural masses would be entitled to “the right to occupy land wherever they choose”.

After 1994, the ANC promised to undertake broad and sweeping action to reverse the deprivations institutionalized under Apartheid. These promises were outlined in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), a policy framework developed through extensive consultation between the ANC and its tripartite alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). It contained government policy guidelines for agricultural and land reform.

The RDP’s land reform goals had three broad thrusts. The first was the strengthening of tenure rights for the rural poor. Second, land restitution was to be made to those who could prove that their or their family’s land had been stolen under Apartheid. And the third was to redistribute 30 percent of agricultural land to the rural poor. All three goals were to be achieved before the year 2000. More than a decade after this deadline, none of these goals have been realized.

The land restitution promised that people who were forced off their land from 1913 (when the Native Land Act was passed) until the end of Apartheid would have their property rights reinstated. The process itself was a farce. Poorly advertised, most people were unaware that the deadline for lodging restitution claims was to close at the end of 1996. Late registration was not permitted, hence the vast majority of forced removal victims were never considered for restitution. Among the tiny minority who did apply, 8,770 claims have yet to be settled; despite promises that the restitution process would be completed by 2005.

In many of the restitution cases, the primary beneficiary has died and consequently their children and grandchildren have become joint beneficiaries. Worn down by endless bureaucracy, and countless delays, many have opted for a meager cash payment in lieu of the valuable prime urban land from which they were forcibly removed.

There are currently 500,000 subsistence farmers, struggling to eke out a living, and an additional 11 million rural poor who have not benefitted from land reform. There has been no mass transfer of agricultural land; instead the rural poor have been forced to migrate to the cities, living in squalid overcrowded townships, searching for work. Some of the rural poor find employment in the mines. Much of their meager income is repatriated to the rural areas in order to sustain families living on the brink of starvation.Since 1996, only 7 percent of the land—as opposed to the target of 30 percent—has been transferred. Of the land that has been redistributed to black farmers, 90 percent of farms are no longer productive. Agriculture is a capital intensive process, requiring tractors, implements, seed, fertilizer as well as technical assistance. These land reform support services have not been forthcoming.

In addition, the redistribution of land is governed by the 1996 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa—Section 25—which states that property may only be expropriated “subject to compensation, the amount of which and the time and manner of payment of which have either been agreed to by those affected or decided or approved by a court”.

In order to divert attention away from the inability of the ANC to implement land reform, the ANC took a decision to scrap the willing buyer, willing seller principle at its June conference this year, with President Jacob Zuma claiming this principle was the major impediment to implementing land reform. Following the June conference, the president released a five point land reform plan to “speed up” the process, which included a provision for buying land at 50 percent of its market value, or at a “fair productive value”.

The Financial Mail wrote that the President would have been aware that such statements could impact heavily on investor confidence. “The party was therefore careful to stress that the speeding up of land reform would be done in accordance with the Constitution, without alarming investors or putting the country at risk,” according to the newspaper.“Unfortunately, a lot of what is being said by the president is heavy on rhetoric and short on detail,” Ruth Hall, senior researcher at the University of the Western Cape’s institute for poverty, land and agrarian studies told the Mail & Guardiannewspaper.

While Hall commended the government’s attempts to speed up land reform, she argued that the process needed to be handled very carefully. “Setting up localised partnerships is a vital ingredient to the process of equitable land reform,” said Hall. “But, how exactly commercial farmers will become involved in a process that is encouraging them to accept below market value is the big question.”

Johannes Moller, president of Agri SA—South Africa’s largest agricultural trade association—described the current proposals for land reform as “dangerous and unworkable”.

“We think we should stick to market value-based land reform. If not, the security needed for a replacement industry for farmers leading the sector will be lost and you will be faced with further unemployment and other related problems,” Moller said.

Moller added that this approach could also lead to banks and other investment institutions becoming wary of placing funds in agriculture. This process could then lead to the agriculture industry in South Africa being crippled by strike action that has thus far only plagued the Western Cape province.

Research by Princeton University professor Bernadette Atuahene, who worked with South Africa’s department of land affairs and rural development, claims that there are two reasons why the ANC has had little success with the expropriation of land, and therefore its land reform policies—it is reluctant to do so, and the constraints imposed by the constitution. Reassuring international investors, Hall said the changes announced in June were not much more than a “political maneuver” and do not signal a new era of land reform.

Farmer Charl Senekal, South Africa’s largest sugar cane producer, said any attempts to facilitate the sale of land below market should not be entertained. “It is enshrined in our Constitution that we will be paid a market value rate for our land,” he told the Mail & Guardian newspaper. Senekal also warned about the possibility of food insecurity emerging in the country’s agricultural industry if government did not buy land at market value.

“If farmers lose interest in this industry when they see the opportunity for success is dwindling, that will immediately lead to food insecurity and if you thought the disquiet in the mining sector was bad—you haven’t seen the worst of what will come,” he said.Senekal was referring to the wildcat strike in the mining industry, which led to the August 16 Marikana massacre, where 34 miners were massacred by the South African Police Services (SAPS). Subsequently, farm labourers in the Western Cape province initiated their own strike action aimed at increasing the current minimum wage, which is set at R69 (US$7.85) per day, to R150 per day ($16.70).The failure the ANC’s land redistribution policies has a direct bearing on the militant strike action by farm workers. Underlying the demand for the wage increase is the question of land reform, and the promised better life for all.

Despite the promises of “equality” and “democracy”, the fall of Apartheid has ushered in a new era of misery and social degradation. The most elementary aspiration of the rural poor, the desire for land, has been unfulfilled. The ANC, as handmaiden of the capitalist ruling elite, on the one hand protects with brutal violence the inviolable right to private property enshrined in the Constitution, while on the other hand deceiving the rural poor into waiting for Godot—an endless wait for something that will never come.

Between two conflicting principles—the right of the rich to amass their fortunes and the right of all people to a better life—there can be no compromise. In the words of Karl Marx, “Between equal rights, force decides.” The question of land reform will only be decided by the struggle of classes.

In the Permanent Revolution, Trotsky wrote “With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.”

The only way forward for a completion of the democratic and national emancipation tasks posed most sharply prior to the fall of Apartheid is through socialist revolution. All major financial, industrial and manufacturing corporations as well as industries critical to the basic functioning of society—including agriculture, telecommunications, education, health care and transportation—must be subject to public ownership and democratic control.

The struggle for power requires the unconditional political independence of the working class from the parties, political representatives and agents of the capitalist class. The working class cannot come to power, let alone implement a socialist program, if its hands are tied by politically enfeebling compromises with the political representatives of other class interests.

What is required is a new leadership in the working class based on an internationalist and socialist perspective to carry through the fight for genuine democracy, equality and socialism.

@ http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/dec2012/land-d06.shtml

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Farmworker strike not over: Coalition

December 6 2012 at 04:28pm
By SAPA

Comment on this story

Independent Newspapers

File photo: Henk Kruger

Saccawu begins strike at OK, House & Home

BY ZEENAT MOORAD, 06 DESEMBER 2012, 13:37 | 2 COMMENTS

Picture: THE TIMES

“The company was given 72 hours to respond. The arrogant and hardline response from the company, a common trend amongst bosses – from mining to farming – simply stated: ‘as regards the demands contained in the memorandum, the company wishes to reiterate that your demands are not acceptable’,” said Saccawu.

The union has demanded a R4,000 basic salary for sales advisers, the scrapping of minimum performance standards, and the payment of commission to carpet estimators on fitting charges and for all sold items.

Shoprite Holdings was unavailable for comment.

@ http://www.bdlive.co.za/business/retail/2012/12/06/saccawu-begins-strike-at-ok-house-home

December 5, 2012

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News on the Farlan/ Marikana Commission; What really happened on August 11th @ Marikana? The History of a “Cover-UP”! Marikana prequel: NUM and the murders that started it all, by Jared Sacks

Marikana Commission: Cornered Mathunjwa let out by Dumisa Ntsebeza

SIPHO HLONGWANE
SOUTH AFRICA
5 DECEMBER 2012 02:29 (SOUTH AFRICA)

AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa appeared credible and honest under scrutiny once again at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry. But for the intervention of lawyers sympathetic to his side, he could have been left tainted. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

The animosity between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) before 16 August has led the president of the latter into sharky water at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry. Joseph Mathunjwa was unexpectedly called upon to intervene in the escalating labour unrest, even though his union was not the bargaining partner to the company. His politicking has opened an opportunity for lawyers to question his priorities.

Tshepiso Ramphele, the lawyer acting for two security guards who were killed by striking miners, put it to Mathunjwa that the union was responsible because some of the men who committed the murders were AMCU members. Mathunjwa backed out of that charge by stating that his union never called the strike.

“We regret the loss of life, but we can’t take responsibility, because this was the workers’ strike, not the AMCU’s strike. As a union you can’t divorce yourself, but it doesn’t mean you agree with them,” Mathunjwa said.

Previously, the AMCU president also stated that they had agreed with the company’s legal bid to have the strike declared unlawful before the 16 August massacre happened.

Takalani Masevhe, who is acting for the family of Warrant Officer Tsietsi Monene, also challenged the unionist for not trying to warn the police that threats had been made against them. A video was broadcast earlier at the commission, and shows the striking workers being addressed by one of their leaders in Mathunjwa’s presence.

“If the police claim to have safety, they should go and apply that safety to the employer. We are not leaving this place unless we get what we want,” the strike leader, Mgcineni Nokwe, said. “Let them go immediately. Those police brought here are going to remain here. They will not be able to get back into that hippo. We will finish them here.”

He was killed at the hands of the police later that afternoon.

Masevhe questioned why Mathunjwa did not try to either stop the miners from making threats, or why he didn’t warn the police. However, the union boss has stated on several questions that the police were uncooperative towards him on that day. Also, he has said that as much as his union was more trusted by the striking miners than AMCU, he didn’t have the power to make the workers do anything. The only promise he extracted from them was that they would disarm if Lonmin came to negotiate with them.

Ramphele and Masevhe were two of several lawyers who failed to make headway against Mathunjwa for asking redundant questions. This was in contrast to the stern cross-examination of police advocate Ishmael Semenya and Lonmin advocate Schalk Burger SC on the previous days of this cross-examination.

It was left to Dumisa Ntsebeza, who represents the families of the 34 miners who were killed, to recast Mathunjwa in a positive light after other lawyers suggested that AMCU may have been involved in goading the workers. He, the lawyers for the injured and arrested miners and AMCU are trying to paint the tragedy as having been the fault of the police, the company and NUM.

After the commission saw videos of AMCU national organiser Dumisani Nkalitshana singing songs about killing the NUM with the striking miners, Ntsebeza cross-examined Mathunjwa to give the meeting an innocuous cultural connotation.

“In my culture, it is December now and we will be going back home where I will take my sharpened stick. As we sing and dance, we do the clashing of the weapons every time,” Mathunjwa said, when asked why he hadn’t been afraid of the armed men.

Ntsebeza was briefly challenged by Lonmin’s Burger on the songs, and replied by comparing them to chants between football fans.

Mathunjwa’s history with NUM was also clarified, when Ntsebeza asked about the animosity between the two unions. When he was NUM’s local secretary at Douglas Colliery, he was expelled for leading a reportedly unprotected strike. His membership was terminated after he refused to sit in on a disciplinary hearing chaired by the then NUM general secretary Gwede Mantashe (now the ANC secretary general), citing it as unfair.

So far, the testimony of Mathunjwa has revealed that the police and the company may have failed to listen to him, even though he apparently got a breakthrough promise of disarmament and dispersal on the 15^th. But we have also learned that he and his colleagues leapt at a chance to seize Lonmin away from NUM, and could have been inappropriately zealous in their interactions with the miners. Of course, their actions on the day would not have been viewed in this light if nobody died.

Mathunjwa’s cross-examination continues next week Wednesday. DM

Marikana Commission: Joseph Mathunjwa stands his ground in Daily Maverick

Photo by Greg Marinovich. Wonderkop, Marikana, Oct 18, 2012.

@ http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-12-05-marikana-commission-cornered-mathunjwa-let-out-by-dumisa-ntsebeza

see aslo:

Strike leaders arrested following testimony before Marikana massacre inquiry

@ https://selim1404.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/strike-leaders-arrested-following-testimony-before-marikana-massacre-inquiry-in-south-africa/

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Marikana prequel: NUM and the murders that started it all

JARED SACKS
12 OCTOBER 2012 02:53 (SOUTH AFRICA)

The coverage of the Marikana massacre seems to start with the mass killings of 16 August. But that’s not where, or how the violence started, and it wasn’t rivalry between unions, either. Rewind a few days and prepare for goosebumps: you’ll find a web of conspiracy around two murders which were not reported in the media and ended in no arrests, but scared the living daylights out of the workers before the weeks of horror started.

Because the Marikana Massacre marked a turning point in the history of our country, I went to the small mining town in the North West. I wanted to know what truly happened and what it meant for the future of our so-called democracy. I hoped my trip would enable me to answer some of the burning questions left obfuscated by media, government and civil society campaigns alike.

It seemed it would be difficult, if not impossible, to uncover the cause of the violence at a distance from Marikana because of the complete failure of most media outlets to ask the right questions of the right people. Professor Jane Duncan of Rhodes University has found that journalists rarely interviewed independent mineworkers or residents of Marikana, preferring to quote “official sources” such as unions, Lonmin or the police. Moreover, my experience of previous incidents of repression in South Africa had taught me that such sources are often unreliable, as they have a lot to lose by telling the truth.

Through my investigations I found that, contrary to many media reports, inter-union rivalry was not the immediate cause of the violence. In fact, a significant cause of the violence can be laid squarely on the National Union of Mineworkers and their murder of two of their own NUM members – which until 2 October remained unreported.

Meeting the community

After meeting a community member (whose family did not consist of direct employees of Lonmin) in Johannesburg, I spent a week at the end of September living in the massive Nkaneng shack settlement in the township of Wonderkop. Together, Nkaneng and Wonderkop dwarf Marikana itself, housing the vast majority of the area’s mineworkers. Yet almost all the roads there remain unpaved, and residents are forced to go all the way to the “city centre” for most of their needs. Geographically and socio-economically, Wonderkop is the bastard stepchild of the Marikana municipality, further marginalised by Lonmin, whose corporate social responsibility initiatives remain unnoticeable.

During my visit, I spoke to Lonmin workers who had participated in the strike and others who were not active strikers. I interviewed the wives and children of the miners and I also sat down with unemployed and self-employed residents who did not have family members working at Lonmin.

I began to piece together a more detailed and shocking timeline of the strike and how it eventually degenerated into the horrifying footage played out for the whole world to see.

Revelation

Perhaps the most striking thing I heard repeatedly in Wonderkop was the near-complete hatred that all residents, regardless of their connection to the strike, had towards the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

I had assumed that within Wonderkop there would be a divide between supporters of NUM and those that had jumped ship to their smaller non-Cosatu affiliated rival, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). I assumed there would at least be a significant minority of residents who blamed the strikers for instigating the killings and felt that NUM still remained a relevant and credible force among Lonmin workers.

And yet every single person that I spoke to, without fail, blamed NUM for starting the violence and reneging on its responsibility to represent the workers. This was the case even when people I interviewed expressed dislike for the strikers and their own subsequent acts of brutality. Almost everyone felt more hatred towards NUM than they did towards Lonmin, the police or even the Zuma administration.

Alternative timeline: how the strike began

On Wednesday 8 August, some rock drill operators (RDOs) from various Lonmin mines had a mass meeting demanding a significant salary increase. The NUM leaders present categorically refused to support the strike, despite the union’s stated mission to promote and represent the interests of its members. On the following day (Women’s Day – a holiday for the workers), thousands of RDOs from all Lonmin mines met at the Lonmin-owned football stadium, adjacent to the settlement, where they agreed to approach Lonmin management directly, as NUM was refusing to represent them.

According to Xolani*, an active striker from Lonmin’s Karee mine, RDOs “came together as workers, not as a union.” As the large majority of the workers at the assembly were NUM members, the AMCU was unrepresented at this meeting.

On the morning of Friday the 10th, workers assembled and marched to the offices of Lonmin management. David, a Lonmin mine geologist I interviewed (who was returning from work and was not then part of the strike), decided to join the striking RDOs to see what was going on. David told me that management refused to speak to the workers, who were assembled peacefully, and told them to go back to the NUM leadership.

Xolani and a few other participants in the march corroborated this. He explained that security had tried to stop the march and that after a long wait, the general manager of the mine came out and then went back in to fetch a NUM leader. After waiting for almost an hour, the NUM leader came out and reprimanded the workers, saying they would not get anything without going through the union.

As a result of Lonmin and NUM’s refusal to meet with the workers, more than 3,000 RDOs and other miners decided to go on strike and refused to clock in that evening. This was a wildcat strike organised directly by workers, without any union representation.

11 August: March on NUM

At approximately 07:00 on Saturday, workers, still primarily RDOs, decided to go to the main offices of NUM in Wonderkop and present union leadership with a memorandum. It is important to note that the NUM offices are also the offices of the ANC and SACP in Wonderkop. They are manned by the top five NUM branch leaders from all the Lonmin mines in Marikana. These leaders are senior to shop-stewards and are elected to their position by workers for a period of three years. Interestingly, David explained to me that they get their normal worker’s salary plus a huge bonus of R14,000 per month from Lonmin. They are therefore accountable to management. Both the NUM leaders and Lonmin are “happy with this arrangement”.

As strikers were by and large NUM members, they were naturally angry that their own union refused to listen to them. The memorandum demanded that NUM represent them in their call for a R12,500 minimum wage for all miners. NUM’s stated raison d’être is, after all, to be a democratic organisation that represents its members.

Julius, an RDO from Lesotho employed at Lonmin since 2008, explained that, as a NUM member, he was hoping the memorandum would convince union leaders of the significance of their wage demands.

Only a handful of AMCU members were present during that march, as many workers from the Karee mine, where AMCU already had a membership presence, was far away and not yet participating in significant numbers in the strike. Xolani, one of the few AMCU members present that day, said this protest was really a case of NUM members rebelling against their own leadership, not a case of inter-union rivalry.

The first murders, ‘a different account’

Once striking RDOs were about 100-150 metres away from the NUM office, eyewitnesses, both participants in the march and informal traders in and around a nearby taxi rank, reported without exception that “top five” NUM leaders and other shop stewards, between 15 and 20 in all, came out of the office and began shooting at the protesting strikers somewhere in the vicinity of the Wonderkop taxi rank.

Some strikers I interviewed claimed the NUM leaders first threw rocks at them before the shooting started. Others said they were attacked from two different angles of the taxi rank. There is also a discrepancy as to just how many guns were in the possession of the leadership that came out of the NUM office (reports range from between five and 15 firearms).

Despite those discrepancies, the strikers and other witnesses – without exception – claim NUM personnel shot at the protesters without warning or provocation. The miners were clearly ambushed by their union representatives. From that point on, the miners marching towards the NUM office, primarily NUM members, ran in many directions: back along the road in which they had come, through the nearby bond houses and through Lonmin-owned hostel properties. They later re-assembled at Lonmin’s football stadium, deciding there for the sake of safety to move to the nearby koppie, a small hilltop uniquely placed on public land between Wonderkop, Marikana and the various Lonmin mines. Protesters seem to have made no attempt to defend themselves, and there seem to have been no further clashes for the rest of the day.

John, a non-striking Lonmin worker, saw two bodies of strikers not far from the NUM office as he returned home from work. One was lying dead by the bus stop in the taxi rank, the other was just outside the workers’ hostel. The range of people I interviewed corroborated the location of the two dead bodies, but it was extremely difficult to confirm the names of the dead strikers as neither Lonmin nor the police have confirmed that any deaths occurred on the 11^th. Neither have they released any substantive information about what happened on that day.

However, one person I interviewed provided me with the following new namesnot released by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate: S. Gwadidi from the Roeland Shaft and Tobias Tshivilika from New Mine Shaft. Both were reportedly RDOs and also NUM members.

I was not able to assess if these names were correct or if any other people were injured during this shooting on the 11 August.

Everyone I interviewed agreed on this general timeline of the murders: two deaths at the very beginning of the violence, followed by a subsequent eight deaths and a number of injuries during the following three days, from Sunday, 12 August until Tuesday, 14 August.

It started out as a peaceful strike

I wanted to find out when and why the workers began to arm themselves, and so asked a wide range of residents in Wonderkop why and when striking workers began carrying traditional items such as sticks, knobkerries and pangas.

The consensus, with one exception, was that the strikers went to their homes to fetch their traditional weapons on Saturday, 11 August, after the murder of two strikers. In the words of David, who was present at the march (but still not yet on strike himself), “people decided to arm themselves (after the first two murders) in self-defence”. Xolani and Julius support this assertion: they had nothing in their hands during the march.

Some women leaders from the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), a body aligned to the ANC, SACP and Cosatu, agreed that the miners only took up arms in self-defence after their members were murdered by NUM officials. Many of the informal traders and bystanders at the scene of the NUM shooting were hesitant to speak to me. Yet, after I assured them that they would remain anonymous, all, without exception, said the violence on that day came from the people working in the NUM office. When I asked some young men playing draughts who killed whom, they merely pointed in the direction of the NUM office, saying it was “them”. By all accounts the strikers were unarmed that morning when they marched to their own union office.

Misrepresentations

When I returned from my visit to Marikana, I began searching through all the mainstream and alternative media reports I could find. After reading hundreds of articles, I found none that mentioned the incident on the 11th. Until the Farlam Commission recently interviewed a worker about the events on that day, not a single media report had acknowledged that the first deaths occurred on the 11 August rather than on the 12th.

A single early South African Press Association story placed the first two shootings on the evening of 10 August. But that was all. That story contradicts other mainstream media reports and does not corroborate what people say on the ground. It seems most likely that the reporting is mistaken and those four people mentioned in the article were actually shot on the morning of the 11th during the march on NUM offices, and that two of them later died.

The only other possible explanations for the lack of reporting on the incident would be either (a) that the murders on the 11th did not take place at all, and that everyone I have interviewed were somehow lying or (b) there is some kind of cover-up of the murders of Mr. Gwadidi and Mr. Tshivilika – both unlikely conclusions.

All the other articles I’ve read have told a completely different story: that the first deaths occurred on Sunday, 12 August. These include two of the security guards in the daytime and two other miners in the evening (see for instance, articles: here,here, here, here, here and here.

It is as if no one outside Marikana knows that two people were murdered in broad daylight at the busy Wonderkop taxi rank. This is strange, except when one considers that no one in Wonderkop/Marikana has access to the media except for NUM, Lonmin and the South African Police Service (SAPS). The media, not present in Marikana until later in the week, were relying on these three official bodies for their entire investigation. Not a single community member or worker was actually interviewed during the first few days of the strike.

As Professor Jane Duncan’s analysis of the media coverage of the Marikana Massacre from 13 to 22 August has shown, only 3% of articles about the events included interviews with workers themselves rather than “official” institutions such as government, SAPS, Lonmin, NUM and AMCU. With one exception, journalists that did actually speak to workers were only interested in asking questions about muthi.

What this means is that no eyewitnesses were contacted by journalists and, when a few were eventually contacted (mostly after the 16 August) they focused primarily on the more recent massacre and overlooked the original cause of the violence.

Causes and responsibilities

Many analysts and academics with easy access to the elite public sphere place the root cause for the Lonmin strike and the subsequent violence on the deprivation and exploitation meted out each and every day on RDOs and other miners all over South Africa. Greg Marinovich’s recent interviews with Lonmin RDOs have done a lot to illuminate the lives and working conditions in the mines.

I found, however, that NUM’s actions, undemocratically refusing to represent its own workers and siding instead with Lonmin management in the wage dispute, were a significant contributor to the violence. Even more disturbing, NUM saw its own workers as enemies from within – an uneducated and unthinking mass to be controlled and managed rather than served.

This is why NUM leaders such as Frans Baleni think it is impossible for workers to organise themselves without a “third force” acting from behind the scenes. My interviews have shown quite clearly that workers were acting by and for themselves, regardless of union affiliation, in rebellion against their own union leadership. They were their own leaders.

The paranoid and delusional fear that NUM members were being “remote controlled” by outsiders set on “destroying the union” may have been what led its leadership at Lonmin to respond irrationally and violently to the striker’s peaceful march on the NUM office.

Police response

The police did nothing in response to the two deaths on 11 August. No one was arrested that day, nor was anyone interrogated. This was despite the fact that many strikers present during the murders assert they can identify at least some of their assailants. Xolani, for instance, named two of the shop stewards, one from the Training Centre and one from the fourth shaft in Wonderkop. Others pointed out the Lonmin “Top Five”, one of whom seems to have now been assassinated.

I asked David if he thought there might have been an alternative to the violence if the police had arrested the murderers on that fateful day. He replied, “I think it would be different if police had arrested NUM…if you don’t arrest anybody, then it seems like you are protecting them.”

Whether or not police could have uncovered the full story on that day, the act of doing nothing left workers with the perception that they were isolated. “Worker, you are on your own” could be their rephrasing of Bantu Steve Biko’s famous words. If one is standing unarmed and vulnerable against armoured vehicles, guns and the full might of the South African state, then, as workers may have put it when meeting on top of the now infamous koppie on the afternoon of 11 August: It’s time to get ready for war. DM

Jared Sacks is a Cape Town-based social justice activist and founder of the non-profit organisation, Children of South Africa

*Not his real name. Because of the recent spate of murders targeting NUM leaders in Marikana, the names of everyone interviewed for this article have been changed, though their real names are known to the author.

@ http://dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2012-10-12-marikana-prequel-num-and-the-murders-that-started-it-all

—————-

After the police executions at Marikana

by Paul Trewhela

10 September 2012

Paul Trewhela on an old question that has found new saliency in the aftermath of the killings

All the ingredients for a climactic eruption in South Africa have been present for almost two decades.

Almost universal agreement on the untenability of the present is matched by equally deep differences on the pattern for the future.

The conflict is also rooted in the divergence and diversity of hopes about what is to come.

South Africa is not a hopeless society; perhaps that is why its central conflict appears to be so intractable.

Some have what others want, and others are determined to monopolise what some want to get at.

It is a deeply divided society where one side’s dreams and expectations for the future becomes the other’s threat to, and frustration of, the present.

That is also why it is increasingly becoming a violent, bitter, and brutalised society.

The question is, why? What is the underlying issue?

***

I must ask the spirit of Frederik van Zyl Slabbert to forgive me. Professor van Zyl Slabbert (“Slabbert”, or “Van”) died two years ago, and the words above are his, only slightly changed from when he first spoke them. They appear as the first words in his address, “The Dynamics of Reform and Revolt in Current South Africa”, delivered 25 years ago in the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Brasenose College, Oxford, in October and November 1987.

They can be spoken or written today, as I’ve just done, only very slightly changed.

After those crucial questions, “Why? What is the underlying issue?”, Slabbert continues:

“Is it class, race, ethnicity? Obviously greed, intolerance, fear, are primordial emotions that run deep in South Africa, but they epitomise rather than explain the dilemma.”

He goes on to state:

“Because analyses of South Africa are often so starkly divergent, it provides a fertile climate for ideological dogmatism.

Differences of opinion, tactics and strategy, often blow up into major confrontations and are seized upon….

“Ideological certainty depends on intellectual compromise, and South Africa is rife with compromised intellectuals who know better but refrain from saying so. The need for certainty is often the most compelling evidence for uncertainty.”

Now, nearly four weeks after the mass shooting by police of armed miners at Marikana on 16 August, followed by repeated reports of cold-blooded executions by police of miners who were wounded, in hiding or surrendering with their hands held straight up in the air, these words by Slabbert have a terrifying immediacy.

Like the zing of a bullet, they ricochet off the rocks at Small Koppie. After a quarter of a century, they demand an answer from the new governors, the new Masters of the Universe, whom Slabbert did his best to assist into office – the greed, intolerance and fear of the old South Africa, which he critically discussed, now brutally revealed as the template (only slightly changed) of the New.

Four documents reveal the limitations – even, the failure? – of the project of transformation which Slabbert did his remarkable best to assist into being. Each should be read with care, and in relation to the others.

The first is the official, state-sponsored report from nearly ten years ago which popularly bears his name, the “Slabbert Report“: more precisely, the Report of the Electoral Task Team (of which Slabbert was chairman), issued in January 2003.

The second is a press statement on 23 March this year giving the rejection by the government and ANC administration in Luthuli House to calls for attention to be given to the buried words of the Slabbert report, delivered by Mathole Matshekga MP, the chief whip of the ANC’s voting herd in the National Assembly.

The third is the report in The Star last Wednesday, 5 September, headed “Begging miners ‘shot for fun'”.

The fourth is the official “ANC Alliance Statement on the Situation at the Lonmin Platinum Mines” issued on Friday 7 September, following a meeting the previous day by the bigshots of the ANC Alliance – ANC, South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions – in response to what they modestly and demurely referred to as the “tragic” and “unfortunate” departure from this world of the shot miners.

Slabbert Report

In an article in the Dispatch on 21 August, I wrote that the “long history of unaccountable power in South Africa has time and time again produced these turns to violence, followed by mass slaughter by the state, followed by wider and wider political disenchantment with the previous political elite, perceived as responsible for the slaughter. So it was after the crushing of the white miners’ strike by Jan Smuts in 1922, so it was after Sharpeville, and so it will be now.

“The new, democratic constitution arising from the end of the Cold War and the unbanning of political organisations in South Africa was supposed to have provided a process in which a law-bound system of democratically elected representatives, mediation and arrived-at consensus would end this bloody history. Clearly it has not. …

“This must mean a return to the issues examined by the electoral task team under the chairmanship of the late Frederik van Zyl Slabbert….

“As it stated then in its crucial section 4.3.5 of the report – its section on accountability – …with ‘very few exceptions a lack or perceived lack of accountability was identified as a problem in the current system.’

“Polling of the electorate showed that already more than 10 years ago ‘only 60% felt that the system helped voters hold individual representatives accountable’.

Today any adequate poll would surely show this figure very far below 60 percent.

“Already at that time, the commission continued, this resulted in ‘71% feeling that candidates should come from the area they represent, which was seen as a means of improving their individual accountability.

Lack of accountability and availability/responsiveness was thus also seen as the weak point’ of the entire political process.”

ANC high command rejection of Slabbert Report

In its statement issued by ANC Chief Whip Motshekga last March, the ruling party high command – now answerable for the mass shootings and executions at Marikana – rejected calls for implentation of the Slabbert commission’s call for electoral reform enabling a majority of MPs to be elected on a constituency basis, with local voters empowered to vote for a specific individual and sack that MP if he or she proves corrupt, brutal, lazy or otherwise no good.

With astonishing crassness, Motshekqa stated the ruling party’s reason for opposing any change from its current party-list system in language and concepts identical to those of the apartheid period.

The unaccountable party-list system had to stay, he said, because South Africa has “a largely illiterate population.”

As reported in the Sowetan, the commission “suggested a hybrid electoral system where at least half of the 400 MPs would be directly elected by their constituencies in place of the current list system.

“Motshekga said South Africa’s democracy was still not mature enough to entertain the kind of system suggested by the commission.

“‘The Van Zyl Slabbert report does not take into account the fact that we are a young democracy; we have a largely illiterate population,’ he said.”

(Mr Motshekga did not explain how he and his superiors explain this confluence of their own political concepts with those of their former apartheid masters).

Cold-blooded executions reported by survivors

Lungisile Lutshetu was among those arrested at Marikana on 16 August and released on bail on Monday 3 September last week.

He returned to Small Kopppie with journalists from the Star the next day, to where “bright-green alphabetic marks on rocks and trees” indicated “where bodies lay after the shooting.”

Lutshetu said he “believed more people than reported were killed between the rocks.”

Chased by police, he said he “‘found a hiding place between large rocks, but then police were already all over the place. Those in front of me were shot at close range and fell over me, and that’s how my life was spared.

“‘There was a Sotho man who I saw kneeling next to a big stone with his hands up.

He begged for his life and apologised profusely for something he didn’t know about, but the heartless officers riddled him with automatic rifles, which pierced through his body.’

“Lutshetu said he had seen at least 15 people being shot dead or left injured, ‘only for some of the injured to be shot again in the head later and finished off’.”

When arrested miners were made to lie prone, Lutshetu said, ‘The unlucky ones who dared raise their heads were killed’.”

Lutshetu’s firsthand account gave powerful support to evidence already provided by the photo-journalist Greg Marinovitch on the Daily Maverick website on 30 August(before arrested miners were released on bail) and again on 2 September (also before their release).

On Thursday 6 September, Sky News in Britain carried a lengthy report by Ms Alex Crawford, its special correspondent in South Africa, with lengthy television coverage of the scene of carnage at Small Koppie, including interview on camera with a named miner who reported deliberate executions of miners, in the same manner as reported by Mr Lutshetu.

At the time of writing, no policemen have been stood down and arrested on suspicion of murder.

The Commissioner of Police, the director of the National Prosecuting Authority and the Minister of Justice should be held to account.

ANC Alliance Statement

Obtuse denialism.

Incapacity to face the truth.

Blame always located somewhere else.

A government and ruling party purblind to reality.

As Slabbert warned 25 years ago: “All the ingredients for a climactic eruption…untenability of the present….a violent, bitter, and brutalised society.”

And 10 years ago: “Lack of accountability…the weak point” of the entire political process.

@ http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=325233&sn=Detail&pid=71619

December 5, 2012

2 Comments

COSATU Intervenes: Western Cape winelands – The strike’s over, nothing’s solved …

Western Cape winelands: The strike’s over, nothing’s solved

BENJAMIN FOGEL
5 DECEMBER 2012 02:35 (SOUTH AFRICA)

December the 4^th marked the short-lived resumption of the Western Cape farmworkers’ uprising, after a 10-day break for negotiations which have seemingly come to nothing. Workers across the Boland went back on strike, but only for day, as it appears the strike has been called off by all “stakeholders”.

Yet it is clear that it was COSATU’s Western Cape branch, chaired by Tony Ehrenreich, that called off the strike without receiving a mandate from most stakeholders or the workers themselves.

By BENJAMIN FOGEL.

The second round of the strike has been a disaster – a major display of weakness that could potentially set back the farmworkers’ struggle for years.

Disempowering the emergent political agency that has resulted from the unified action of farmworkers, wage negotiations are now to be conducted by unions on a farm-by-farm basis, while also including the unrealistic temptation of a profit-sharing scheme.

If the power and agency of the strikers arose from the actions of the most brutalised and exploited segment of South Africa’s working class, the end of the strike marks a continuation of the same backroom union politics that brought about the wildcat strikes on the mines of the North West.

Speaking with farmworkers across the Boland on Tuesday, both those who participated in the strike and others who returned to work made it clear that there was no consensus on the direction the strike should take or a understanding between those appointed to negotiate in the name of the workers and the workers themselves.

In the Robertson area, the majority of non-union workers returned to their jobs, while members of unions such as CSAAWU (Commercial Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allies Workers Union) continued the strike at the Vink Rivier, Voorspoed, Wonderfontein and the La Collione farms.

We found a group of strikers hunkering down opposite the gas station near the entrance to Robertson from the Worcester side.

These workers had apparently been driven from their picket line at the La Collione farm by the police; they claimed that the farmer only pays them R65 a day.

Three workers claimed to have been hit by police rubber bullets.

When questioned, police redirected our questions to a superior, who, clutching his weapon, avoided giving us any answers to our queries about the strike.

Photo: Some of the strikers were displaying rubber bullet wounds from 15 November violent unrests.

Wesley Booison, a CSAAWU shop steward interviewed at the Voorspoed farm told us that the workers had been organised at the farm for three years now, despite the hostility of the farm-owner and the meager R69 per day wage they received.

A week ago, this same farmer had charges laid against him at the Robertson police station for allegedly threatening to shoot his workers if they damaged his property.

Workers picketing at the farm clutched signs demanding R150 per day and claiming that “R150 was only a start” – something we heard on Sunday at a rally in Ashton.

It is interesting that the most determined and politically aware workers we encountered in the region were affiliated to the small independent CSAAWU union.

An hour’s drive away, De Doorns once again appeared to be both the core of the strike and the key political battle for whatever capital can be extracted from the farmworkers strike.

As local politicians and newly discovered community leaders struggle for legitimacy, national politicians, perennial camp followers of the struggle and union leaders seeking to rapidly recruit new members.

The strike’s energy seemed to have dwindled somewhat by noon as workers, fearing the loss of money needed for Christmas, returned to their farms.

Still, according to locals, around 6,000 workers remain on strike. Those who did return to work were permanent workers rather than those employed seasonally.

As in the Roberston-Ashton area, in De Doorns it was clear that the majority of workers on strike were not ready to settle for anything less than R150 per day, and that there was no clear process of accountability between workers and their “representatives” at the negotiating table.

Assembled at the De Doorns stadium were over a thousand workers. Most were waiting in the December heat for something to happen while their compatriots had the good sense to stay at home.

A small group entertained themselves through an impromptu toyi-toyi and song session, while carrying flags provided by Mario Wanza and a few of his new UDF comrades.

Yet the most shocking occurrence witnessed at the De Doorns rally was a call made by one Sandile Kenny in full view of union leaders, for PASSOP director Braam Hanekom to be killed on his return to the community.

This call was made after Sandile led the crowd in a decidedly weak rendition of Kill the Boer, and at a podium shared with the controversial former unionist, Nosey Pieterson, who now heads the Black Association of Wine and Spirit Industry as well as BAWUSA.

Tony Ehrenreich of COSATU in the Western Cape arrived a bit later; his speech, delivered at about noon, did not explicitly call for an end to the strike or even engage with that possibility.

Rather, it contained two key themes:

a) a call for the workers to embrace’s COSATU’s particular brand of unionism as the only way to protect their interests and

b) a call for workers to place their trust in the power and wisdom of their representatives at the negotiating table who had the political connections necessary to call in the appropriate cabinet ministers and to meet with the farmer’s representatives.

Both of these themes have emerged prominently in today’s deal, which may put an end to the strike and looks set to empower COSATU affiliated unions in future negotiations at the expense of independent unions like CSAAWU.

While it is clear that division among workers on the strike has been growing and many thought it was more prudent to return to work than take the risk of going back on an indefinite strike, the deal was imposed on the farmworkers after an unaccountable process conducted in the name of democracy.

It further hampers the growth of a new democratic and active political culture among workers in South Africa.

Instead of attempting to build a democratic trade union movement, COSATU affiliates have been more concerned with politicking and increasing their clout in rural areas.

In the end the deal – unlike in Marikana – removed actual farmworkers from the negotiating table or any other public platform. This risks further perpetuation of the system of degradation and exploitation that is endemic in the agricultural industry. In the area where real problems exist and sobering differences are there for all to see, it solved pretty much nothing. DM

Main photo: Tony Ehrenreich of COSATU delivers the usual speech to a somewhat disinterested audience, 4 December 2012, De Doorns. (Benjamin Fogel)

Secondary photos: Elizabeth Beekman and Daman Phillips

@ http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-12-05-western-cape-winelands-the-strikes-over-nothings-solved

December 5, 2012

1 Comment

We Demand The Release Of All Arrested Activists NOW!!

For Immediate Release: We Demand The Release Of All Activists NOW!!

Cape Town, 5 December 2012 – Two prominent activists from Mawubuye Land Rights Forum and the Coalition for Farm Workers Living Wage and Decent Living Conditions are still being detained in Montague police station.

Mercia Andrews, Denia Jansen and two others were arrested at approximately noon yesterday and have been denied justi

ce.

The absence of a magistrate in Montague meant that they have had to remain in jail overnight.

18 were arrested in the Citrusdal area but were later released.

The arrests came at the same time that Tony Ehrenreich, general secretary of COSATU, called off the strike in De Doorns.

Andrews and Jansen will appear this morning in Ashton Magistrates court at 10am.

For further information please contact:

Gavin Joachim – Director of Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE) on 078 066 1662

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FARMWORKERS´ STRIKE (NOT?) OVER?

Farmworkers’ strike is over

December 5 2012 at 07:50am
By Daneel Knoetze

Comment on this story

REUTERS

A protester rolls a tyre into a burning barricade in Franshhoek. Photo: Reuters

Armed men arrested as farm strike resumes

December 4 2012 at 09:17pm
By SAPA

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Bloomberg

Franschhoek – Police arrested seven armed men on Tuesday as farm workers in South Africa’s picturesque winelands resumed strike action, with tension enveloping the Western Cape region.

The men, suspected to be members of the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), were found with one firearm and 60 rounds of ammunition at a roadblock leading to the epicentre of the farmworkers strike.

Regional police spokesman Andre Traut said the suspects aged between 33 and 66 years “were driving in the direction of De Doorns when their vehicle was searched.”

It was in De Doorns – outside Cape Town – that last month’s unrest began, leaving two dead and vineyards burnt.

On Tuesday, there were however few signs of a repeat of last month’s deadly violence as the strike resumed.

The strike, which comes at the start of South Africa’s grape harvest season, turned violent in November when workers burned vineyards, looted shops and blockaded streets with burning tyres in towns close to Cape Town.

Many of the farmers have since hired private security firms to protect their property while the police have sent hundreds of additional officers to monitor the area.

Mario Wanza, a spokesman for the Farmworkers Strike Coalition, said a number of farm workers and protests organisers were arrested after the police fired rubber bullets in the area of Paarl, in the orange farming town of Citrusdal and near the town of Montagu.

“A number of people were shot,” he said. “We expect the strike to carry on for a number of days.”

Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Andre Traut said the situation in farming communities was “under control” late on Tuesday afternoon.

Porschia Adams, a spokeswoman for AgriWes-Cape, which represents farmers in the Western Cape province, said farm workers marched to the group’s offices in Paarl to hand over a memorandum of demands.

“About 200 people came in a group,” she said. “It was very small. Most of the areas today were quiet.”

Workers are demanding that their 70 rand ($8) daily wages be increased to 150 rand ($17).

Adams said a strike was unusual for the farming industry, where wage disputes were normally resolved “on the ground”.

“Farm workers do not normally strike. They are partners in business and they realise what their role is. They sort their issues out on the farm with the farmers.”

Adams said farmers were “reassessing their risks and thinking about alternatives” to using labour.

The fruit industry in the Western Cape employs around 200 000 permanent workers and 200 000 casual labourers.

Michael Loubser, a spokesman for Hex Valley Table Grape Farmers Association, said no violence had been reported early on Tuesday.

“About 95 percent of the permanent staff are at work today,” he said.

The only people who were not able to work were those from the nearby Stofland informal settlement, he said.

“The workers there have been told that if they go to work there will be consequences,” Loubser

said.

So far talks to end the dispute have remained deadlocked.

Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant has said that the basic wage may only be reviewed one year after it was put in place, according to legislation, with the current level dating to March this year.

Tony Ehrenreich, the general secretary of Western Cape branch of union federation Cosatu, said discussions with farmers had been fruitless.

“So far our discussions have yielded no results.” – Sapa-AF

———————————————————–

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