The Marikana Massacre: Details of deliberate police murder begin to emerge

Aug. 31, 2012 Libcom.org

This article is from the mainstream media in South Africa but has invaluable details on what actually happened when the police left 35 strikers dead and another 78 injured.
 

The murder fields of Marikana. The cold murder fields of Marikana.

The majority of the dead in the 16 August massacre at Marikana appear to have been shot at close range or crushed by police vehicles. They were not caught in a fusillade of gunfire from police defending themselves, as the official account would have it. GREG MARINOVICH spent two weeks trying to understand what really happened. What he found was profoundly disturbing.

Of the 34 miners killed at Marikana, no more than a dozen of the dead were captured in news footage shot at the scene. The majority of those who died, according to surviving strikers and researchers, were killed beyond the view of cameras at a nondescript collection of boulders some 300 metres behind Wonderkop.

On one of these rocks, encompassed closely on all sides by solid granite boulders, is the letter ‘N’, the 14th letter of the alphabet. Here, N represents the 14th body of a striking miner to be found by a police forensics team in this isolated place. These letters are used by forensics to detail were the corpses lay.

There is a thick spread of blood deep into the dry soil, showing that N was shot and killed on the spot. There is no trail of blood leading to where N died – the blood saturates one spot only, indicating no further movement. (It would have been outside of the scope of the human body to crawl here bleeding so profusely.)

Approaching N from all possible angles, observing the local geography, it is clear that to shoot N, the shooter would have to be close. Very close, in fact, almost within touching distance. (After having spent days here at the bloody massacre site, it does not take too much imagination for me to believe that N might have begged for his life on that winter afternoon.)

And on the deadly Thursday afternoon, N’s murderer could only have been a policeman. I say murderer because there is not a single report on an injured policeman from the day. I say murderer because there seems to have been no attempt to uphold our citizens’ right to life and fair recourse to justice. It is hard to imagine that N would have resisted being taken into custody when thus cornered. There is no chance of escape out of a ring of police.

Other letters denote equally morbid scenarios. J and H died alongside each other. They, too, had no route of escape and had to have been shot at close range.

Other letters mark the rocks nearby. A bloody handprint stains a vertical rock surface where someone tried to support themselves standing up; many other rocks are splattered with blood as miners died on the afternoon of 16 August.

None of these events were witnessed by media or captured on camera. They were only reported on as component parts in the sum of the greater tragedy.

One of the striking miners caught up in the mayhem, let’s call him “Themba”, though his name is known to the Daily Maverick, recalled what he saw once he escaped the killing fields around Wonderkop.

“Most people then called for us to get off the mountain, and as we were coming down, the shooting began. Most people who were shot near the kraal were trying to get into the settlement; the blood we saw is theirs. We ran in the other direction, as it was impossible now to make it through the bullets.
“We ran until we got to the meeting spot and watched the incidents at the koppie. Two helicopters landed; soldiers and police surrounded the area. We never saw anyone coming out of the koppie.”
The soldiers he refers to were, in fact, part of the police task team dressed in camouflage uniforms, brought to the scene in a brown military vehicle. Asked about this, Themba said he believed people were hiding at the koppie, and police went in and killed them.

In the days after the shooting, Themba visited friends at the nearby mine hospital. “Most people who are in hospital were shot at the back. The ones I saw in hospital had clear signs of being run over by the Nyalas,” he said. “I never got to go to the mortuary, but most people who went there told me that they couldn’t recognise the faces of the dead (they were so damaged by either bullets of from being driven over).”

It is becoming clear to this reporter that heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood. A minority were killed in the filmed event where police claim they acted in self-defence. The rest was murder on a massive scale.

Peter Alexander, chair in Social Change and professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg, and two researchers interviewed witnesses in the days after the massacre. Researcher Botsong Mmope spoke to a miner, Tsepo, on Monday 20 August. Tsepo (not his real name) witnessed some of the events that occurred off camera.

“Tsepo said many people had been killed at the small koppie and it had never been covered (by the media). He agreed to take us to the small koppie, because that is where many, many people died,” Mmope said.

After the shooting began, Tsepo said, he was among many who ran towards the small koppie. As the police chased them, someone among them said, “Let us lie down, comrades, they will not shoot us then.”

“At that time, there were bullets coming from a helicopter above them. Tsepo then lay down. A number of fellow strikers also lay down. He says he watched Nyalas driving over the prostrate, living miners,” Mmope said. “Other miners ran to the koppie, and that was where they were shot by police and the army** with machine guns.” (** Several witnesses and speakers at the miners' gathering referring to the army, or amajoni, actually refer to a police task team unit in camouflage uniforms and carrying R5 semi-automatic files on the day. – GM)

When the firing finally ceased, Tsepo managed to escape across the veld to the north.

It took several days for police to release the number of those killed. The number 34 surprised most of us. With only about a dozen bodies recorded by the media, where exactly had the remaining miners been killed, and how did they die?

Most journalists and others did not interrogate this properly. The violence of the deaths we could see, again and again, was enough to contend with. The police certainly did not mention what happened outside of the view of the cameras.

The toll of 112 mineworkers (34 dead and 78 wounded) at Marikana is one of those few bitter moments in our bloody history that has been captured by the unblinking eye of the lens. Several lenses, in fact, and from various viewpoints.

This has allowed the actions and reactions of both the strikers and the police to be scrutinised in ways that undocumented tragedies can never be. Therefore, while the motives and rationale of both parties will never be completely clear, their deeds are quite apparent.

Thus developed a dominant narrative within the public discourse. The facts have been fed by the police, various state entities and by the media that the strikers provoked their own deaths by charging and shooting at the forces of law and order. Indeed, the various images and footage can be read to support this claim.

The contrary view is that the striking miners were trying to escape police rubber bullets and tear gas when they ran at the heavily armed police task team (our version of SWAT). The result was the horrific images of a dozen or so men gunned down in a fusillade of automatic fire.

From the outside the jumble of granite at Small Koppie, the weathered remains of a prehistoric hill, it would appear that nothing more brutal than the felling of the straggly indigenous trees for firewood occurred here.

Once within the outer perimeter, narrow passages between the weathered bushveld rocks lead into dead ends. Scattered piles of human faeces and toilet paper mark the area as the communal toilet for those in the miners’ shack community without pit toilets.

It is inside here, hidden from casual view, that the rocks bear the yellow letters methodically sprayed on by the forensic team to denote where they found the miners’ bodies. The letter N appears to take the death toll at this site to 14. Some of the other letters are difficult to discern, especially where they were sprayed on the dry grass and sand.

The yellow letters speak as if they are the voices of the dead. The position of the letters, denoting the remains of once sweating, panting, cursing, pleading men, tell a story of policemen hunting men like beasts. They tell of tens of murders at close range, in places hidden from the plain sight.
N, for example, died in a narrow redoubt surrounded on four sides by solid rock. His killer could not have been further than two meters from him – the geography forbids any other possibility.

Why did this happen?

Let us look back at the events of Monday, 13 August, three days prior to these events.
Themba, a second-generation miner from the Eastern Cape, was present then too. He was part of a group of some 30 strikers who were delegated to cross the veld that separated them from another Lonmin platinum mine, Karee.

It was at Karee mine that other rock drill operators led a wildcat strike to demand better wages. The National Union of Mineworkers did not support them, and management took a tough line. The strike was unsuccessful, with many of the strikers losing their jobs. The Marikana miners figured there were many miners there still angry enough to join them on Wonderkop.

The Marikana strikers never reached their fellow workers; instead, mine security turned them back and told them to return by a route different from the one they had come by.

On this road, they met a contingent of police. Themba said there were some 10 Nyalas and one or two police trucks or vans. The police barred their way and told them to lay down their weapons. The workers refused, saying they needed the pangas to cut wood, as they lived in the bush, and more honestly, that they were needed to defend themselves.

The Friday before, they said, three of their number had been killed by people wearing red NUM T-shirts.

The police line parted and they were allowed to continue, but once they were about 10 metres past, the police opened fire on them.

The miners turned and took on the police.

It was here, he said, that they killed two policemen and injured another. The police killed two miners and injured a third severely, from helicopter gunfire, Themba said. The miners carried the wounded man back to Wonderkop, where he was taken to hospital in a car. His fate is unknown.

Police spokesman Captain Dennis Adriao, when asked about the incident by telephone, said public order policing officers were attacked by miners, who hacked the two policemen to death and critically injured another. He said eight people had been arrested until then for that incident and for the 10 deaths prior to 16 August. “Two are in custody in hospital who were injured in the attack on the police.”

The police version of how this event took place is quite different from that of Themba, but what is clear is that the police had already arrested people for the murders committed thus far.

Why, then, the urgency to confront those among the thousands camped on Wonderkop in the days leading up to the massacre on 16 August?

But let us, in this article, not get too distracted by this obvious question, and return to the events of 16 August itself.

The South African Government Information website still carries this statement, dated from the day of the Marikana massacre:

“Following extensive and unsuccessful negotiations by SAPS members to disarm and disperse a heavily armed group of illegal gatherers at a hilltop close to Lonmin Mine, near Rustenburg in the North West Province, the South African Police Service was viciously attacked by the group, using a variety of weapons, including firearms. The Police, in order to protect their own lives and in self-defence, were forced to engage the group with force. This resulted in several individuals being fatally wounded, and others injured.”

This police statement clearly states that the police acted in self-defence, despite the fact that not a single policeman suffered any injury on 16 August.

And as we discussed earlier, it is possible to interpret what happened in the filmed events as an over-reaction by the police to a threat. What happened afterwards, 400 metres away at Small Koppie, is quite different. That police armoured vehicles drove over prostrate miners cannot be described as self-defence or as any kind of public order policing.

The geography of those yellow spray painted letters tells a chilling and damning story and lends greater credence to what the strikers have been saying.

One miner, on the morning after the massacre, told Daily Maverick that, “When one of our miners passed a Nyala, there was a homeboy of his from the Eastern Cape inside, and he told him that today was D-day, that they were to come and shoot. He said there was a paper signed allowing them to shoot us.”

The language reportedly used by the policeman is strikingly similar to that used by Adriao early on 16 August, and quoted on MineWeb: “We have tried over a number of days to negotiate with the leaders and with the gathering here at the mine, our objective is to get the people to surrender their weapons and to disperse peacefully.”

“Today is D-day in terms of if they don't comply then we will have to act ... we will have to take steps,” he said.

A little later he commented: “Today is unfortunately D-day,” police spokesman Dennis Adriao said. “It is an illegal gathering. We've tried to negotiate and we'll try again, but if that fails, we'll obviously have to go to a tactical phase.”

Speaking to the possible intention of the police, let us look at how the deployed police were armed. The weapons used by the majority of the more than 400 police on the scene were R5 (a licensed replica of the Israeli Galil SAR) or LM5 assault rifles, designed for infantry and tactical police use. These weapons cannot fire rubber bullets. The police were clearly deployed in a military manner – to take lives, not to deflect possible riotous behaviour.

The death of their comrades three days previously set the stage for the police, who have been increasingly accused of brutality, torture and death in detention, to exact their revenge. What is unclear is how high up the chain of command this desire went.

There has been police obfuscation and selective silence in a democratic society where the police are, theoretically, accountable to the citizenry, as well as to our elected representatives. We live in a country where people are assumed innocent until proven guilty; where summary executions are not within the police’s discretion.

Let us be under no illusion. The striking miners are no angels. They can be as violent as anyone else in our society. And in an inflamed setting such as at Marikana, probably more so. They are angry, disempowered, feel cheated and want more than a subsistence wage. Whatever the merits of their argument, and the crimes of some individuals among them, more than 3,000 people gathering at Wanderkop did not merit being vulnerable to summary and entirely arbitrary execution at the hands of a paramilitary police unit.

In light of this, we could look at the events of 16 August as the murder of 34 and the attempted murder of a further 78 who survived despite the police’s apparent intention to kill them.

Back at the rocks the locals dubbed Small Koppie, a wild pear flowers among the debris of the carnage and human excrement; a place of horror that has until now remained terra incognita to the public. It could also be the place where the Constitution of South Africa has been dealt a mortal blow. DM

Note: We have put these questions to the police and they state that they are unable to comment on, or give further detail regarding, to what happened at and around Small Koppie 13 August. We are awaiting comment from the IPID.

Striking miners killed by security forces in South Africa

Aug. 16, 2012 Libcom.org

Earlier today at least seven striking miners have been gunned down and killed by security forces at South African platinum mine. The killings are the latest in a long line of deaths during a strike that is complicated by a bitter and violent inter-union dispute over membership numbers.

Yesterday, South African police ordered thousands of striking miners to leave the vicinity of the Lonmin Marikana platinum mine or face being forcibly removed. Up to 3,000 police officers, an elite paramilitary unit, supported by horses and helicopters, confronted the miners and delivered their ultimatum.
Just before the police attacked the strikers, a spokesman said that:

Quote:

“Today is unfortunately D-day. It is an illegal gathering. We’ve tried to negotiate and we’ll try again but if that fails, we’ll obviously have to go to a tactical phase”.

The president of AMCU responded by saying:

Quote:

“There will be bloodshed if the police move in. We are going nowhere. If need be, we are prepared to die here”

Within the last week, ten people, including two policemen, have been killed in a violent turf war, (which is running alongside the strike), between two ‘rival’ trade unions.
The dispute is over membership, and is between the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Workers (AMCU) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and has been on-going for around eight months.
The NUM is viewed as ‘moderate’ and no longer looking after its member’s needs, whereas AMCU are supposedly more militant and ready to confront the bosses. AMCU are alleged to be using ‘strong arm’ tactics in order to get members to change affiliation.
Apart from the temporary inconvenience of lost production, the bosses must be absolutely delighted that working people prefer to fight each other rather than the real enemy.
[youtube] WfSDWexoGvk[/youtube]

Lesson from South Africa: Support the political prisoners

Sept. 28, 2011 by Adri Nieuwhof Electronic Intifada

Last week, I discussed with Ghadija Vallie the lessons learned from resistance in apartheid South Africa, particularly involving political prisoners. Ghadija coordinated the Western Cape Relief Fund that supported prisoners on Robben Island, a maximum security prison for political prisoners in apartheid South Africa. Vallie also worked with most prisons in the Western Cape province and visited political prisoners on death row.

Ghadija Vallie (Adri Nieuwhof)

The Western Cape Relief Fund (WCRF) was founded in 1985 when the apartheid regime once again declared a State of Emergency. Ghadija acted as a coordinator between lawyers, detained persons and their families, NGOs and donors. People of diverse backgrounds who were committed to the resistance joined forces to build the WCRF from scratch. The European Community supported the work of the WCRF through the Holland Committee on Southern Africa. I was involved in providing this support.

South Africa persecuted anti-apartheid activists under section 29 of the Internal Security Act. Ghadija tells me: “Normally the South African forces came during the night while people were asleep, when they are the most vulnerable. They would be taken from their homes and detained. People could disappear without a trace. They could be held in solitary confinement, were tortured. Then after months, people could suddenly appear in court or were traced in a hospital.”

The detention-related practices in apartheid South Africa under section 29 are similar to Israel’s practice of administrative detention. The WCRF was founded to meet the needs of detainees held under section 29. The climate changed when the State of Emergency was declared in July 1985. “We decided to serve these prisoners as well. If possible, the WCRF would pay for the bail of activists who were awaiting trial. The fund evolved into an organization that served all political prisoners and their families.”

I showed Vallie letters I received from Palestinian prisoners, including a letter from Ali. He wrote: “I was surprised when I got your letter, because it didn’t take a long time as the ‘prison time’, where is no value for time. (..) I became 46 years old and 23 years of my life I’m in prison, so I am enough experienced.(..) Today, we live with eight prisoners in cells of about 20 square meters. The cell includes a bathroom and shower. We have to stay in the cell 20 hours a day. We eat, sleep, watch television, study, have a bath, …all in the same cell. But all those years, hope still exists.”

Vallie comments: “Why do we keep talking about Nelson Mandela who spent 27 years in prison. Why don’t we speak about the Palestinian political prisoners who are also spending so many years in jail?”

I asked Vallie about campaigns in support of the South African political prisoners. She explained that there was an ongoing “Release the Detainees Campaign”. “Our political leaders from inside and outside South Africa gave directions for the campaigns. We called for the release of our leaders since the 1950s. Prisoners went on hunger strike. It is important that prisoners know that they are not forgotten. We did a lot of work for women and child prisoners; they are more vulnerable.”

Hunger strikes have also been used by Palestinian prisoners to protest against Israel’s prison regime. Ali wrote me about the hunger strike in 1992: “At that time we were 13,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. 20 days we did not eat or drink anything except water. One of my friends from Jerusalem died at the last day of the strike. Our demands were to improve our life conditions in prisons, such as studying at open university (to be paid for by our families). The food was so bad we demanded to improve it and to raise the amount of it because it was not enough for us. For example, I was suffering from malnutrition. I still suffer from its consequences.”

Vallie thinks that support by South Africans in exile for resistance differed from that of Palestinians today. For example, exiled ANC members protested in front of South African embassies. Kader Asmal, who died this year, played a key role in the International Defence and Aid Fund that raised financial support for the political prisoners, tells Vallie.

She continues: “Sometimes activities just happened. For example, when former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s son went missing in the desert during the Paris-Dakar rally in 1982, Thatcher asked people to pray for him. At that time, women with relatives in detention or awaiting trial held a meeting in Cape Town. One woman said: ‘Thatcher is crying for one child, but we are crying for a nation of children who are held in prison.’ On the spot we decided to march to the British embassy and deliver that message to Thatcher.”

“When family members of prisoners or ex-detainees came to my office to ask for support, we cried together. Then I would say, ‘What can you do to change it?’ And people became active, protested outside court and detention centers, informed the media, and found ways to communicate with the prisoners inside. It is so important that prisoners know that they are not forgotten. I found ways to deliver messages to prisoners on Robben Island. Some guards were helpful. I am still in touch with Christo Brand, Nelson Mandela’s prison guard who became a friend of Mandela”, says Vallie.

“The Palestinian people need to tell us how they feel which support should be given. They know, they live under oppression, they feel the pain. They must drive the vehicle to change this”, adds Vallie. “Sometimes the vehicle needs a bit of a push. International solidarity activists can assist in the pushing of the vehicle.”

This week, Palestinian prisoners announced the start of a campaign of disobedience to protest an escalating series of punitive measures taken against them by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) in recent months. Prisoners have decided to undertake a hunger strike on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday of every week beginning this week. Prisoners have also declared that their campaign will include a range of other forms of disobedience, including refusal to wear prison uniforms, to participate in the daily roll call, or to cooperate with any other IPS demands. Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association calls for solidarity with the striking prisoners. Let’s give the vehicle a push!

South Africa: ANC frame up of Abahlali baseMjondolo militants thrown out of court

Jul 24 2011 Libcom.org

The 12 Abahlali baseMjondolo activists arrested after the attack on the movement in late 2009 have all been fully acquitted in court - and the state excoriated from the bench for its failed attempt to frame the 12.

18 July 2011
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

The Victory in the Kennedy 12 Trial is a Victory for all the Poor in South Africa

The Kennedy 12 have been acquitted of all the charges bought against them after the attack on our movement in September 2009. It is a great day for the 12, their families, our movement and the struggle of the poor in South Africa.

We wish to begin by extending our deepest, heartfelt gratitude to all our comrades and our partners around the world who have supported the 12 and our movement since the attack. We must thank our Alliance partners, the Rural Network, LPM, and the AEC; our comrades in the UPM and the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front; Bishop Rubin Philip of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, the Diakonia Council of churches, and all the other church leaders that stood with us; the German churches; the Church Land Programme; the Human Rights organization around the world, particularly Amnesty International, the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York; our comrades in the grassroots organisations in the US from Chicago to New York City and the Bay Area in California, our comrades in Moscow (Russia), Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Belgium. We also want to thank all the academics and leading scholars who signed a powerful petition in our support and all those who academics who wrote articles in our defence while we and our supporters were under attack. Most importantly we want to thank our Legal Team from the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI). There are so many of you, we cannot mention you all by name, but we thank you all. We are not alone in this struggle.

Today the Durban Regional court has acquitted all of the the Kennedy 12 accused of murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, public violence and damage to property. In fact there was no case to answer as the prosecution failed to make any case against any of the accused on any charge. We have always been saying that these charges were fabricated and politically motivated. This emerged clearly in the court. The Magistrate said that the evidence that was brought before the court was contradictory, was unreliable, not credible, had serious discrepancies and was concocted. No court in this world could find the accused guilty without any evidence at all against them. The court has agreed that there was fighting and killing but that it was not by the accused. The Magistrate was saying all these things because our legal team had applied for acquittal under Section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Act. The Magistrate had no option but to grant that application to have the accused acquitted because it was clear that there was no evidence against any of the accused and that there had been an attempt to frame them.

Today it has, again, been clear that there will be high price to be paid in the struggle for justice and a better society. We salute our comrades, the Kennedy 12, who have paid a very high price not just for Abahlali but for all poor in South African who are suppressed every day when they try to resist their repression. This is a lesson to all those who have chosen to be our enemies - Abahlali will defeat you in the streets and in courts. We are many and we have proven to the world that we have the courage to stand together and to face repression and lies. Abahlali will celebrate this hard won Victory. Our meeting will discuss the celebration plan.

Those in High authority within the eThekwini Municipality and those in the KwaZulu Natal legislature who abused their power to engineer and back this attack on our Movement have been exposed to the world. This was not just an attack to our Movement but an attack against our hard won democracy. From today, as it has always been the case, our Movement will move forward without any fear of any thuggery from any politician. We will continue to be together and to find courage in our unity.

The likes of Henrick Bohmke and his associates have been exposed to the world as the liars that they are. The regressive left that would rather support state repression against a movement than to allow the poor to organise ourselves and to speak for ourselves has been exposed for what it is.

We call upon the media to attend our Press Conference to be held at the Anglican Church, St Mary’s Street, Greyville at 11:00am tomorrow. At this Press Conference we will tell the Nation about the lie of our democracy, the democracy that serves the interest of the few, while the majority of us live in deep poverty.

Our struggle continues.

For more information please contact:

S'bu Zikode (ABM President) 083 547 0474
Mnikelo Ndabankulu(ABM PRO)081 309 5485
Bandile Mdlalose(ABM Secretary General) 071 424 2815
Rev. Mavuso (Rural Network PRO) 072 279 2634
Zodwa Nsibande (ABM Youth League Secretary) 071 183 4388

Andries Tatane: Murdered by the Ruling Classes

Libcom.org Apr 24 2011

South African activist Andries Tatane was buried in the small rural town
of Ficksburg yesterday. He was murdered by the police on a demonstration
of four and a half thousand people last week. Shawn Hatting from the
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front has developed the first libertarian
communist response to the last of a growing number of police murders of
grassroots activists in South Africa.

by Shawn Hattingh (ZACF)

On the 13th April, people in South Africa were stunned. On the evening
news the sight of six police force members brutally beating a man, Andries
Tatane, to death was aired. The images of the police smashing his body
with batons and repeatedly firing rubber bullets into his chest struck a
cord; people were simply shocked and appalled. Literally hundreds of
articles followed in the press, politicians of all stripes also hopped on
the bandwagon and said they lamented his death; and most called for the
police to receive appropriate training to deal with ‘crowd control’ –
after all, elections are a month away.

Andries Tatane’s death was the culmination of a protest march in the Free
State town of Ficksburg. The march involved over 4,000 people, who
undertook the action to demand the very basics of life – decent housing,
access to water and electricity, and jobs. They had repeatedly written to
the mayor and local government of Ficksburg pleading for these
necessities. Like a group of modern day Marie Antoinettes, the local state
officials brushed off these pleas; more important matters no doubt needed
to be attended to – like shopping for luxury cars; banking the latest fat
pay check; handing tenders out to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE)
connections and talking shit in the municipal chambers. Therefore, when
the township residents had the audacity to march, and call for a response,
the police were promptly unleashed with water cannons and rubber bullets.
If the impoverished black residents of Ficksburg could not get the hint,
in the form of silence; then the state and local politicians were going to
ensure that they got the message beaten into them.

The reason why specifically Andries Tatane was murdered was because he had
the cheek, in the eyes of the officials involved, to question police force
members about why they were firing a water cannon at an elderly person –
who clearly was not a threat to the burly brutes that make up South
Africa’s arm of the law. For that act of decency, he paid dearly: with his
life. The message was clear – how dare anyone question the authority of
the state and its right to use force wherever and whenever it deems
necessary.

A war on protestors

The sad reality though is that Andries Tatane’s murder at the hands of the
state did not represent something new or even an isolated incident. For
years, the South African state has been treating people that have embarked
on protests with brute force and utter contempt. Activists from community
based movements – such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), Abahlali
baseMjondolo (ABM), Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) and Landless People’s
Movement (LPM) have routinely been harassed by the state, arrested and
beaten. For instance, on the day of the elections in 2004, LPM members
were tortured by the police in Soweto. Some activists have also been
subjected to attacks by vigilante groupings; to which the state and the
police have often turned a blind eye. In reality, the state views
community based movements as enemies and when they protest the state often
dishes out violence. The fact that the vast majority of community based
protests are peaceful, usually involving little more than people
blockading a road and burning old tires, does not deter them.

Andries Tatane’s awful death, for standing up for what he believed, was
also by no means the first at the hands of the South African state.
Numerous people involved in community protests, much like the one in
Ficksburg, have been murdered by police officials. As recently as
February, protests erupted in the town of Ermelo; situated in one of South
Africa’s poorest provinces – Mpumulanga. The people involved were
demanding the exact same basic necessities as the Ficksburg protestors.
The state did not respond by listening or engaging the people, but rather
sent 160 riot police, euphemistically named the Tactical Response Team
(TRT), to end the protests. The country’s Police Commissioner, General
Cele; personally warned the Ermelo protestors and organizers that the TRT
was going to restore ‘order’. In the process, two people were shot dead by
the police and 120 more were arrested. Raids were conducted throughout
impoverished areas – due to the legacy of apartheid, residents in these
areas are mainly or exclusively black – and, as part of this, an 80 year
old woman was detained. An illegal curfew was also implemented by the
police and anyone on the street was automatically shot at with rubber
bullets. Indiscriminate violence by the police reportedly became the order
of the day. In one incident, captured on a cellphone camera, a teenager
was called out of a shop by a group of policemen. When he approached their
car, he was repeatedly shot at with rubber bullets and forced to roll down
the street as ‘punishment’. Other people were also reportedly whipped by
the police with sjamboks – the imagery of colonial and apartheid style
punishment no doubt being deliberate. People were literally driven off the
streets by state organised terror. The bitter reality, however, is that
Emerlo and Ficksburg were simply microcosms of how the state routinely
dishes out violence towards those that it views as a threat: in 2010 alone
1,769 people died as a result of police action or in police custody.
Sadly, Andries Tatane will become part of these statistics.

Sinister interrogation processes have also accompanied the outright
violence that the state has directed towards protestors. In the case of
the Ermelo protests, a person who the state accused of being one of the
organisers, Bongani Phakathi, was interrogated for 14 hours by the crack
Hawks unit. Amongst other things, he was questioned about whether there
were funders behind the protest. The questions asked to Phakathi reveal
the level of paranoia that the state has shown around the ever-growing
community protests. In fact, the state has repeatedly claimed that there
has been a sinister ‘third force’ behind the wave of protests. To
supposedly uncover this ‘third force’ and to intimidate people, the
National Intelligence Agency (NIA) has been unleashed on communities over
the last few years. In the process, many people have been arrested,
interrogated and some have even been charged with sedition. For example in
2006, 13 people were charged with sedition in the small town of Harrismith
because they were involved in a community protest. Almost all, however,
have been released for a lack of real evidence and in the end the state
was forced to drop the sedition charges. Nonetheless, the South African
state’s goal of intimidating people is clear. What has also become
patently clear is that there is no ‘third force’; the claims about a
‘third force’ are simply being used to ‘legitimise’ the use of
intelligence agencies against people. The only ‘third force’ driving the
protests are the conditions that people are being forced to live under –
it is sadly not an exaggeration to say the dogs that guard the property of
the rich, and that are used by the police, live under better conditions
than the poor in South Africa.

It is also clear that police force members, who are the foot soldiers of
the state, are taking their cue from leading state officials and
politicians – whether tied to the Democratic Alliance (DA) or the African
National Congress (ANC). The likes of General Cele has encouraged the
police to “shoot to kill” if they feel threatened. The ANC, DA and
Congress of the People (COPE) have more than once branded people embarking
on protests as criminals that need to be dealt with. Even sections within
the country’s trade union leadership, and some ‘leftists’ associated with
them, have at times called community protestors and activists thugs.
Despite uttering regrets about Andries Tatane’s murder, politicians have
also continued to say that protestors need to be subjected to effective
‘crowd control’. Likewise, police officials stated that anyone who
“taunts” the police, despite the death of Tatane, must still be dealt
with. The fact that those in the state believe that they have a right to
‘control’ people and ‘deal with them’ speaks volumes about their
oppressive worldview. In response to a wave of protests in 2009, the
Cabinet also released a wrath of statements including one saying:

“The action that we will be taking is that those who organise these
marches, those who openly perpetuate and promote violent action, the state
will start acting against those individuals”

The Cabinet’s and the state’s message was clear: it was saying to the
poor: protest and the state will come for you, isolate you and crush you.
Such thuggish statements have become common on the lips of South African
state officials. It is in this context that Andries Tatane was killed.

The way the current state views and deals with community protestors also
has remarkable similarity, and continuity, with the practices of the
apartheid state – despite the state being in the hands of a supposed black
nationalist liberation movement – the ANC. Besides apartheid-style
brutality, the post-apartheid state still makes use of apartheid laws to
deal with protests. Under these laws, anyone wanting to protest has to
apply 7 days in advance. Linked to this, the state can refuse permission
on a number of grounds. If permission is not granted then any protest
involving more than 15 people is deemed illegal. The state is then ‘free’,
according to its own laws, to arrest or take action – a euphemism for
firing rubber bullets – against the people involved. Freedom of expression
is hollow under such circumstances. With such practices it is also no
wonder that the South African state is attempting to pass laws that would
allow it to classify vast amounts of information that would stop any
public scrutiny of its practices, abuses and short-comings. The state is
not an entity of the people; it is an entity of oppression.

The wider war

Of course, the suppression of protestors, such as Andries Tatane, is
merely the outward sign of a larger and more intense war that the elite in
South Africa have been waging on the majority of people. In fact, the
elite, through capitalism, have been exploiting people through wage
slavery; stripping people of their jobs to increase profits; turning
houses into a commodity; stripping peoples’ access to water to make
profits; denying people without money access to food; and cutting people’s
electricity when they are too poor to pay. For years people have,
therefore, been robbed by the rich and state officials. As such, the elite
– made up of white capitalists but now joined by a small black elite
centred mainly around the state and ANC – have forced the vast majority of
people in South Africa to live in misery. Indeed, the elite in South
Africa has created and entrenched a society that is defined by continued
exploitation of the poor and workers; that is defined by continued racial
oppression of the majority of workers and the poor, and that is defined by
extreme sexism. The rich and state officials (the ruling classes) have
grown rich and fat out of this situation – living off the blood, sweat and
cheap labour of the, predominantly black, workers and the poor. It is for
this reason that the rich and politicians have come to enjoy one of the
highest living standards in the world. They enjoy lavish houses, serving
staff, massive pay checks – lifestyles that even the royalty of old could
only dream of. Thus, it should not be surprising that South Africa is
statically the most unequal society in the world – it was and is designed
by the ruling classes to be so: their wealth and power is based on it!

The state is war

It is this extreme inequality and deprivation – and accompanying
experience of exploitation, oppression and humiliation – that drives
people, including Andries Tatane, to protest. While we should rightfully
be appalled by the death of Andries Tatane, and other people embarking on
protests, at the hands of the state; we should, however, not be surprised.
The state is the ultimate protector of the unjust and unequal society we
have. If the status quo is even remotely threatened or questioned, the
purpose of the state is to neutralise the threat and/or silence or co-opt
it.

In fact, anarchists have long pointed out that states, of whatever
variety, are inherently oppressive and violent. States are centralising
and hierarchical institutions, which exist to enforce a situation whereby
a minority rules over a majority. The hierarchical structure of all states
also inevitably concentrates power in the hands of the directing elite.
States and the existence of an elite are, therefore, synonymous. States
are the concentrated power of the ruling class – made up of both
capitalists and high ranking state officials – and are a central pillar of
ruling class power. Thus, the state serves dominant minorities and by
definition it has to be centralised, since a minority can only rule when
power is concentrated in their hands and when decisions made by them flow
down a chain of command. It is specifically this that allows minorities
who seek to rule people (high ranking state officials) and exploit people
(capitalists) to achieve their aims.

The fact that the state is an oppressive and hierarchical system, which
operates to protect and entrench the privileged positions of the ruling
class, has also resulted in the continuation of the racial oppression of
the vast majority of the working class (workers and the poor) in South
Africa. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin foresaw the possibility of such a
situation arising in cases where national liberation was based upon the
strategy of capturing state power – as has happened in South Africa.
Indeed, Bakunin said that the “statist path” was “entirely ruinous for the
great masses of the people” because it did not abolish class power but
simply changed the make-up of the ruling class. Due to the centralised
nature of states, only a few can rule – a majority of people can never be
involved in decision making under a state system as it is hierarchical. As
such, he stated that if the national liberation struggle was carried out
with “ambitious intent to set up a powerful state”, or if “it is carried
out without the people and must therefore depend for success on a
privileged class” it would become a “retrogressive, disastrous,
counter-revolutionary movement”. Over and above this he stressed that
national liberation and the end to all forms of oppression, including that
of race, had to be achieved “as much in the economic as in the political
interests of the masses”. Through their position in the ruling class
(based on their control of the state), the black elite have escaped the
effects of racial oppression and have become oppressors themselves (their
power over the state at times has even been used by them, for their own
interests, against other sections of the ruling class like racist white
capitalists), but racial oppression for the majority of the working class
continues. The privileged position of the black ruling elite – like their
white capitalist counterparts – is based on the continued oppression of
black workers, who have been and are deliberately relegated by the state
and capitalism in South Africa to the role of extremely cheap labour.
Thus, although the working class in South Africa includes white people,
the main source of wealth for the white and black ruling elite depends on
the exploitation of the black working class as a source of super cheap
labour. It is this combination of racial oppression and exploitation on
which the wealth of the elite rests. Thus, when the state and capitalism
remained intact in South Africa, after apartheid, the continued
exploitation of the working class and racial oppression of the majority of
impoverished people were assured. It is this situation that has created
the conditions that have led to the protests in townships in places like
Ficksburg and Ermelo, and it is this situation that has assured that they
will continue.

Indeed, the oppression and exploitation of the majority of people will,
and does, happen even under a parliamentary system. This is because even
in a parliamentary system a handful of people get to make decisions,
instruct others what to do, and enforce these instructions through the
state. When people don’t obey these top-down instructions or disagree with
them, the power of the state is then used to coerce and/ or punish them.
Thus, the state as a centralised mechanism of ruling class power also
claims a monopoly of legitimate force within ‘its’ territory; and will use
that force when it deems necessary – including against protestors raising
issues like a lack of jobs, a lack of housing and a lack of basic
services. It is this violent, oppressive and domineering nature of all
states that have led anarchists, rightfully, to see them as the antithesis
of freedom. The brutal reality is that protestors in South Africa, like
Andries Tatane – demanding a decent life and greater democracy – have
ended up victims of the mechanism of centralised minority rule: the state.
In terms of trying to silence protestors – whether by baton, water cannon,
rubber bullets or live ammunition – the South African state has also been
carrying out one of the main tasks it was designed for: organised
violence.

Conclusion

The fact is that capitalism and the state systems are one of the key
reasons why South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. The
state entrenches and enforces this status quo: a status quo based on the
exploitation and oppression of the vast majority of people; made up of the
workers and the poor. Andries Tatane too was a victim of this system.
Indeed, for as long as capitalism and the state exist; inequality will
exist and people will be forced to live in misery. When they raise issues
and protest; the state will try to silence them either by co-option or
violence or a combination of both. The fact also is that for as long as
the state and capitalism continue to exist there will be thousands upon
thousands of Andries Tatanes, Ernesto Nhamuaves, Steve Bikos and Hector
Pietersons. The state and capitalism, to paraphrase Bakunin, are in
combination a vast slaughterhouse and cemetery – sometimes killing workers
and the poor suddenly and openly; sometimes killing them silently and
slowly.

For as long as the state and capitalism are in place people will also be
driven to protest against the oppression, exploitation and inequalities
that are generated by, and that are part and parcel of, these systems. If
people want a just, fair, equal, genuinely democratic, non-racist,
non-sexist and decent society then capitalism and the state systems need
to be ended. Certainly, people should demand and organise to win immediate
gains like jobs, better wages, housing and services from the state and
capitalists; but ultimately for as long as these systems of class rule
exist; domination, inequality, and oppression will exist. Thus if genuine
material equality is to be achieved, people are going to need to organise
to take direct control of the economy, and run it democratically, for the
benefit of all and to meet the needs of all. Only under such circumstances
will the poverty, which has been driving people like Andries Tatane to
protest, be ended. Only under such a system will racial oppression too be
ended. Likewise, if people want a genuine democracy and a say over their
lives, and not to have their concerns dismissed, then people are going to
have to get rid of the state and replace it with a form of people’s power
based on structures of self-governance like federated community/worker
assemblies and federated councils at regional, national and international
levels. There have been historical experiments, although on a limited
scale, with such structures of direct democracy including in South Africa
during the anti-apartheid struggle. We need to learn from these. In fact,
if we want to ensure that there will be no Andries Tantanes in the future
we need to revive the best practices of Peoples’ Power and build towards
achieving a free and egalitarian world: a world based on the principles
that have become known, through a 150 year struggle for justice, as
anarchist-communism.

This article was originally published on the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist
Front site.

The clip screened on the television news in South Africa is online
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omWi5PayXiM]here.[/url]

There is a collection of other articles on the police murder of Andries
Tatanes here.

http://www.abahlali.org/taxonomy/term/3033

The Flames of Phaphamani

Feb 21 2011 Libcom.org

Pedro Alexis Tabensky on recent events in Grahamstown, South Africa, and
the increasing repression of poor people's movements there.

by Pedro Alexis Tabensky

The poor are steadily getting angrier and they are preparing for
something. They have relatively little to lose, except the hope that
drives their movements, informed predominantly by desire for justice for
those who are systematically dehumanized in our country today. These
movements include: Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), the Poor Peoples’
Alliance, the Landless Peoples’ Movement, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction
Campaign, Mandela Park Backyarders and Sikhula Sonke. And, in my hometown—
Grahamstown—the Unemployed Peoples’ Movement (UPM) and the Woman’s Social
Forum (WSF) are represented.

All these independent movements are communicating with one another, having
conferences such as the recent Conference of the Democratic left in
Johannesburg, and using the courts and the internet, to achieve their
aims. They are organizing themselves, finding moneys here and there that
do not carry strings attached, thinking about possible futures without
economic injustice, rereading Biko and Fanon, and using their feet and
voices. Little will stop them except repression or genuine change for the
better. Sadly, more often than not, their voices are met with police or
grassroots ANC thuggery (such as the widely reported violence met out
against AbM in 2009 and the ANC Youth League sabotage of a meeting
convened by the UPM to discuss the Makana Municipality water crisis in
2010). But this violence only stops them temporarily. In the medium term,
it works as a catalyst. The more they are shot at and beaten in police
stations and on the streets around the country, the more they become
convinced that their fight is a fight to assert their humanity; the more
they are convinced that they are largely alone and that what they hope for
can only be brought about by their own efforts.

And their voices are starting decisively to be heard and taken seriously
by the mainstream, despite countless acts of official and semi-official
violence against them, and despite mainstream condescending portrayals of
them as angry children unproductively venting out frustration or as blind
automata of some mysterious third force.

I will focus here primarily on recent events in my hometown. They are
exemplary of what is happening nationally.

On Wednesday the 9th of this month, tyres started burning in the
Phaphamani informal settlements in Grahamstown after a failed attempt—one
of many—to get the local Mayor, Mr Vumile Lwana, to address the grievances
of the local poor. The first thing one finds when visiting the Makana
Municipality website is its vision statement: “We shall strive to ensure
sustainable, affordable, equitable and quality services in a just,
friendly, secure and healthy environment, which promotes social and
economic growth for all.” If only the municipality acted in accordance
with its own stated commitments, the Phaphamani fires would not have
started.

The flames of Phaphamani were an offshoot of a failed peaceful protest
organized primarily in response to a spate of recent rapes and murders. In
late December last year Ms Zingiswa Centwa, a learner at Nombulelo High
School, was raped and murdered. A few days later Ms Ntombekhaya Blaatjie
was also raped and sustained severe brain injuries from the attack. These
acts, in addition to many other recently reported sexual assaults in
Grahamstown, prompted the WSF and the UPM to join forces to organize a
protest march on the day of the trial of Ms Centwa’s alleged rapist and
killer to demand desperately needed services, such as better lighting,
that would help put an end to the violence met out against women. But the
aims of the planned protests were also more general. The radical lack of
security on township streets is only one sign of many more that point to
the glaring fact that in South Africa today only some of its citizens are
treated as full-blown human beings.

The protest conveners requested permission to protest in a timely fashion,
but the Makana Municipality unilaterally banned the march without
convening a legally mandatory Section 4 meeting, making their banning of
the march illegal. Given the municipality’s disregard for the law, the
organizers decided to carry on with the protest and moved from the
Grahamstown Magistrate’s Court to stage a sit-in at the municipal offices,
demanding to speak to the Mayor, Mr Lwana. They were in the building for
the better part of the day, but the Mayor did not present himself.
Instead, the Municipal Manager, Ms Ntombi Baart, made an appearance
towards the end of the day and assured the crowed that a meeting with the
Mayor would be arranged within 48 hours and then left giving those present
assurances that she would now contact Mr Lwana to arrange the meeting and
get back to them shortly. Soon after she left, the police came, claiming
that Ms Baart had called for them, and they dispersed the peaceful
protest. Residents of Phaphamani, who witnessed the deceit, were incensed
and decided, without consulting the protest conveners, to return to their
settlement, set tires alight and to dig up a recently laid tar road
running through Phaphamani.

The promised meeting with the Mayor never materialized itself. The
commitment made by Ms Baart was broken, lending further evidence that
Municipal officials are not to be trusted.

From the perspective of an outsider, one may think that this gesture of
lighting tires and destroying public property is senseless, but one must
take time to reflect on why residents of Phaphamani decided to do this.
First, they were outraged at the ongoing non-responsiveness of municipal
officials. Second, and relatedly, their needs were not considered when
deciding to spend public moneys on a road that will only advantage the
relatively rich. The residents of Phaphamani are too poor even to make use
of taxis, so the road clearly was not meant for them and, yet, their
demands for better housing, dignified toilets, water, security and jobs
are not being heard.

The flames of Phaphamani went on all night. Next morning when Mr Ayanda
Kota (UPM President), Mr Xola Mali (UPM Spokesperson) rushed to the
settlement upon receiving a call from Ms Nombulelo Yami (of the WSF)
informing them of police violence against the protesters. On arrival they
found that police were firing rubber bullets and rocksalt at the
protestors. They immediately went to speak to them to stop the unnecessary
violence, and were arrested with Ms Yami on the spot, handcuffed and
placed in a police van. While in the van they overheard a policeman ask
the driver to give him more ‘sweets to enjoy himself’. He wanted more
rubber bullets, and got them. Shortly after these arrests one of the
protesters—Ms Ntombentsha Budaza—was beaten and arrested.

The prisoners were taken to the police station and the following day they
were released on bail. The conditions of bail, disturbingly, are
unconstitutional according to Professor Jane Duncan from Rhodes
University. In summary, they are forbidden from organizing and
participating in further public expressions of the right to freedom of
speech. Their trial is scheduled for March 16.

In conclusion, unnecessary violence, dubiously motivated arrests and
intimidation, illegal actions and deceit are being used by state
representatives to suppress the voices of those who may as well be called
the South African untouchables.