On this day in 2012, the Marikana Massacre took place when South African police fired on striking workers, killing 34 and injuring 76 in the most lethal use of force by the state in half a century.
The shootings have been compared to the infamous Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when police fired on a crowd of anti-Pass Law protesters, killing 69 people, including 10 children. The Marikana Massacre took place on the 25-year anniversary of a nationwide strike by over 300,000 South African workers.
On August 10th, miners had initiated a wildcat strike at a site owned by Lonmin in the Marikana area, close to Rustenburg, South Africa. Although ten people (mostly workers) had been killed before August 16th, it was on that day that an elite force from the South African Police Service fired into a crowd of strikers with rifles, killing 34 and injuring 76.
After surveying the aftermath of the violence, photojournalist Greg Marinovich concluded that “[it is clear] that heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood.”
Following the massacre, a massive wave of strikes occurred across the South African mining sector - in early October, analysts estimated that approximately 75,000 miners were on strike from various gold and platinum mines and companies across South Africa, most of them doing so illegally.
A year after the Marikana Massacre, author Benjamin Fogel wrote “Perhaps the most important lesson of Marikana is that the state can gun down dozens of black workers with little or no backlash from ‘civil society’, the judicial system or from within the institutions that supposedly form the bedrock of democracy.”
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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
I ffucking hate every employer that makes you like work until 7pm and then come back in at 7am for a morning shift. Fuck them. The sous chef Im working with is doing that today so I gotta be up early and guess what i couldn’t fucking sleep
should be mandatory 16 hours off between shifts tbh
i don’t even mind long shifts all that much depending on the job, just hate the “you have exactly 8 hours from the time you clock out until you have to be back”, as if I can even do anything useful or productive with that time
I hate every employer who makes you work and come back.
(I have a solo shift today and can’t sleep)