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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Is there a reason I keep getting logged out? I’m not complaining, I’m not being passive aggressive towards the wonderful people who make this place possible. I just want to know if there is anything I can do in my end to make this happen less.
Big hugs to the devs, y’all are awesome. I know if you had a button to press to fix the recurring thing you would. 🖖
It’s happening to me too on mobile. I will not on purpose
So many passwords, lost to time.
your grass-o-meter score was too low so you were forcibly logged out
Time to get a friend to blow into my grass-o-meter
I don’t get the connection
everything is a euphemism if you’re horny enough
the intent was to learn why it’s happening. I like learning things and wanted to learn in particular why this thing happens. I have no idea if it’s something I’m doing when I use the site or just a quirk of the site itself, hence the phrasing.