by Shawn Hattingh

The South African state’s oppression of the ongoing wildcat strikes, including at Marikana, is clearly deepening. Over the weekend, troops were deployed in the platinum belt in what has been a barefaced bid by the state to stop the protests by striking workers, and essentially force them back to work. As part of this, residents at the informal settlement at Marikana have been subjected to a renewed assault by the police. Many residents in the process were shot with rubber bullets; their homes were raided; and tear gas, at times, lay over the settlement like a chemical fog. In practice, a curfew has also been put in place and anyone gathering in a group has been pounced upon by the men in blue. Threats have also emerged from the Cabinet that a crackdown on any ‘trouble-makers’, that are supposedly inciting workers to continue to strike, is going to happen.

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by Shawn Hattingh

This article explores, from an anarchist perspective, the sugar industry in southern Africa, and how the two dominant companies – Illovo and Tongaat-Hulett – exploit and oppress workers and communities surrounding their operations.

Southern Africa has become well known for being one of the cheapest places to produce sugar. Consequently, million of tons are produced in the region every year. Two companies have come to dominate much of this lucrative industry: Illovo Sugar and Tongaat-Hulett. It is little wonder (given how profitable the sector is), that in 2012 these two South African headquartered sugar giants once again declared massive annual profits. In fact, Illovo and Tongaat-Hulett have been reaping in billions of Rands from their operations in South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland over the years.

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by Shawn Hattingh

The sight of policemen brutally gunning down striking mineworkers at Marikana was truly galling. At the very least 300 rounds of live ammunition were fired at workers (and not only those seen on TV) by the police using automatic assault rifles in a military style operation [i]: the infamous consequences being 34 workers killed and perhaps as many as 87 injured [ii], with some workers still unaccounted for [iii]. Many of the workers were also reportedly shot in the back [iv] and some executed [v]. To add insult to injury, and with what was clearly some relish, the police arrested 260 workers in the aftermath [vi].  This often even involved policemen literally sticking the boot into injured workers. Allegations have also subsequently emerged that 190 of these arrested workers were tortured, some for up to 3 days, whilst being held in surrounding police stations [vii]. One worker also claims that he was taken to a room on Lonmin’s property, who owns the mine at Marikana, and handcuffed to a chair and beaten with a rubber pipe by police in a bid to extract information about the ‘leaders’ of the wildcat strike [viii]. Not to be outdone in callousness, Lonmin issued an ultimatum that unless the rest of the striking workers returned to work by 7am on the 21^st of August disciplinary actions would be taken against them [ix]. The strikers though have ignored Lonmin’s threats, and at the time of writing, most remained out on strike [x].

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