Labor Struggles in South Africa and the World
Message Delivered to the Longshore Union on April 7, 2014
Note: On Tuesday, October 6, 2021, NUMSA (the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa), the largest union in South Africa, went on strike to demand a living wage. At the time of publication of Socialist Viewpoint, the strike is ongoing and could develop into a general strike engulfing all of South Africa. South African auto workers comprise a major part of NUMSA.
A reminder that the working-class struggle for decent wages and conditions is truly an international struggle: The striking John Deere agricultural machinery workers in the United States are in the United Auto Workers union.
NUMSA broke with COSATU, the South African Trade Union federation when COSATU supported the South African government, led by the African National Congress (ANC). The miners were in the National Union of Miners (NUM), one of the major components of COSATU. The ANC government conspired with Lonmin, the mining conglomerate, to shoot down the striking miners in Marikana on August 16, 2012. NUM actually participated in the massacre, killing two of the miners. Thirty-four workers were killed and 78 were seriously injured. It was the worst massacre in South African history since Sharpeville, in 1960.
Today NUMSA demands a living wage of R 12,500 a month (about $800)—the same demand made by the Marikana Miners.
We are printing a message from 2014 presented in a recording from prison by Mumia Abu-Jamal to a meeting of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union at which a representative of NUMSA was present. The message calls out the betrayal of the ANC government in representing the mining companies, not the miners. The same danger exists today for the striking autoworkers of NUMSA. —The Editors
Sisters and Brothers of the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union and, of your guests—the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA), I greet you all as militant, historic labor unions who have in the past, the present, and I’m sure in the future, continue the noble struggle for the working class in both countries.
As I write these words, I’m mindful of the horrors brought to us by the unholy alliance between capital and the state exhibited in all its ugliness in the Marikana massacre of August 16, 2012.
NUMSA has rightly called this event a turning point in history, which finds its echo in the shameful Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the Soweto massacre of school children in 1976. There, school kids took to the streets in protest of new rules forcing the teaching of Afrikaans, the language of white, Dutch descendant settlers in South Africa to Black students. They knew that such a language would be of little use anywhere else in the world other than South Africa.
Here in Marikana, Black mine workers were protesting for a few measly dollars from a foreign mining concern, Lonmin mining. Living at virtually starvation wages, workers fought for a living wage from a consortium making millions off their labor.
The owners gave orders to South African police to answer their demands with death. The ANC (African National Congress) government, in many ways put in power by memories of events like Sharpeville, passed the orders down, and 34 miners and metal workers were executed in defense of capital.
This was indeed a turning point, but not for South Africa alone. This was a global turning point. We hope that this puts a stake into the vampire of neo-liberalism. For when events such as this happen, it shows us the true face of neo-liberalism—that of conservatism and capitalism with a smile.
Welcome NUMSA.
May you grow in numbers and militancy.