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Marikana Massacre - New General Megathread for the 16th of August 2023

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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  • Absolutely losing my mind with some of the libs here lately. The propaganda brain. The chauvinism.

    I just watched one call Saddam Hussien a genocider for that chemical attack that killed about 3 thousand people. Then turn around when confronted by the number (not mine don't know how it was arrived at) 4.5 million people the US killed in the region and they straight face said it wasn't as bad because the former was deliberately targeting a race and the latter was a misguided attempt at 'creating a new government and squashing an insurgency'. Completely flipped my shit on them.

    My tankie levels are rising. I want these people in deprogramming camps.

    • I don’t understand why the Kurds keep trusting America. We’ve used and abused them so many times. The history of America and Iraq might as well be titled “how to fuck a minority over and make them come back for more”. It’s sad.

      • It's not like they're trusting the Americans for the hell of it. What other choice do they have?

        Let's take the Rojava Revolution. The American partnership started in 2014 first with the Yazidi Genocide. As you may know, the YPG and PKK sent in a force from Syria and from the Qandil mountains to relieve the IS siege of Sinjar Mountain and to create a safe passage for the Yazidi to flee to Syria. This resulted in tens of thousands of Yazidi being saved. It was assisted by American and British airstrikes + spec ops. At this point-when it is literal genocide-who are they to turn down the support of literally anyone?

        But of course the real American intervention started in the battle of Kobane. Let's again think of the situation the PYD/YPG were in. IS had taken most of the city and the YPG had been ground down to the pulp. If Kobane had been taken the defenders would have had nowhere to go and would have been slaughtered (and some tortured, raped, etc). The Americans offer to help, what do you say? You say yes because it is the only way to avoid your complete destruction and death.

        After this the PYD DID try and balance the US and Russia and sought the support of both because air power was vital to defeat IS given the latter, in the 2014-2015 years above all, had seriously strong light infantry, significant armour, and was deeply entrenched in a lot of big cities (the south of Hasakah, Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa, etc). In Afrin the YPG favoured Russia, yet this balancing act fell apart in 2018 when Russia withdrew and allowed Turkey to invade and ethnically cleanse Afrin. Thus the trust with the Russians was gone and the YPG was solely reliant on the US with no other great power options who could viably (A) help them defeat IS but, much more importantly, (B) stop Turkey from invading. Considering Russia and the US are the sole powers who can stop this, the options are not many.

        When the US partially withdrew in 2019 the PYD turned back to Russia and invited them + the Syrian army back (the latter in a strictly controlled fashion) but in places east of the Euphrates now, while the Americans remained in Deir ezzor and Qamishli simply because balancing is better than overreliance and because the American relationship brought financial benefits too (and they can help open up trade with the KRG, too). Since then the PYD has expertly played the two off each other to prevent a planned Turkish invasion of Tel Tamr despite Russia repeatedly promising to allow the invasion if the SDF did not effectively surrender the whole region to the hated government.

        Really the foreign policy of the AANES has been very smart-though some major mistakes were made during the learning process (e.g., the PYD/YPG immediately learnt after the catastrophe of Afrin and from then on allowed Syrian government troops back into NE Syria to appease Russia. The AANES was overreliant on the US from Afrin to the partial withdrawal and now they have returned to a balancing act despite the distrust of Russia and the feelings of betrayal around Afrin). Indeed, they have tried to balance just about everyone they can to maximise their gains, even working with Iran and its friendly militias in Afrin. Iranian militias sell ATGMs to the Afrin YPG who then use them in the insurgency against the Turkish occupation of NE Syria.

        So it's not as simple as "trusting America". The AANES/PYD/SDF leaders don't trust America and they have said so many times in Kurdish media, they simply have no other choice. There are two untrustworthy great powers who can stop their immediate destruction and the ethnic cleansing of millions of Kurds, Yazidi, and Christians (Assyrians and Armenians) from NE Syria. There is no alternative but to work with them and to try and play them off the other.

        I'll stop there but it's never just blind trust in America. If you study the times where Kurdish groups partnered with the US you will see there is always a far more rational reason than you are implying, e.g., a lack of alternative partners most of all. I will explain other cases if you would like but I'll end it here for the time being simply because this is already a long comment.

    • no more half measures walter

    • I'm sorry but the Anfal campaigns were genocide. The gassings alone were not genocide by themselves, it's about intent. The actions of the Iraqi government were provably dedicated to the physical destruction of a large part of the Kurdish people, particularly those involved with the (large) Barzani (neo-)tribal federation. Particularly wrt the Barzanis ( a distinct social group such that it would meet any reasonable social-scientific definition of a potential target group for genocide) were quite literally exterminated. They were driven out to the desert and shot.

      As well as that Kurds were systematically and systemically either shot or put into detention camps where they were deprived of the conditions for life, particularly in disputed areas. The only reason more didn't die is because Kurdish Peshmerga stopped them and then the no fly zone was implemented and Iraqi forces could no longer launch offensives into Kurdish territory.

      It wasn't just 3,000 who died in the Anfal campaigns, it was perhaps up to 100,000! Not that this matters anyway, as the number of deaths doesn't make a genocide. "Only" around 4,000 are confirmed to have died in the Yazidi Genocide (a few thousand more missing, dead or enslaved somewhere) yet it was still undisputedly genocide, and the perpetrators openly boasted of it as such.

      No, I don't think the US is some moral actor btw, I am not defending the original poster who I disagreed with on the thread, but it is very wrong to downplay the Anfal like that. The invasion of Iraq was wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that Saddam's government was utterly heinous.

460 comments