Telling the real story behind the shocking killings on the koppie of Lonmin’s Marikana mine was never going to be easy, wrote Kwanele Sosibo in the Mail & Guardian on 21 December 2012.
Here are few brief extracts from the interesting article – Marikana: Truth, memory and reportage.
Opportunists seize the moment
By that time, Marikana was abuzz with a confluence of agendas. The clergy, Julius Malema and the fractured left – all seeking a reinvigorating cause – descended on the town like famished vultures on to a corpse.The Democratic Socialist Movement, having long held Rustenburg as the “centre of gravity” for a mounting “workers rebellion” (as executive member Mametlwe Sebei told the M&G), co-ordinated an independent joint strike committee that shook the platinum and gold sectors with a series of rolling strikes that refuse to die down completely.
At a joint strike co-ordinating committee meeting in Marikana on October 13, the socialist movement revealed that its intention was to organise a Workers and Socialist Party.