Ties between Johannesburg Community Activist Groups and Striking Mineworkers after the Violence at Marikana

Date Presented:

February 6

Abstract:

South Africa’s poor population is characterized by a relatively deep division between the working poor and the unemployed. Some use the term “underclass” to refer to the unemployed, while others argue for the importance of the interconnections between the two groups. At the same time, unions have become increasingly bureaucratized and closely affiliated to the neoliberal state. Attempting to break away from their state-affiliated union, workers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine were attacked by South African police, resulting in the deaths of thirty-four mineworkers. This was the largest instance of state violence since the fall of apartheid, and has become a point of political significance and a rallying cry for those who oppose the ruling government. This research looks at three grassroots organizations of unemployed activists around different communities in Johannesburg, and examines the impact that Marikana had on their relationships with worker groups. I argue that the violence at Marikana caused unemployed activists struggling for basic services to identify with mineworkers against an unresponsive government, even though the two groups’ interests remained unchanged, and to some extent, divergent. At the same time, activists see Marikana as a strategic turning point in South Africa and see cooperating with the Marikana mineworkers as tactically important. The shift in identity and strategy among the unemployed poor came as a result of the violence at Marikana—unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa—and imply that effective linkages can be formed between these two categories of poor citizens.