South Africa: Marikana massacre – a turning point?

by Martin Legassick · 2012-09-02 · first published in Links · 130 words

This was not a Socialist Resistance publication. marxsite was Phil Hearse’s own long-form site, run alongside the paper he helped edit. It is kept here with his agreement, recovered from the Internet Archive after the domain lapsed and was taken over by someone else; nothing here links to the address it now points at.

As credited on the page: “August 27, 2012 – reprinted from Links, the International Journal of Socialist Renewal -”

Only a fragment of this survives. It may have been a short link-and-comment post, which marxsite ran many of, or the opening of a longer piece cut off by the capture — from what remains there is no way to tell which. The original is still readable at Links: read it in full. The full piece runs to about 6,502 words against the 130 that survive here.

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By Martin Legassick

August 27, 2012 – reprinted from Links, the International Journal of Socialist Renewal -

Marikana is a town situated in barren veld, dry brown grass in the winter, with occasional rocky outcrops ( kopjes , hillocks). The Lonmin-owned mines – there are three, Karee, West and East Platinum – are situated on the outskirts of the town. Alongside two of them is a settlement of zinc-walled shacks festooned with lines of washing called Enkanini, where most of the mineworkers live.

The capture this was recovered from