The South African state?s oppression of the ongoing wildcat strikes, including at
Marikana, is clearly deepening. Over the weekend, troops were deployed in the platinum
belt in what has been a barefaced bid by the state to stop the protests by striking
workers, and essentially force them back to work. As part of this, residents at the
informal settlement at Marikana have been subjected to a renewed assault by the police.
Many residents in the process were shot with rubber bullets; their homes were raided; and
tear gas, at times, lay over the settlement like a chemical fog. In practice, a curfew has
also been put in place and anyone gathering in a group has been pounced upon by the men in
blue. Threats have also emerged from the Cabinet that a crackdown on any ?trouble-makers?,
that are supposedly inciting workers to continue to strike, is going to happen.
Many left groups, amongst them the Democratic Left Front (DLF), have rightfully condemned
this violence and the accompanying threats. They have highlighted how the state is
protecting investors in the platinum belt, and they have lamented how the ANC government
is acting in a similar way to the apartheid government. While we should be disgusted by
the actions of the state, it would, however, be a mistake to be surprised by them.
The reality is that no state is truly democratic, including the one headed by the ANC.
Even in a Parliamentary system, most high ranking state officials, including Generals,
Director-Generals, Police Commisioners and Judges, are never elected by the people. Most
of their decisions, policies and actions will never be known by the vast majority of
people ? the top down structure of the state ensures this. Added to this, Parliamentarians
make and pass laws; not the mass of people. In fact, Parliamentarians are in no way truly
accountable to voters (except for 5 minutes every 5 years). They are not mandated nor are
they recallable. They ? along with permanent state bureaucrats ? have power; not the
people. As such, no state, including the ANC headed one, is participatory; but rather
designed to ensure and carry out minority rule. Likewise, the state?s main function is not
to protect workers, but to ensure rule over them. While the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin
rightfully pointed out that it is better to live under a Parliamentary system than a pure
dictatorship, he also pointed out that all states are inherently oppressive towards the
working class (workers and the unemployed).
The outright and ongoing violence of the state in the platinum sector and at Marikana,
therefore, lays bare the true nature of the state; and the role it plays in protecting the
ruling class (made up of capitalists and high ranking state officials). It is not an
regrettable accident that the state has been protecting the mines of huge corporations,
like Lonmin, and that it has been willing to use such violence to do so. The state?s,
including the ANC headed one, main function is to further the interests of the elite and
their continued class rule. For capitalism to function, and for class rule to be
maintained, a state is vital. It is central to protecting and maintaining the very
material basis on which the power of the elite is derived. Without a state, which claims a
monopoly on violence within a given territory, an elite could not rule nor could it claim
or hold onto the ownership of wealth and the means of production. In fact, the state as an
entity is the defender of the class system and a centralised body that necessarily
concentrates power in the hands of the ruling classes; in both respects, it is the means
through which a minority rules a majority. Through its executive, legislative, judiciary,
military and policing arms the state always protects the minority ownership of property
(whether private or state-owned property), and tries to squash any threat posed to the
continuing exploitation and oppression of the working class. As Marikana and other
protests and strikes show that includes shooting rubber bullets, tear gassing people,
raiding houses, arresting people, threatening people, humiliating people, torturing
people, and even killing those that pose a threat.
The post-apartheid state in South Africa too has played an instrumental role in
maintaining the situation whereby poorly paid black workers remain the basis of the
massive profits of the mining companies, including Lonmin. In South Africa, black workers
have historically been subjected to national oppression; and this has meant that they were
systematically turned into a source of extremely cheap labour and subjected to
institutionalised racism. The history of very cheap black labour enabled white capitalists
? traditionally centred around the mining houses ? to make huge profits, and it is on this
basis that they became very wealthy. The post-apartheid state has continued to protect and
entrench this situation; it has maintained an entire legal and policing system that is
aimed at protecting the wealth and property of companies, like Lonmin, from the black
working class in South Africa.
State managers, who comprise a section of the ruling class, based on their control of the
means of coercion, administration and sometimes production, also have their own reasons
for wanting to protect the minority ownership of property: because their own privileged
positions rest on exploitation. This is why the post-apartheid state in South Africa has
been so willing to protect companies like Lonmin: the pay checks of high ranking state
officials, mostly tied to the ANC, depend on it. The lifestyles of people like Jacob Zuma,
Tokyo Sexwale, Pravin Gordhan, Trevor Manuel and rest of their cohorts in the Cabinet,
therefore, is based on the continued exploitation of the working class, and the black
section in particular. These state officials are consequently parasites that live off the
back of workers ? workers who have created all wealth in society!
Since 1994 the entire working class has fallen deeper into poverty, including sections of
the white working class, as inequality has grown between the ruling class and working
class as a whole. It has, however, been the black working class that has been worst
affected. This is because the state has implemented extreme policies, in the form of
neo-liberalism, to help capitalists increase their profits even further. While it is clear
that the black working class remains nationally oppressed, the situation for the small
black elite, nevertheless, is very different. Some, through their high positions in the
state, and hence having control over the means of coercion and administration, have joined
the old white capitalists in the ruling class. Others, have also joined the ruling class,
but through the route of Black Economic Empowerment. This can be seen in the fact that all
of the top ANC linked black families ? the Mandelas, Thambos, Ramaposas, Zumas, Moosas
etc. ? have shares in or sit on the boards of the largest companies in South Africa,
including the platinum mining companies. In fact, Ramaphosa not only owns shares in, and
is on the board of, Lonmin; but a number of functions at Marikana and other platinum are
outsourced to various companies he has interests in, like Minorex. He too has shares in
the largest platinum mine in the world, Modikwa, through African Rainbow Minerals. The
wealth and power of this black section of the ruling class in South Africa too rests on
the exploitation of the working class as a whole, but mostly and specifically on the
exploitation and national oppression of the black working class. Hence, this is the reason
why the black section of the ruling class and the state its members are part of has been
so willing to take action ? whether during platinum strikes, Marikana, other strikes in
general ? against the black working class.
Bakunin foresaw the possibility of such a situation arising in cases where supposed
national liberation was based on capturing state power. Bakunin said that the ?statist
path? was ?entirely ruinous for the great masses of the people? because it did not abolish
class power but simply changed the make-up of the ruling class. Due to the centralised
nature of states, only a few can rule: a majority of people can never be involved in
decision making under a state system. As a result, he stated that if the national
liberation struggle was carried out with ?ambitious intent to set up a powerful state?, or
if ?it is carried out without the people and must therefore depend for success on a
privileged class? it would become a ?retrogressive, disastrous, counter-revolutionary
movement?. He also noted that when former liberation heroes enter into the state, because
of its top down structure, they become rulers and get used to the privileges their new
positions carry, and they come to ?no longer represent the people but themselves and their
own pretensions to govern the people?. History has proven his insights to be accurate;
former liberation heroes in South Africa rule in their own interests, they wallow in the
privileges of their positions, they have joined white capitalists in the ruling class, and
they exploit and oppress the vast majority of the people in the country, including in the
platinum sector.
The state we must also, nevertheless, realise can?t simply rule by force alone ? force is
ultimately the last pillar upon which its power rests ? but for its own stability and that
of capital, it also tries to rule through consent. To do so, it pretends to be a
benefactor of all; while in reality facilitating, entrenching and perpetrating
exploitation and oppression. Certainly, most states today do have laws protecting basic
rights, and some provide welfare ? including the South African state. Such laws and
welfare, however, have been won through massive struggles by the oppressed, and that
should not be forgotten; states simply did not hand out these rights. But even where such
laws exist, and sometimes they exist only paper, the state tries to make propaganda
mileage out of them. It is this duplicity that led the anarchist revolutionary Errico
Malatesta to argue that the state: ?cannot maintain itself for long without hiding its
true nature behind a pretence of general usefulness; it cannot impose respect for the
lives of the privileged people if it does not appear to demand respect for human life, it
cannot impose acceptance of the privileges of the few if it does not pretend to be the
guardian of the rights of all?. As struggles go forward, including in the platinum belt,
it is important that the working class is not duped by the duplicity.
Certainly we must raise demands from the parasitic state and bosses. The state and bosses
have stolen from the working class, and it high time the working class got some of this
back. A fight must be taken to the state and corporations, and the working class must
mobilise to have its demands met. As part of this, we must, however, have no illusions
about what the state is; who it is controlled by; who it protects; and what its function
is. As such, the working class must mobilise outside of and against the state and force it
to give back what has been stolen, but it should not have illusions in doing so that the
state protects workers or the unemployed.
It is vital for the future of working class struggles that mineworkers in the platinum
sector and at Marikana win their demands. If they do, it could rejuvenate workers
struggles across the country, which have been on the decline since the late 1980s. In
fact, workers need to win better wages and safer working conditions. In the long run
though, and if inequality and injustice are to be ended, the working class needs to take
power and run society through its own structures. This means confronting the state, which
is not theirs. This too means abandoning faith in the state to nationalise companies,
which would essentially mean ownership by a state bureaucracy; not the working class.
Indeed, calling for nationalisation builds illusions in a higher power: the state; and it
does not show faith in, or build the power of, the working class itself. The state is not
a lesser evil to capitalists; rather they are part and parcel of the same system. Workers
need, and Marikana highlights this, to use struggles for reforms, such as wining higher
wages, to build towards seizing the land, mines, factories and other workplaces themselves
so that they can run them through worker self-management for the benefit of everyone in
society. Only when the working class has done this, and runs society through its own
structures and not a state, will the power of the ruling class, the power of its violent
state, and inequality be broken, smashed and ended.
Central to this too has to be the ending of the national oppression, and accompanying
racism, that the black working class is subjected to. Until this is ended, true freedom
and equality for both the black and white working class will not be achieved in South
Africa. As has long been pointed out by anarchist-communists, however, if a just society
is to be achieved the means and the ends in struggle have to be as similar as possible.
Hence, if we want a future genuinely equal and non-racist society, our struggle to end the
national oppression of the black working class, and the accompanying capitalism and racism
in South Africa, must be based firmly on the ideals of non-racialism. Only once racism and
inequality have ended will the Marikana massacres and other killings in the name of profit
and national oppression be part of history.
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