MARIKANA, we are constantly told, changed everything. Sadly, it is not clear that it changed anything. Last week saw the second anniversary of the shootings and Cyril Ramaphosa’s appearance at the Farlam commission. So Marikana is again in the public mind — we were told again how much of a watershed it was. But, while Marikana was important since it showed how much of our past has survived into the present, the test of a watershed is whether it changes behaviour or opinions among key actors: two years on, there is little evidence Marikana did either.
The government probably is more careful now about the way protests are policed. But it still seems to think that a heavy hand is the best way to deal with worker militancy — particularly from unions that are not loyal to the governing party. Cabinet ministers are threatening new laws to curb strikes: cynics might wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that the unions that called the two key strikes this year — the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) — do not support the African National Congress (ANC).
A government-led process has produced a plan for a more sustainable mining industry but there are few signs yet that this has changed anything. And the problems that contributed to Marikana — the survival of inequalities that force workers to borrow more than they can repay — go well beyond mining. If Marikana had changed government thinking, it would have prompted it to press for negotiation on a new approach to the economy that tackles poverty and inequality while encouraging growth. But, despite promising noises earlier in the year, there is little sign of this yet.
Marikana showed that business also continues to play a role in continuing past patterns: Ramaphosa’s role at the time suggested, for example, that senior black board members are appointed not to contribute skills and capital but because they have contacts with government ministers. If Marikana had changed business attitudes, we would have seen a similar willingness to face our past as we saw in the early 1990s. We would see businesses building a negotiation position that accepted the need for reform and set out what they are prepared to offer to change and what they expect in return. Instead, many in business assume that economic health requires simply that the government and labour get out of business’s way.
Much of the labour movement seems not to have moved either. Marikana signalled clearly that many unions were out of touch with members and badly needed to reconnect. But some unions have dismissed the turmoil as an assault by their enemies. Others recognised the problem but soon seemed to lose interest. More disturbing is that violent conflict in the union movement has not disappeared: last week, three Numsa shop stewards in KwaZulu-Natal were shot dead and the union links their murder to its plan to launch a socialist movement, which would mean that, as before Marikana, some still settle union disputes with the gun.
Despite all this, some on the left insist that Marikana did change everything: they argue that the shootings convinced many working and poor people that they could trust the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) no longer — those who support radical change know that they cannot pin their hopes on a government on whose watch strikers are killed, and so Marikana opened the way for a strong movement to the ANC’s left. Those of this view insist the screening of a film on Marikana at last year’s special Numsa conference persuaded many delegates they needed to break with the ANC alliance. The first problem with this argument is that, where unions and their members challenge the ANC from the left, Marikana may simply have confirmed views they already held.
Far more important, the claim that union members have had enough of the ANC is hardly self-evident. Surveys of worker attitudes show they continue to support it — in one, most respondents did say they would join a workers’ party if Cosatu formed one, but that does not necessarily mean they have had enough of the governing party: it may mean that, if most Cosatu members agreed to ditch the ANC, they would go along. It is hard to read the May election results as a sign that Cosatu members are deserting the ANC: while it fared badly in the Marikana area, it is still the choice of most union members.
Marikana should have been a watershed — it should have persuaded the government, business and labour that they needed to chart a new course. But, two years later, there is little evidence that it was. Until all the parties recognise the need to look inward and to examine what they can do to address the problems that caused Marikana, the families of those who perished cannot be comforted by the prospect that their loved ones’ deaths shocked us into taking a new direction.
• Friedman is director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy.
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