On this day in 2012, the Marikana Massacre took place when South African police fired on striking workers, killing 34 and injuring 76 in the most lethal use of force by the state in half a century.

The shootings have been compared to the infamous Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when police fired on a crowd of anti-Pass Law protesters, killing 69 people, including 10 children. The Marikana Massacre took place on the 25-year anniversary of a nationwide strike by over 300,000 South African workers.

On August 10th, miners had initiated a wildcat strike at a site owned by Lonmin in the Marikana area, close to Rustenburg, South Africa. Although ten people (mostly workers) had been killed before August 16th, it was on that day that an elite force from the South African Police Service fired into a crowd of strikers with rifles, killing 34 and injuring 76.

After surveying the aftermath of the violence, photojournalist Greg Marinovich concluded that "[it is clear] that heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood."

Following the massacre, a massive wave of strikes occurred across the South African mining sector - in early October, analysts estimated that approximately 75,000 miners were on strike from various gold and platinum mines and companies across South Africa, most of them doing so illegally.

A year after the Marikana Massacre, author Benjamin Fogel wrote "Perhaps the most important lesson of Marikana is that the state can gun down dozens of black workers with little or no backlash from 'civil society', the judicial system or from within the institutions that supposedly form the bedrock of democracy."

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    • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I'm glad you had such a nice trek!

      I remember going through some ancient Roman ruins (I think it was just Pompeii, but it mightve been somewhere else) and gawking at all the stuff. The baths, the Cave Canem (beware of dog lol), it was late in fall so the pomegranate trees were full and just dropping all this nice juicy fruit, farmers were burning their olive plants (dunno why still), feeling how people lived 2000 years ago. And then coming upon the modern tourist pizzeria they installed near where a bunch of people burned and choked on volcanic ash.

      There's something so nice about this tension when we're traveling of this kind of sacred and profane moment overlapping.

    • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Thank you for sharing your story. You are good at writing. Your self analysis is inspiring. Completing a journey like this is impressive on its own but posting every day of it is another level. You could probably make a Novela out of the whole thing.