Some SAfrican miners vow to fight to the death
By By THOMAS PHAKANE and MICHELLE FAUL | Associated Press – 6 hrs ago.. .

MARIKANA, South Africa (AP) — Frantic wives searched for missing loved ones, President Jacob Zuma rushed home from a regional summit and some miners vowed a fight to the death Friday as police announced a shocking casualty toll from the previous day's shooting by officers of striking miners: 34 dead and 78 wounded.

Wives of miners at the Lonmin platinum mine northwest of Johannesburg took the place of dead and wounded husbands on Friday in staging a protest. But this time instead of asking for higher wages as the miners had done, the women demanded to know why police had opened fire Thursday with automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns on the strikers, many of whom had been armed with spears, machetes and clubs, as they rushed toward the officers.

Police said at a news conference that it was in self-defense, noting that strikers even possessed a pistol taken from a police officer they had beaten to death on Monday. But video footage indicates the miners may have simply been trying to flee tear gas that police had fired at them moments earlier.

As the miners rushed away from a hill they had occupied and that was being tear-gassed, police opened fire, including with automatic rifles. Police were perhaps jumpy, knowing that the strikers were armed and that two officers had already died earlier in the week.

"Police stop shooting our husbands and sons," read a banner carried by the women on Friday. They kneeled before shotgun-toting police and sang a protest song, saying "What have we done?" in the Xhosa language.

National police Chief Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega told a packed news conference that Thursday was a dark day for South Africa and that it was no time for pointing fingers, even as people compared the shootings to apartheid-era state violence and political parties and labor unions demanded an investigation.

Zuma returned home from a summit in Mozambique and announced an official inquiry into the killings, which he called shocking and tragic. The president headed directly to the mine, 70 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, where his office said he would visit injured miners in the hospital.

At least 10 other people were killed during the week-old strike, including the two police officers battered to death by strikers and two mine security guards burned alive when strikers set their vehicle ablaze.

Makhosi Mbongane, a 32-year-old winch operator, said mine managers should have come to the striking workers rather than send police. Strikers were demanding monthly salary raises from $625 to $1,563. Mbongane vowed that he was not going back to work and would not allow anyone else to do so either.

"They can beat us, kill us and kick and trample on us with their feet, do whatever they want to do, we aren't going to go back to work," he told The Associated Press. "If they employ other people they won't be able to work either. We will stay here and kill them."

Research released by the Bench Marks Foundation, a non-governmental organization monitoring the practices of multinational mining corporations, found that Lonmin had a bad track record with high levels of fatalities and keeping workers in "very poor living conditions." According to the report released Tuesday, workers often live in deteriorating shacks without electricity. Some children suffer from chronic illnesses due to sewage spills caused by broken drainage.

The mining company said earlier that it would withhold comment on the report until the conflict situation cooled down.

Myriad problems are facing South Africa 18 years after white racist rule ended, including growing inequality between a white minority joined by a small black elite while most blacks endure high unemployment and inadequate housing, health care and education.

The shootings "awaken us to the reality of the time bomb that has stopped ticking — it has exploded," The Sowetan newspaper said in a front-page editorial Friday. "Africans are pitted against each other... They are fighting for a bigger slice of the mineral wealth of the country."

The youth wing of the ruling African National Congress party argues that nationalization of the nation's mines and farms is the only way to redress the evils of the apartheid past. Zuma's government has played down those demands.

Lonmin PLC chairman Roger Phillimore issued a statement Friday saying the deaths were deeply regretted.

At hospitals in the area, people gathered, hoping to find missing family members among the wounded. At the scrubland scene of the killings, a woman carrying a baby on her back said she was looking for a missing miner.

"My husband left yesterday morning at 7 a.m. to come to the protest and he never came back," said Nobantu Mkhuze.

Shares in Lonmin PLC fell as much as 8 percent Friday. Since violence broke out last weekend at the Marikana mine, shares have fallen by as much as 20 percent, wiping some 390 million pounds ($610 million) off the company's market value. The company, the world's third-largest platinum miner, has also been hit by Thursday's announcement that Chief Executive Ian Farmer is hospitalized with a serious illness.

Meanwhile Friday, police investigators and forensic experts watched by about 100 people combed the scene of the shooting, planting multicolored cones and numbered placards to mark evidence amid the dirt and bushes where the shooting took place. Police also searched the rocky outcropping where thousands of miners had gathered daily to strike.

The South Africa Police Service defended officers' actions, saying in a statement that they were "viciously attacked by the (strikers), using a variety of weapons, including firearms. The police, in order to protect their own lives and in self-defense, were forced to engage the group with force."

Poor South Africans protest daily across the country for basic services like running water, housing and better health and education. Protests often turn violent, with people charging that ANC leaders have joined the white minority that continues to enrich itself while life becomes ever harder for the black majority.

The Law Society of South Africa said the miners "have been the victims of an escalating breakdown in conflict resolution, particularly in the mining industry."

"This breakdown is symptomatic of our society and body politic in South Africa," the society added.

While the initial walkout and protest focused on wages, violence has been fueled by the struggles between the dominant National Union of Mineworkers and the upstart and more radical Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.

NUM secretary-general Frans Baleni has said that some of his union members were on a hit list, including a shop steward killed Tuesday by strikers.
http://news.yahoo.com/safrican-miners-v ... 50242.html

Ousted SAfrica leader blames gov't for mine deaths
Associated Press – 1 hr 46 mins ago.. .


JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Expelled politician Julius Malema blames senior members of the governing African National Congress for police killing 34 striking miners this week, and says South African police had no right to fire live ammunition at the men.

The youth leader, who was expelled from the ANC earlier this year, was welcomed as a hero on Saturday by thousands of strikers. He is the first politician to address them at the site and says he has come because the government has turned its back on them.

Strikers complained that President Jacob Zuma had not come to them when he flew to the area Friday and visited hospitalized miners who were wounded in Thursday's shootings.

Malema claimed senior ANC members had ignored the escalating situation over miners' demands for higher salaries because they had shares in the affected Lonmin platinum mine.
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http://news.yahoo.com/ousted-safrica-le ... 52412.html

Gordimer distressed at S.Africa mine 'massacre'
By Susan Njanji | AFP – 5 hrs ago.. .

Nobel literature prize winner Nadine Gordimer, a powerful critic of apartheid, told AFP she never imagined the police violence that killed 34 miners could ever happen in the new South Africa.

In scenes that drew comparisons to the infamous 1960 Sharpeville massacre, when apartheid police fired into a crowd of blacks, police on Thursday opened fire into group of striking miners demanding a tripling of their salaries.

"I am absolutely devastated. I can't believe this terrible massacre between our own people, our own black people," she said in an interview. "Ghastly, completely unacceptable."

"If you ask me when when we celebrated our victory in the struggle, when Umkonto weSizwe (the ANC armed wing) won against the South African army, and especially those of us around, as I was in in the ANC, we could never have believed this would ever happen," she said.

Police said they acted in self defence against the armed protestors.

Gordimer said South African police lacked crowd control skills, despite the recurring protests against poor living conditions across the country.

"I don't understand why, since we have had so many protests over the living conditions of people living in shacks, why the police do not have sophisticated, more competent methods of dealing with people who become violent in a crowd.

"Why would you simply pick up your gun and shoot back?"

Gordimer, who had several works banned by the apartheid regime, said in the dawn of democracy euphoria, a host of inequalities were overlooked and no plans were put in place to deal with them.

"There were many factors we didn't take into account. All we were absolutely interested about was getting rid of apartheid. We didn't realise that the financial inequality along with all the other inequalities, were sure going to be with us."

"And unfortunately we seem to have quite wrongly not talked about this before, and how we were going to deal with this situation."

The 88-year-old writer and political activist said as a young white girl she was made to believe that black miners were dangerous.

But as she grew up and became politically aware, she got to understand the deplorable living conditions of black mine workers, who were kept far away in so-called compounds.

As co-author of the book "On The Mines", she went in to understand first-hand the mine workers' living conditions, which she believes have not improved much.

"The compounds, the sleeping quarters, were concrete bunks, one above the other, concrete. And I don't know what the conditions are like now (but) I am sure they are not particularly comfortable.

She said the "incredible" compound system continued "until I am sure, very recently."

"These people are really the most important working factor in bringing out the wealth that we have, our wealth, our platinum, our gold and uranium underground. They have always been underpaid and under-cared for."

Many of them have suffered from mining-related illnesses such as tuberculosis, she said.

She was also annoyed that President Jacob Zuma did not return home immediately in the thick of the violence.

"President Zuma was on some mission in Mozambique. Why didn't he get on one of his private jets and come back immediately to deal with the trouble?"

She does not spare mine owners from blame.

"I want to see them brought into the public domain to (explain) what they intend to do to change the conditions of these workers."
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http://news.yahoo.com/gordimer-distress ... 08196.html

It seems that you were looking for ways to avenge the humiliation suffered by your genocidal leader Meles Zenawi during his visit to South Africa.

It seems that you were looking for ways to avenge the humiliation suffered by your genocidal leader Meles Zenawi during his visit to South Africa.

Don't you care about anything else but your sorry shabo azz?

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What do your woyane diplomats.. ooops I mean drug traffickers, think of what's happening in South Africa? Will their drug trade be affected by the protests ?

The flagbearer, fed-up with shabo, absconds. Your tyrant 'lost his shirt' in London.

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I understand what you're going through....

I understand what you're going through....
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shabo,

Don't you think you've caused enough grief to the Eritrean people?

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... GdPBBK5O8I

http://www.tesfanews.net/archives/9014