Statement by the International Workers’ Unity (Fourth International)
There is growing international outrage over the criminal police repression in South Africa that resulted in the death of 34 miners who were part of a demonstration by striking workers.
On Thursday [August] 16, South African police fired on striking miners at the British-owned Marikana Lonmin Platinum mine killing at least 34 men in a scene that prompted comparisons with the brutality experienced during the apartheid era.
In the incident, filmed by Reuters, police agents with automatic weapons fired at a group of workers who were simply protesting during a strike.
President Jacob Zuma said he was “appalled and dismayed”. However, the Zuma government is directly responsible for this repression. It is “his” police and his capitalist government that ignores workers’ demands, represses strikes and defends the profits of multinationals and enacts economic austerity against working people. In this occasion, it seems to be one of the bloodiest police operations since the end of white minority governments in 1994 in what is supposedly Africa’s largest economy.
We call on the workers of the world, in addition to political, student and trade union organizations to condemn the murder of the 34 miners and demand punishment and imprisonment for those responsible.
International Secretariat of the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (UIT-CI)
August 17, 2012
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Originally published in Laclase.info
International Secretariat of the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (UIT-CI) August 17, 2012
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