WHAT shall we say to the 700 schoolchildren who laid down their lives at the hands of the terrorist apartheid regime on June 16 1976 in what became known as the Soweto Uprising?
Vana Mandela vakatambura kusvika pakaperera simba ravo. Muviri wakarakashwa ukaparara, vakanga vaitwa kafira mberi.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela suffered so much till his death; multiple illnesses plagued him to his dying day.
He paid the price, a very exacting price for the freedom of his people.
Vamwe vavo vazhinji vakatamburavo kusvika pakaperera simba ravo, vakafa ndufu dzinorwadza; vamwe mumajeri, vamwe vakapfurwa semhuka mumamisha, mumadhorobha, nemumasango.
On June 16 1976, the terrorist South African apartheid regime opened fire on thousands of school children, killing at least 700 of them.
The schoolchildren were protesting learning in the language of their oppressors, Afrikaans.
It is amazing that whites can claim to be the forebears of civilisation and still brutally murder schoolchildren and some among us still think they are civilised.
History will judge us.
When the 34 striking miners were gunned down at Marikana on August 16 2012, it shocked us. It was reminiscent of June 16 1976, it was reminiscent of Sharpeville on March 21 1960 (69 killed) — was it just the timing that was different, or was it?
Cyril Ramaphosa, a senior member of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), also a shareholder, board member of Lonmin PLC and a non-executive director in the company at the time said this in an email to the company on August 15 2012 (with reference to the striking miners):
“The terrible events that have unfolded cannot be described as a labour dispute. They are plainly dastardly criminal and must be characterised as such. In line with this characterisation, there needs to be concomitant action to address this situation.”
Lonmin PLC, the British-owned giant platinum mining company, makes millions and the miners live in shacks, ‘the typical dwelling for the miners is nine square metres built with corrugated metal sheets, with no electricity, gas or running water’.
The miners generate so much wealth but they and their families live as the wretched of the poor.
It was only in 2016 that their wages were raised to US$307, the wage they died for in 2012.
They were killed because they demanded better wages so they could move out of this wretchedness.
The miners were not only underpaid, they were also condemned to what is euphemistically called informal settlements, which in actual fact are shacks not fit for human habitation. They are worse than where animals are housed on commercial farms.
The work conditions were inhuman as the ILO reports that the workers were exposed to ‘a variety of safety hazards such as falling rocks, exposure to dust, intensive noise, fumes and high temperatures, among others’.
Marikana Mine accounts for 95 percent of Lonmin PLC’s platinum.
Lonmin PLC, the third largest platinum mining company in the world, has been mining platinum in South Africa since 1909 and yet this still is the lot of the South African miners, the owners of the platinum. So, what has been the benefit of this company mining platinum in SA if it has not benefitted the South African miners?
The platinum belongs to the South Africans, the indigenous people of South Africa, it is their God-given heritage.
The mining company does not own the platinum, it has implements, that is instruments of production but that does not mean they own the platinum.
This is the essence of capitalism, but more so the essence of colonial capitalism where the land with all its wealth summarily belongs to the foreigner who comes with a gun.
As President Robert Gabriel Mugabe always underlines:“We don’t lose ownership because someone brings a hoe, we cannot and we must not.”
The story of Marikana is still so reminiscent of apartheid, it is heartbreaking.
‘Did you see how I took him down? I shot him 10 times and he still kept coming. That m*******r, I shot him at least 10 times!’ said one of the killer policemen caught on camera excitedly celebrating the murder he had just committed.
The 500 police were armed with assault rifles; how do you take assault rifles to dispel a strike unless you intend to kill?
How do you kill your kith and kin with assault rifles? In a ‘free’ South Africa?
Who were the police defending when they murdered the 34 miners?
They say that South Africa is a First World country, some would go as far as to say it is not in Africa.
The children who were callously and brutally murdered on June 16 1976 by the apartheid terrorists died for a different South Africa, they refused to be slaves in the land of their birth.
They died so that each South African should have a decent life in the land of their birth.
As we remember these brave schoolchildren, we need to remember that as long as we are at peace with our resources being owned and controlled by white monopoly capital, we are not free and we are not defending the interests of the majority, the goals of the liberation struggle.
These children said no to slavery, can we do any less?