http://thinkingafricarhodesuniversity.blogspot.com/2013/01/workers-power-thrives-on-unity.html

Workers' Power Thrives On Unity

by Steven Friedman

The Durban strikes of 1973 empowered workers and helped destroy apartheid.

This month 40 years ago, South Africa learned an important truth which shaped our future - that people without power can challenge those who have it, but only if they act together.

The lesson was taught by the Durban strikes of 1973; they began a process which shifted power to working people and played an important role in defeating apartheid.

http://www.citypress.co.za/Opinions/Liberation-betrayed-by-bloodshed-20120825

Liberation betrayed by bloodshed

The tragedy at Marikana reflects the loss of the vision of liberation and the onset of repression by default, argues Njabulo S Ndebele

On the evening of Thursday, August 16, in Johannesburg, I returned to my hotel for a well-deserved rest.

I would turn on the TV, watch the news and then settle back to enjoy yet another episode of Isidingo.

But the evening I imagined was not to be. As the TV flickered to life, a newsreader introduced a breaking news item, and I knew immediately what was being replayed before me.

Klicken Sie hier für den deutschen text.

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/1402

The Massacre of Our Illusions...and the Seeds of Something New

by Leonard Gentle, SACSIS

The story of Marikana runs much deeper than an inter-union spat. After the horror of watching people being massacred on television, Marikana now joins the ranks of the Bulhoek and Sharpeville massacres, and the images evoked by Hugh Masekela’s Stimela, in the odious history of a method of capital accumulation based on violence.

http://www.amandlapublishers.co.za/blog/1534-echoes-of-the-pastmarikana-cheap-labour-and-the-1946-miners-strike

Echoes of the Past: Marikana, Cheap Labour and the 1946 Miners Strike

by Chris Webb

On August 4, 1946 over one thousand miners assembled in Market Square in Johannesburg, South Africa. No hall in the town was big enough to hold them, and no one would have rented one to them anyway. The miners were members of the African Mine Worker's Union (AMWU), a non-European union which was formed five years earlier in order to address the 12 to 1 pay differential between white and black mineworkers. The gathering carried forward just one unanimous resolution: African miners would demand a minimum wage of ten shillings (about 1 Rand) per day. If the Transvaal Chamber of Mines did not meet this demand, all African mine workers would embark on a general strike immediately. Workers mounted the platform one after the other to testify: "When I think of how we left our homes in the reserves, our children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on 12 August. It is better to die than go back with empty hands." The progressive Guardian newspaper reported an old miner getting to his feet and addressing his comrades: "We on the mines are dead men already!"[1]

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/1330

'Dropped Against the Rocks of Promise'

by Richard Pithouse

More than half of our young people are unemployed. For many of these people there is no formal route through which they can develop their energies and creativity and have them rewarded with a passage into autonomy and adulthood. Time becomes circular rather than linear and as life moves in descending and tightening spirals rather than up and forward. Pain and panic set into the bones.

Some people are able to keep their spirits up with the support of family, friends and congregations that sustain warmth and community amidst desolation. Others succumb to depression, cynicism, various ways of numbing pain or the temptation to blame other vulnerable people for their inability to bring their lives to bloom.

http://duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de/servlets/DocumentServlet?id=23715

The 2010 Mass Strike in the State Sector, South Africa: Positive Achievements but Serious Problems
Social.History Online / Sozial.Geschichte Online
by Ian Bekker and Lucien van der Walt
Issue 4 / 2010
pp. 138-152

Abstract

The August-September 2010 mass strike in the South African state sector demonstrated remarkable working class unity across racial and ideological lines, as 1.3 million workers of all colours stopped work for four weeks despite severe economic recession.

http://links.org.au/node/1997

Workers' factory takeover to defend jobs enters second month

November 17, 2010 -- A militant factory occupation by South African metalworkers is about to enter its second month. On October 20, 2010, workers at the Mine Line/TAP Engineering factory in Krugersdorp, just outside Soweto, began the occupation to prevent the removal of machinery and other assets and to fight to save their jobs. The workers are demanding the state take over the factory, so that it can be reopened as a democratically run workers' cooperative.

The attached pdf contains chapters two and 16 of Steven Friedman's Building Tomorrow Today (Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1987)