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Miners Shot Down—Documentary on the 2012 Massacre of 34 Miners in South Africa

February 16, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

In the face of mounting corruption charges and sharpening struggle within the ANC (African National Congress), Jacob Zuma was forced to resign as president of South Africa on February 14, and was replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa. Who is Cyril Ramaphosa? He is the founder of the National Union of Mineworkers and former anti-apartheid fighter who, since the end of apartheid in South Africa, has turned nouveau bourgeois exploiter. In the name of “Black Economic Empowerment,” he has become one of the richest people in South Africa, a country which has one of the most extreme wealth gaps in the world. In 2012 he was on the board of the British mining company Lonmin, when 34 striking platinum miners in Marikana, in the country’s Northwest Province, were massacred by police. He called the miners' strike “a dastardly criminal act.”

How did this happen? Check out the 2014 documentary film Miners Shot Down, available on YouTube, which uncovers the horrible massacres of the miners, including the collusion between Ramaphosa and Lonmin management with the government and national police in this crime.

And I would also urge people to read the revcom.us excerpt from the section on “The Decisive Role of Leadership” in Bob Avakian’s The New Communism: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation. Here, he gets into how oppressed people will repeatedly rise up against their oppression, “But where that struggle ends up, and whether it can be taken all the way to an emancipating revolution, a new society and ultimately a new world, without exploitation and oppression and all the suffering and destruction that goes along with that, depends on leadership—on the line, the worldview, the method and approach, the strategy and program of the force which gains the leadership in the struggle against oppression.”

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