South Africa: Marikana miners' fate under ANC's ultra-capitalism

From The Commune:

marikana: the suffering goes on

6 05 2013

As the homeless residents of Marikana, we are here because we do not have  anywhere else to go. We are also now jobless which means we cannot  afford to pay rent to live in someone’s backyard. We always vote for  this government but they always treat us like dogs in our own country.  The government sends the Anti-Land Invasions Unit, Law Enforcement and  SAPS to demolish our houses. They did this on Sunday, Tuesday,  Wednesday, Thursday and again on Friday the 3rd of May. They’ve now arrested four of us for public violence even though the police were the ones that hurt us, shot us and beat us.

On the 1st  of May, a public holiday which celebrates the resistance of  the workers and the poor against the oppression of the rich, the City  even again took the side of the rich and stole our building material.  This is thousands of Rands worth of our property which we don’t think we will ever see again because they don’t tell us where they have taken  it. Without this material, we have nowhere else to go because even if we had a little money, we can’t now rent somewhere build a shack there.

So we have nowhere else to go. Since Wednesday, we have been  sleeping out in the open, in the rain. While we sleep in the bush, at  least the snakes have forgiven us for moving onto their land. They don’t chase us away and now treat us with respect. They have become like our  brothers and sisters.

But the same cannot be said for our government which is chasing us  away as if we are not their brothers and sisters. As if we are not even  human. But next year, they will need us to go vote for them. But how can we vote for anyone that takes away our dignity.

Yesterday, on Friday the 3rd, Law Enforcement came again and took  away our waterproof tarps and plastic material the we were using to keep us dry from the rain. Why did they do this? We can’t build a shack with that material – we were just trying to keep dry and warm because we are stuck there with nowhere else to go. But the City of Cape Town is  heartless. They want us to get sick. They want to punish us for trying  to do whats best for our families, for our children. All 50 of us!

But we are not going anywhere. They can take the material. They can  shoot us. They can even kill us. But we will not move from this place.  This piece of land is not being use and has never been used (except by  criminals who go there to kill people, abuse children and rape women) so we will remain there unless we are given a piece of land that we can  call our own.

We have tried to engage with the City of Cape Town, but they ignore  us. We are trying to attend a meeting between the City, Law Enforcement  and SAPS at the Philippi East police station on Monday the 6th of May.  This meeting is about us but we have not even been invited! When we  spoke to Station Commissioner Colonel Mdimbaza, he told us: “I am sick  and tired of you. I don’t want to see you in that meeting. If I see your faces in the meeting, I will shoot you”.

So what can we do? The police shoot us, the Law Enforcement evicts  us, and the rest of the City ignores us. So we will just continue to  stay in Marikana until they give up or we die. This is the same story as the Marikana Massacre of the rich and government oppressing the poor  and it is being repeated all over the country included here in Philippi  East.

Abahlali baseMarikana