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KPFA WorkWeek on April 14, 2014 To Interview South Africa NUMSA Treasurer Mphumzi Maqungo

by WorkWeek Radio KPFA
South Africa NUMSA Treasurer Mphumzi Maqungo will be interviewed on KPFA WorkWeek on April 14 2014 between 8 & 9 AM. He will discuss the action of the union to call for the formation of a workers party in South Africa
sa_miners_family_after_massacre.jpeg
KPFA WorkWeek on April 14, 2014 To Interview South Africa NUMSA Treasurer Mphumzi Maqungo
WorkWeek on Monday April 14 2014 between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM will look at the labor struggles in South Africa and interview South Africa NUMSA Treasurer Mphumzi Maqungo. Their union has called for the formation of a workers party with a socialist program. We will also look at the attack on immigrant worker on the US Mexican border who are treated as 'Alien Commuters'"We will investigate the labor conditions at UPS that led to the firing of 250 UPS teamster drivers in New York City and the national day of action on April 24 against Staples to stop privatization of the post office.
KPFA WorkWeek Radio On The Morning Mix
http://www.kpfa.org listen live
workweek [at] kpfa.org
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio



South Africa NUMSA Treasurer Mphumzi Maqungo will also be speaking in the bay area on May 1, 2014 at ILWU Local 10 and there will be a premier screening of the new film from South Africa "Miners Shot Down" at La Pena on April 21, 2014 at 7:00 PM sponsored by the organizing committee for the visit.

From Marikana, South Africa To Oakland, CA: The Struggle For Workers Power

The fall of apartheid in South Africa in 1994 was a watershed victory. It culminated decades of struggle by the Black and Colored South African masses, a struggle supported by millions in the U.S. and around the world. The victory brought to power the Tripartite government of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

Now, two decades later, the ANC-led Tripartite government represents big business’s interests -- especially the interests of U.S. and European-based banks and corporations. This has led the government to brutally attack workers who fight back against austerity. Indeed, in 2012, at the Marikana mine, this government massacred 34 striking miners at the behest of the mine owners.

Black poverty has worsened. Inequality has worsened. Trade union officials collaborate with employers against workers, youth, and unemployed. Does this sound familiar? Isn’t the situation similar in the US, with union of- ficials not fighting employer and government attacks on workers, like the machinists at Boeing?

But in South Africa, there’s an exciting new development: for the first time since the fall of Apartheid, there’s a serious challenge to the Tripartite government’s rule, and it comes from the largest and most militant union in Africa. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has broken with the COSATU leadership and called for South Africans not to support the ANC in this year’s elections. It is currently building a workers’ party and united front to lead the struggle against the capitalist onslaught of deregulation, privatization, and strike breaking.

We are privileged to present Brother Mphumzi Maqungo, the national treasurer of NUMSA and past chair of NUMSA’s autoworker shop steward network, to discuss these developments.

Thursday, May 1, 7:00 pm
ILWU Hall, Henry Schmidt Room
400 N. Point St./Mason, San Francisco

Friday, May 2, 12 Noon at UC Berkeley,
McCone Hall (Room 575)

Saturday, May 3, 2 pm.
Black Repertory Theater; 3201 Adeline,
Berkeley (one block south of Ashby BART)

For updates or to get involved in building for these events, contact the May Day Committee in Solidarity with South African Workers at:twsc [at] transportworkers.org. Reach us directly at (510)325-8664 or (415)282-1908
http://www.transportworkers.org


New Working Class Leadership and the Prospects for Socialist Politics in South Africa
Presentation Of NUMSA Gen Sec. Irvin Jim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLhiXBRrj94PcqxWjoF9to5T_559slyIsD&v=cEsNF3vuirw
Published on Mar 22, 2014
New Working Class Leadership and the Prospects for Socialist Politics in South Africa with Irvin Jim, General Secretary of National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA).


New Working Class Leadership and the Prospects for Socialist Politics in South Africa
Toronto — 6 March 2014.
The dramatic upsurge of popular grass-roots protest in South Africa's townships and rural areas in recent years has been well-termed as marking a virtual “rebellion of the poor” in that country. The working-class itself has also been assertive there, prompting the ANC-led state's orchestration of an horrific massacre of dissident mine-workers at Marikana in 2012. Until recently, however, leading trade unions have themselves been cribbed and confined within the tri-partite governing coalition of the ANC, the South African Communist Party and COSATU, the country's largest trade union central body. Now NUMSA – the country's National Union of Metalworkers with over 340,000 members – has begun to break that mould, under the leadership of its General Secretary, Irvin Jim, a longstanding socialist militant in the union. At its Special National Congress in December it heralded a new socialist political direction for South Africa.
Presentation by Irvin Jim, General Secretary of National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). Moderated by John S. Saul.
More recent analysis of South African politics:
• NUMSA, “The State of Class Struggle in South Africa,” The Bullet No. 946
• Judith Marshall, “Building a United Front Against Neoliberalism,” The Bullet No. 944
• Irvin Jim, “Manifestos and Reality,” The Bullet No. 936
• Sam Ashman and Nicolas Pons-Vignon, “NUMSA Rupture Could Mark New Start for Socialist Politics in South Africa,” The Bullet No. 935
• Leonard Gentle, “Forging a New Movement,” The Bullet No. 933
Sponsored by: Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly, Centre for Social Justice, Socialist Project, and BASICSnews.ca.

SA NUMSA International Officer Hlokoza Motau Reports On Economic Crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXHKldzy7Ms&feature=
Hlokoza Motau reported on the economic and social conditions for the
working class in South Africa. He is the International Officer of the
South African National Union Of Metal Workers NUMSA. This
presentation was given in Chicago on 4/5/14 during the Labor Notes
convention. For more information about NUMSA go to:
http://www.numsa.org.za
Labor Video Project http://www.laborvideo.org

Through the lens: A look at Marikana’s bleeding heart "Miners Shot Down"
http://www.citypress.co.za/news/a-look-at-marikanas-bleeding-heart/
Charl Blignaut @sa_poptart
11 August 2013 14:00

Police officers stand ready to shoot, during a protest at Marikana. Picture: Leon Sadiki/City Press

Two documentaries peel away the layers that led to the tragedy.

Two new Marikana documentaries are on their way ahead of the first anniversary of the mining strike that left 44 dead. The first of them airs tonight on eNCA.

South Africans have not yet seen the real horror of limbs twitching as 34 miners lay dying in the dust after police used live ammunition to quell a strike at Lonmin mine on August 16 last year.

We have not really seen the families of the dead on either side, nor have most of us watched the police footage in the days leading to the shooting that was shown at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry.

Made in two parts – Through the Lens and Seven Days of Night – eNCA’s documentary special focuses on the journalists covering the story and the live-on-air horror as it broke.

In part two it tracks the week leading to the massacre.

While the man in the green blanket became a symbol of the tragedy; the eNCA documentary foregrounds the man in the orange jersey.

His name is Mongezeleli “Bhayi” Ntenetya. After he is shot he tries to sit up and then collapses. His wife Nosipho saw her husband die on TV.

“After he fell, I couldn’t watch any more,” she says. She starts to cry. “I cannot talk about him. I just can’t.”

Producer and director Xoli Moloi visited Ntenetya in the Eastern Cape village of Idutywa.

She told City Press the grieving widow told her she and her husband spoke every night and that she still stares at her phone at the time he used to call.

The documentary pays equal attention to the 10 men who died in the week before the massacre.

Petunia Lepaaku sits in the same chair she was sitting in when she saw a corpse with its face covered on TV and suspected it was her husband.

“He prayed alone that morning,” tells Aisha Fundi, the wife of security guard Hassan Fundi who died when his car was torched by strikers.

Normally her husband would wake her to pray with him.

Another Marikana documentary, Miners Shot Down, is in post-production. It’s a well-funded feature from Rehad Desai’s Uhuru Productions.

He had been preparing to shoot a project on mining and labour that focused on Lonmin when the massacre happened.

It changed his film into “a forensic investigation into the shooting”. Showing never-before-seen footage, it also covers the week leading to the tragedy.

It is, he says, a clear comment on capitalism and politics, foregrounding labour issues and including interviews with Cyril Ramaphosa, mine management and union leaders.

It also draws on photographer Greg Marinovich’s coverage of the scene of the shooting.

“It shows why and how state and capital collusion can lead to a mass shooting,” Desai told City Press.

The documentary will premiere internationally next year.

Newsflash: Families appeal to ConCourt

Family members of the 34 striking miners who were killed by police in Marikana have asked the Constitutional Court to help them find out “how and why our loved ones were killed in the manner in which they were”.

In an affidavit filed by Zameka Nungu, whose husband was killed on August 16 last year, she asks the court to order that the state must fund the legal representation of families at the inquiry into the massacre.

“I want to participate in the commission because I want to know why the police killed my husband,” said Nungu.

“I also want to know why the police who killed my husband have not yet been brought to justice.”

The families, who are being represented by Advocate Dali Mpofu, are appealing a decision of the North Gauteng High Court which dismissed an urgent application for the state to fund their legal representation at the Farlam commission of inquiry.

The widows, mothers and sisters of the late miners say they “simply don’t believe” that their husbands were attempting to attack the police.

“We knew our loved ones as peaceful and loving men.” – Charl du Plessis

» eNCA’s Marikana special screens tonight at 7pm and will be available online at http://www.enca.com/marikana.


Marikana film shows cops' attacks on miners
http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/36737/Marikana+film+shows+cops+attacks+on+miners
New evidence backs miners in the fight for justice over the Marikana massacre, reports Ken Olende


President Jacob Zuma visits an injured miner in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre in South Africa in 2012 (Pic: GovernmentZA/flickr)

Socialist film maker Rehad Desai has uncovered previously unseen news footage of the beginning of the Marikana massacre in South Africa on 16 August 2012.

It clearly shows one of the striking Lonmin platinum miners’ leaders at the head of a large group moving away from “the mountain” where they had been meeting.

They are heading towards Nkaneng, the informal settlement where most of them live.

The miners are moving slowly and trying to leave—not attack.

The police move vehicles up and then open fire, panicking the miners who start to run.

This fits entirely with the miners’ evidence as reported in Socialist Worker at the time.

It contradicts the police statement that the miners attacked them three times and they had to fire in self defence.

Socialist Worker’s report, days after the massacre said, “Witnesses say police near the ‘small koppie’ (hillock) opened fire on them, probably with rubber bullets.” The new footage backs this up.

The police shot 112 striking miners, killing 34. They later arrested 270 protesters, blaming them for their colleagues’ deaths.

Rehad found the footage while preparing a documentary on the massacre.

Revelations

The latest revelations follow the discovery of police hard drives containing material that the police had not presented as evidence at the commission into the massacre.

Much of the new information contradicts the evidence officers did give.

One of the documents is a transcript of a meeting between Lonmin officials and the police from two days before the massacre.

This was the meeting where Lonmin’s vice president for “human capital” Barnard Mokoena said, “Let tomorrow be the D-Day where we issue the ultimatum and say if you do not show up for work, sorry, that is it.”

Also at the meeting was Police Commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo who complained, “Remember we are tied up by these new amendments in our law that says we should not shoot.”

Other new footage also shows damage to police armoured vehicles.

Police had testified that the damage was carried out by the miners as they attacked the police.

But the damage was visible on film shot before the massacre took place.

A mortuary worker has supplied an affidavit saying that on the morning of the massacre police ordered four mortuary vans and an officer told him, “Today we’re going to take the miners down.”

Angry public meetings in Johannesburg and Cape Town after the massacre set up the Marikana Solidarity Campaign

The South African High Court decided two weeks ago that the miners could have legal aid to fund their legal costs.

SA Miners leaving peacefully the koppie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajmsBHMuT_E

UhuruProductionsJHB·24 videos
§Lonmin Platinum Miners on Hill
by WorkWeek Radio KPFA
sa_miners_on_hill.jpg
Over 34 miner's at the Lonmin platinum mine in South Africa were massacred by the South African government. This massacre has in part led to the National Union Of Metal Workers NUMSA to call for the formation of a workers party and nationalization of the mines
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