Miners Protest Magnifies South Africa's Struggles With Apartheid Conditions in Wealth Distribution



South African mners of Lomin Mine protest wages.
They are seen wearing tribal clothes during protest.

When the white South African regime brokered deals with jailed leader Nelson Mandela prior to Mandela's release in the 1990s, there were several agreements that were made regarding wealth distribution in the severely Apartheid torn nation.

It was a deal that Winnie Mandela is still, openly hypercritical towards because it left majority of South Africa, a largely black nation, dependent on whites to dictate wealth, and has played in the continual destabilization of the African National Congress. Resultantly, it were the terms of that complex agreement that are directly tied to the miners protest on August 16, 2012.

Mandela agreed to terms that shifted much of the political power to blacks, yet the economic power stayed in the hands of whites, hence the mines and multinational, long standing corporations are all  white owned in South Africa.

Another aspect of the agreement were that white government workers who did not want to work alongside blacks in federal jobs could retire with a pension for life immediately. As a result, South Africa has to fork over a chunk of its budget to a pension system that pays whites who retired from work as early as 18 years old.

Although South Africa is rich in minerals and natural resources that could balance the budget and create more wealth, the white domination, white privatization and control of the money flow has made it difficult for the upward mobility of a majority black population and increased enhancement of South Africa's infrastructure that is dire need of a better public education and hospitals.


Mark Munroe, left, executive vice president for mining at Lonmin,
speaks alongside chief financial officer Simon Scott.

Whites have privatized much of their existence. Schools, hospitals, neighborhoods and businesses are in the hands of whites who were in staunch support of Apartheid. Unfortunately, when Apartheid was dismantled, their worldview did not switch; yet whites have reaped all of the rewards from the ending of the sanctions, boycotts and embargoes against South African countries during the Apartheid regime.

Today, South Africa has progressed politically, yet the wealth distribution has created bigger gaps in the haves and have-nots. Miners have not received proper increase of pay, health plans or sustainable living benefits for their families.

As well, a large sector of the labor, which is still in mining, receives pittance wages, but these mines have not been regulated for the gross environmental damage they have caused to towns who live close to the mountains of unearthed dirt that blow toxic soil on windy days, along with other issues.

What the miners of Lonmin were protesting were an increase of wages from about US $600 to $1500 a month. The average day for a miner is 15 hours underground with shadey safety conditions. Most miners still work in conditions where they are separated from wives and families who live in the rural area.

Lonmin is the third largest platinum mine in the world, and has been refusing to budge in the wage increase like other local mines who have responded to the national debate regarding the mines being privatized. More importantly, the now suspended ANC Youth League leader  Julius Malema was demanding that South African government nationalize the mines to bring wealth to the people rather than keep it in the hands of few.

SA President Zuma talks to miners.

ANC leaders, such as current president Jacob Zuma saw his actions as divisive and disagreed. Zuma, as well as others like Mandela, opt for a plan that gradually, but with little certainty, shifts wealth.

For example, the resettlement plan of South Africa that gives land and homes to South Africans who once lived in Shanty towns, or were ripped from their homelands, is an iniative of wealth redistribution.

Nonetheless, the gap that has widened between white wealth and black poverty, added by growing costs of living in South Africa are making the average black South African anxious and disappointed. Add to the that, the ANC is weakening from within, which further makes governing and staying in power more diffcult.

Yet the cold truth is emerging amongst black South Africans through their controversial, and ineffective head-of-state, black power without black wealth is only a mere puppet to the highest bidder.

The protest that occured and the cold response by Lonmin executives is a reminder that the past is not far away, and that the past is the current. The racist, color-stratified, white racist regime is alive and kcking.

Women family members of miners eye police at Lonmine Mines.

African Americans gawked at how black police officers were involved in killing their own black countrymen, but those of us who understand oppression know that all to often the oppress perpetuate their oppression better than their oppressors.

South Africa is much like the US in its racial politics and issues. Just because Obama is president and South Africa has black presidents and Mandela has been free for over 20 years, does not make any two of the countries post-racial.

Just like an ordinary day in New York, Chicago, New Orleans or Los Angeles. As Zora Neale Hurston prophetically said, 'Your skin folk ain't [always] your kinfolk.'

Those black officers probably really believe they were doing what was right along with white officers who are paid a little more than the miners.

Both are still perpetuating the residuls of a white South African regime that suppresses black enfranchisement, and protect white wealth.

The Struggle Continues: LSE Students, Faculty Hold Protest Today to Oust Researcher Who Published 'Black Women are the Least Attractive' Study

 

Below are posts on the Students Against Kanazawa Facebook Page a collective of LSE students and staff who are calling for the removal of London School of Economics professor Satoshi Kanazawa. 

According to the FB statement by the LSE, Home Of The Racist Academic SAY NO campaign, "Kanazawa has consistently produced racist, sexist and incredibly offensive 'studies' which are not peer reviewed and use science which is completely flawed." 

The protest was scheduled at 4:30 PM, June 21, Outside Tower 1, LSE, Houghton Street. I hope the protest was successful and made more people aware. If you look on the FB page, everyone does not agree, and there are racist comments themselves by cowards and ignorant, racist students. Nevertheless, the movement to remove Kanazawa crosses all racial and ethnic boundaries.

Evolutionary psychologists turn on controversial peer

 by John Gill 2 June 2011

An international group of more than 60 academics has accused a controversial evolutionary psychologist of refusing to engage in scientific dialogue, highlighting long-standing criticism of his work in an attempt to protect their discipline from further attack.

The group, which consists of 68 scholars of evolution and human behaviour, wrote to Times Higher Education following the furore over a recent blog by Satoshi Kanazawa, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, in which he claimed that an analysis of data showed that black women were "far less attractive" than those of other races.

The academics and journal editors from countries including the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Italy and New Zealand claim that Dr Kanazawa - who is currently on sabbatical from his post as reader in management - has attracted a flood of criticism to the field of evolutionary psychology.

Defending the discipline, they say that "a large number of scientists who apply an evolutionary approach to human behaviour consider Dr Kanazawa's work to be poor quality and have demonstrated this via their own academic critiques".

The signatories say they have taken the "unusual step of making this statement to counteract the damage we believe he is doing to the perception of our discipline in the media and among the public".

They go on to list 24 papers that have critiqued Dr Kanazawa's work, which they say involve a total of 59 social and natural scientists. The critics have "expertise sufficient to critique his work both theoretically and methodologically, including statisticians and epidemiologists", they write.

They add that 35 psychologists, including many evolutionary psychologists, recently contributed to a critique of Dr Kanazawa's research that is shortly to be published in the peer-reviewed journal American Psychologist.

The statement, which has been posted on the website of the journal Evolutionary Psychology, says that Andrew Gelman, director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University, re-analysed data used by Dr Kanazawa in 2007 to suggest that "beautiful people have more daughters". Professor Gelman concluded that his findings were not supported by the data, it says.

The statement goes on to say that "the peer-review process is not perfect" and claims that in some instances papers by Dr Kanazawa that had been rejected by one journal on scientific grounds subsequently appeared almost unaltered in another.

Despite the strength of their criticism, the signatories say they agree with the sentiments expressed by Dr Kanazawa in an opinion piece in THE in 2006, in which he said that "academic freedom must be paramount".

The statement adds: "Academics who publish work that may be unpopular...should not be condemned on those grounds. However, we are adamant that any work in science - politically sensitive or not - should at all times adhere to the principles of rigour and good scientific method."

The LSE says in a statement that it "has informed Dr Kanazawa that in the opinion of the school's directorate, his recent article appears to lack a sound academic foundation and therefore threatens the school's reputation for research excellence".

An investigation has been launched, and Dr Kanazawa has been asked not to publish any work in non-peer-reviewed publications until it has been completed, the institution adds.

Dr Kanazawa declined to comment.

john.gill@tsleducation.com.

Total Destruction Only Solution

In America we are practicing mild agitation while England, France, Greece & Ireland are kicking up dust with protests rejecting economic policies such as 200 percent hikes in education tuition while they pay roughly 60% taxes.

Ain't no Earl Grey tea parties and scones over there. It is straight up resistance. Ahh, I smell revolution. I feel a "burn baby burn" type of situation.

Oh how hegemony often misunderstands the instability of human spirit. Woohoo.

On these side of the waters, I do appreciate the comfy reality TV shows. It puts me in a coma and dis-agitation. Just like most Americans. But on the other hand, the roused and riled tea baggers are spitting fire in the pit of gasoline. Nothing but a backdraft will occur on a elite, racist agenda for an illogical lot.

America, the gluttonous, lazy sow...

I often try to understand how and why we've become so complacent to political bedfellows who perform non-consensual sodomy with the passing of bills to suit status quo interests.

Is it American Idol?
Was it Bush-idiocracy repression?
Or maybe it was Facebook?

One thing I do know, we's sick. And massa can't get us no Robitussin.

Blog on, EcoSoul.

My Black Super Hero - Danny Glover

My black folk vacation was short-lived because it was disrupted by the surprisingly pleasant news report of Danny Glover being one of several protesters who took on food management plantation, oh I mean, company, Sodexo.

Yeah Danny, stick it to them!

Just recently, Glover sent out a personal statement to attendees of the last Academy Awards asking them not to wear Hugo Boss fashion because the company was shutting down its Ohio facility and preparing to relocate the factory overseas.

Glover always made me smile. I had the opportunity to interview him when he did the movie, "Boseman and Lena" with Angela Basset about 10 years ago. It was film about a South African couple who lived in a Shanty Town attempting to save their home from being bulldozed.

Of course no one really heard about the movie because it was political and positive, and did not contain black coons, criminals, or a jiggy hip hop beat. It was great acting...well, I must say, Angela's accent was unbelievable at times.

Nonetheless, I proffer that Glover does not get the due recognition and certainly the acting opportunities that actors such as Sam Jackson or the good Negro Morgan Freeman (old man keep your dick in your pants) have gotten.

Glover is not new to civil agitation for the purpose of human and social progress, though he is one of the few who does it not for the accolades, but from the heart, especially when it is not fun, cute, or will bring more celebrity. That is hard to say as of late with the Haiti relief aid effort that surpassed genuine concern to relief aid-gluttonous porn.

Read up on Glover and you know he was not only been physically down to protest, but he has put forward over a million dollars, and he has long been in a blockbuster since The Color Purple and Lethal Weapon movies, 1 to 10.

Another little secret that folk don't know is that Glover, a long-time supporter and advocate for Haiti, has been trying to get more funding to film a movie about Toussaint L'Overture.

He already has received roughly $10 million from Venezuelan President Chavez in what was a $20 million package deal to also film a movie about successful Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar who sought refuge in Haiti during his freedom fighting. Of course Hollywood does not want to touch L'Ouverture or Bolivar because you have a black and brown man getting into the ass of the big Western powers through black movement that was unheard of during the 1700s.

And I have a personal acknowledgement for Glover. Years ago, myself and few brave souls protested for more inclusion of reporters at the Source Awards. The next day Marvet Britto, Glover's publicist, called me and said that Glover and Denzel Washington sent their congratulations.

Yes, Glover is one of the few black celebs that is not afraid to risk it all for the forward progres of humanity. Do you remember when black celebs made it a point to participate in civil and human rights struggles?

So folks, Ecosoul's abrupt end to her black folk vacation was welcomed.

Keep pushing D. Glover.

Blog On..EcoSoul