Capital fails, we turn on each other and our mines become fields of death - ANCYL

For more than a week now, the ANCYL has observed with horror the escalating, scandalous and horrendous violence that has left 45 people dead and countless more injured at Lonmin's Marikana Massacre.

Provoked by murderous and unscrupulous elements within the trade union movement - workers, our people, who for years have borne the brunt of hardship, poverty and displacement, have gone on rampage at Marikana. Vulnerable and driven by a basic human need for dignity and a living wage, workers have turned on each other and society killing wantonly security guards, policemen and each other. Both organised labour and capital have failed the many dead, the injured and all of us, South African society.

The Marikana Massacre is a rupture that has long been in the making and irreversibly destined to occur. The signs were loud and clear for all to see during the Impala tragedy. We refused to see them, we were happy to accept then as we did now that problem is and was trade union rivalry. South Africa's exploitative mining regime, capitalist greed and the poverty of our people is the cause.

How many more people must die before we accept that the festering conditions of inequality and ownership by a select few, a white few in particular, is a time bomb that no longer just ticks, it is ready to explode and is contained only by the deadly determination of some amongst us to maintain the status quo at the expense of the majority. Regardless the cost.

It will never be correct for our society to turn on and kill law enforcement agencies, but the South African Police Service, mandated to serve and protect us, cannot never also turn into a bloodthirsty killing machine. We condemn in the strongest possible terms the use of live ammunition in public order policing and call on Minister Mthethwa to conduct full investigation to explain to South Africans how it is that police turned on our people and killed them, when the right to life paramount.

We further call on South African society to work with and support the ANC Youth League in its call for urgent, equitable and just redress to return to the people the mineral wealth beneath the soil and their birthright, our land.

This must be done through the nationalisation of mines and other strategic sectors of the economy and expropriation of land without compensation. We demand that mediators are sent immediately to resolve the deadly situation, ensure that the employee and employer find one another immediately to avoid the situation descending into a further bloodbath. We no longer have any faith in the machinations of capital to resolve this calamity the interest of the workers.

Our deepest condolences to the family and friends of those who have unnecessarily and unfortunately have lost their lives.

Statement issued by the ANC Youth League, August 17 2012

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter