The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) joins the families, survivors, mineworkers and the entire working class in commemorating the 14th anniversary of the Marikana Massacre.
On 16 August 2012, the South African Police Service opened fire on striking mineworkers at Lonmin’s platinum mine in Marikana, killing 34 workers in a single day. The workers were engaged in a struggle for a living wage, centred on the demand for R12,500 a month.
But as we commemorate 16 August, we must remember all 44 people who lost their lives during the terrible events of 11–16 August 2012. Ten people — including mineworkers, two Lonmin security guards and two police officers — were killed in the days preceding the massacre. The official Marikana Commission recorded that the events of that week resulted in approximately 44 deaths, more than 70 injuries and around 250 arrests.
SAFTU bows its head before every family that lost a loved one.
But remembrance without justice is not enough.
MARIKANA WAS NOT SIMPLY A TRAGEDY — IT WAS A MASSACRE
Fourteen years later, we reject attempts to sanitise Marikana by describing it merely as an unfortunate “tragedy”.
Workers were shot and killed by the police of a democratic state while engaged in a wage struggle.
Marikana exposed the brutal reality of South Africa’s class structure. It demonstrated how quickly the coercive power of the state can be deployed when workers challenge the interests of powerful corporations and demand a greater share of the wealth their labour produces.
The massacre also exposed the obscene contradiction at the heart of South Africa’s mining economy: enormous mineral wealth surrounded by working-class poverty.
The platinum beneath the soil generated enormous wealth, yet workers who extracted that wealth lived in communities characterised by inadequate housing, poor sanitation, unemployment and deprivation.
That contradiction remains with us today.
THE DEMAND FOR R12,500 WAS A DEMAND FOR DIGNITY
The Marikana workers were demonised for demanding R12,500.
Yet their fundamental demand was simple: workers who create enormous wealth must be able to live with dignity.
Fourteen years later, millions of South African workers remain trapped in poverty wages. Outsourcing, casualisation, labour broking and precarious employment continue to divide workplaces and push workers towards insecurity.
The lesson of Marikana is therefore painfully relevant to every worker fighting today for a living wage.
It speaks to mineworkers.
It speaks to farmworkers.
It speaks to security guards and cleaners.
It speaks to manufacturing workers facing retrenchments.
It speaks to municipal workers and public servants.
It speaks to casual and outsourced workers.
It speaks to the millions of unemployed people desperately searching for work.
The struggle of Marikana was, and remains, a struggle of the entire working class.
FOURTEEN YEARS LATER — WHERE IS ACCOUNTABILITY?
South Africa cannot claim that the wounds of Marikana have healed while accountability remains unfinished.
Government reported in August 2024 that approximately R352 million had been paid in Marikana-related claims, including payments involving families of the 34 workers killed, injured workers and arrested mineworkers. Government nevertheless acknowledged that constitutional-damages claims remained unresolved and before the Gauteng High Court.
Compensation is necessary. Families who lost breadwinners and workers who were injured, arrested and traumatised must receive every cent to which they are entitled.
But compensation cannot substitute for accountability.
Money cannot answer the fundamental question:
How can 34 workers be killed by police in a constitutional democracy and, fourteen years later, accountability for the massacre itself remain unfinished?
Even the NPA’s 2024/25 Annual Report records litigation in which applicants complained that police members implicated by video and other evidence in the 16 August shootings had not been charged despite the recommendations arising from the Commission of Inquiry. (National Port Authority)
Justice delayed for fourteen years becomes justice denied.
SAFTU demands that the state provide the country and the families with a transparent account of the status of every investigation and potential prosecution arising from the killing of the Marikana workers.
There must be no political untouchables, no institutional protection and no selective accountability.
MARIKANA EXPOSED THE CRISIS OF THE POST-APARTHEID MINING MODEL
Marikana cannot be separated from the structure of South Africa’s mining industry.
More than three decades after apartheid, enormous sections of our mineral wealth remain controlled according to the logic of private accumulation.
Mining communities frequently remain poor while wealth extracted from beneath their feet flows to corporations, shareholders and financial markets.
Workers continue to suffer occupational diseases. Former mineworkers and their dependants still struggle to obtain benefits owed to them — a problem serious enough that Parliament was again considering interventions to accelerate healthcare, compensation and social protection for ex-mineworkers in June 2026.
SAFTU therefore repeats the historic demand contained in the Freedom Charter:
“The mineral wealth beneath the soil… shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.”
We call for the democratic public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, including the mines, under genuine worker and community control.
But public ownership must not simply reproduce the extractivist model.
South Africa cannot remain an economy that digs minerals from the ground, exports them largely in raw or insufficiently beneficiated form and then imports manufactured goods at enormous cost.
We demand a fundamental programme of beneficiation and industrialisation that uses South Africa’s mineral wealth to build domestic industries, create decent jobs, develop mining communities and meet the social needs of our people.
NEVER AGAIN MUST THE STATE RESPOND TO WORKERS’ DEMANDS WITH BULLETS
Marikana must permanently change how democratic South Africa handles strikes and protests.
Workers must never again confront heavily armed police simply because collective bargaining has broken down.
The right to strike is not a favour granted by employers or government. It is a constitutional right won through generations of struggle.
SAFTU demands policing based on de-escalation, negotiation, respect for human life and constitutional rights.
Rubber bullets, stun grenades, water cannons and live ammunition cannot become substitutes for collective bargaining.
The state must protect the right of workers to organise, strike, picket and protest.
MARIKANA ALSO CONFRONTS THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
We would be dishonest if we commemorated Marikana without reflecting on the failures of the trade union movement.
Marikana demonstrated what can happen when workers believe their voices are no longer being heard through established institutions.
No trade union, federation or leader has the right to take workers for granted.
Unions must belong to workers — not officials.
They must be independent, militant, democratic and worker-controlled.
Leadership must listen to workers, remain accountable to workers and never allow proximity to political or corporate power to become more important than the mandate of workers.
The best monument the trade union movement can build to the workers of Marikana is a united, fighting, democratic working-class movement capable of ensuring that workers never again stand isolated when confronting powerful employers and the state.
FROM MARIKANA TO TODAY’S STRUGGLES
This anniversary comes while workers across South Africa are again engaged in difficult struggles over wages, retrenchments, outsourcing and job security.
The message from Marikana must therefore echo through every picket line:
No worker must fight alone.
An injury to one remains an injury to all.
SAFTU calls on its affiliates, other trade union federations and organised workers throughout the country to rebuild practical working-class solidarity.
When workers strike, other workers must join their picket lines.
When employers attempt to starve workers back to work, unions must organise material solidarity.
Where strategic conditions permit, workers must consider solidarity action and secondary strikes within the framework of the law.
Our differences of federation, union, political affiliation, nationality, language and region must never become stronger than our common class interests.
MARIKANA AND SOUTH AFRICA’S UNEMPLOYMENT CATASTROPHE
The struggle for decent wages cannot be separated from the struggle against unemployment.
Mass unemployment weakens workers’ bargaining power. It creates an enormous reserve army of labour that employers can exploit to drive wages and conditions downward.
It also creates fertile ground for those who seek to redirect working-class anger away from employers, government policy and the economic system and towards other poor and vulnerable people.
The working class must refuse this diversion.
The enemy of an unemployed South African worker is not an employed worker from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi or anywhere else on the African continent.
Our enemy is an economic system that condemns millions to unemployment while concentrating extraordinary wealth in the hands of a minority.
Workers must never fight workers.
OUR DEMANDS
On the 14th anniversary of the Marikana Massacre, SAFTU demands:
- Full justice and accountability for the killing of the Marikana mineworkers, including transparent public reporting on the status of outstanding investigations and prosecutorial decisions.
- Finalisation of all outstanding compensation and constitutional-damages claims without further unnecessary delay.
- A living wage for every worker, so that no worker who creates wealth is condemned to poverty.
- Protection of the constitutional right to strike, organise, picket and protest, accompanied by fundamental reform of public-order policing.
- An end to labour broking, outsourcing and precarious employment that fragment and weaken workers.
- Democratic public ownership of the country’s mineral wealth and strategic sectors of the economy, consistent with the aspirations of the Freedom Charter.
- A national programme of beneficiation and reindustrialisation to transform mineral wealth into decent jobs and industrial development.
- Urgent transformation of mining communities, including decent housing, water, sanitation, healthcare, schools and economic opportunities.
- A moratorium on retrenchments while South Africa confronts its catastrophic unemployment crisis.
- Working-class unity across unions and federations, including rebuilding coordinated campaigns against unemployment, poverty, inequality and the destruction of decent jobs.
REMEMBER MARIKANA — ORGANISE, UNITE AND FIGHT!
SAFTU remembers the workers who left their homes and families to descend deep underground and create enormous wealth with their labour.
We remember the workers who gathered on the koppie believing that their collective strength could win them a better wage.
We remember the 34 workers whose lives were extinguished by police bullets on 16 August 2012.
We remember the other ten people killed during that terrible week.
We remember the widows.
We remember the children who grew up without their fathers.
We remember the injured workers and those who were arrested.
And we say:
Marikana must never be reduced to another anniversary on the calendar.
Marikana must remain a warning against corporate greed.
A warning against poverty wages.
A warning against state violence.
A warning against unions becoming detached from workers.
And above all, Marikana must remain a call for workers to organise.
Fourteen years later, the struggle for which the Marikana workers sacrificed remains unfinished.
Remember the 44!
Justice for the 34!
A living wage for all!
Nationalise the mines under democratic worker and community control!
Beneficiate our minerals! Reindustrialise South Africa! Create decent jobs!
Workers of South Africa, Africa and the world — unite!
An injury to one is an injury to all!
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS (SAFTU)
