BLF condemns Anglo American Platinum’s dismissal of workers at Mototolo mine

Posted on May 20, 2019May 20, 2019 by Black First Land First

Black First Land First (BLF) condemns Anglo American Platinum’s dismissal of 50% of the underground workforce at Mototolo mine.

BLF views the firing of the workers employed at the Anglo American mine as a direct attack by white monopoly capital on the landless.

Ramaphosa’s election has energised white capital and insulated them to the extent that they feel confident to hire and fire as they please. This new found confidence is precisely because they know it was Ramaphosa who sided with Lonmin and called for ‘concomitant action’ on that fatal day when mine workers were slaughtered in Marikana to protect white capital.

The likes of the Oppenheimers and white capital at large know that they can operate with impunity and have moved swiftly to fire the Mototolo based workers.

BLF demands that the Minister of Mineral Resources, Gwede Mantashe moves with speed to nationalise the mines, giving ownership to the workers in order to protect the landless from the abuse of white capital.

BLF further calls for unity of the workers in rejection of this outrageous attack by Anglo American.

Finally, BLF warns Anglo American Platinum, reinstate the workers, pay a living wage or face a mobilisation of the workers towards a shutdown!

Issued by Black First Land First, National Coordinating Committee (BLF NCC)

20 May 2019

Black First Land First Email: [email protected]

Zanele Lwana
(Deputy President)
Cell: +27 79 986 7225

Lindsay Maasdorp
(National Spokesperson)
Cell: +27 79 915 2957

Brian Tloubatla
(Head of Media & Communications)
Cell: +27 82 216 7664

BLACK FIRST LAND FIRST HONORS MARIKANA

Posted on August 16, 2016August 16, 2016 by Black First Land First

Four years ago 34 miners were murdered in Marikana by the ANC on the instruction of the white capitalist Lonmin, for simply demanding a living wage. The ANC government immediately blamed the striking blacks for daring to go against white monopoly capital. As the bodyguard of white capital the response of the ANC was not surprising. It set up a Commission of Inquiry which has served to hide the truth and to undermine the justified anger of blacks. It was then 18 years after democracy and the post ’94 neo liberal settlement had delivered nothing meaningful to the black majority – all the ills of white supremacy from landlessness to starvation wages to poverty to a lack of sanitation, decent housing and clean running water etcetera still characterized black life. Against this backdrop the legacy of Bloody Marikana must serve to pave the path towards the institutional destruction of capitalist imperialism represented by the likes of Lonman and Johann Rupert in SA.

Marikana has given us a significant layer of revolutionaries who have cast their eyes firmly on destroying white monopoly capital. We can see how the Marikana legacy, via the message of BLF in its revolutionary call, finds its logical consolidation in the ideas of Biko, Sobukwe and Thomas Sankara. With this legacy guided by the Sankofa approach of learning from the past in order to move forward BLF draws lessons from Marikana to resolve the big questions relating to decolonization being land return, nationalisation of the economy and so on.

Since Marikana, the potential for blacks being ready to embark on a path for the overthrowal of the anti black rule is growing but the absence of a revolutionary movement until the inception of BLF kept this initiative contained within neo-liberalism.

BLF captured the Marikana legacy at the core of its liberation efforts. This is evidenced inter alia by its identification of the real enemy of black liberation being white monopoly capital; going against apartheid era white capitalists and politicians who looted R26 billion from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), and proceeding against white capitalists for capture of the SA State.

The Marikana workers were murdered in their just fight for a living wage of R12500 – a fight that is in essence a battle for the return of our land and mineral wealth. Only through land return to blacks for collective ownership without payment to the land thieves and by nationalization of the mines that gives workers ownership, control and management, can the legacy of the Marikana workers be truly honored.

BLF calls on the ANC government to do the following:

Declare and implement a living wage of R12 500.

Pay reparations to the families of the murdered workers for their pain, suffering and loss of income.

Nationalise the mines and place them under direct worker’s control

Give the dependents of the murdered workers shares in those mines.

ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL COORDINATING COMMITTEE OF THE BLACK FIRST LAND FIRST MOVEMENT

16 August 2016

Contact Details

Black First Land First Mail: [email protected]

Zanele Lwana
(National Spokesperson)
Cell: +27 79 486 9087
Mail: zanelel[email protected]

Lindsay Maasdorp
(National Spokesperson)
Cell: +27 79 915 2957
Mail: [email protected]

A PEOPLE’S MANIFESTO

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Black First Land First

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We promise the politicians nothing! We demand that they deliver everything! All the political parties have now published their manifestoes; the empty ritual they buy our votes with. We say 17 years of elections without change are enough. Now we make our own manifesto:

We, the people of South Africa, hereby legislate a new law, titled “POLITICIANS AND PUBLIC SERVANTS: USE PUBLIC SERVICES”. This law compels all politicians, from the president to the local councilor, and all public servants, from the Director General to the sweeper and their families to use public utilities: Starting with the following:

Hospitals.
Schools.
Transport.
Housing! (The same standard house given to citizens must be used by all politicians and public servants)
A living wage for all!
Land belong to the people

Our politicians and public servants have neglected public services for far too long because they know they can take their families to the private sector. We say, what’s good for you is good for us. Equality for all, for real!

Our hospitals are falling apart; doctors and nurses are overworked and underpaid. By and large our public hospitals are places of death. Simply put, no one is safe in our public hospitals. Our leaders, politicians, senior public servants and their families use private hospitals and that is why they don’t care about public hospitals which are used by the poor.

Our public schools are in bad condition, teachers are underpaid and the government is not investing in their training with the result that after 12 years of schooling most children from public schools can’t read, write or count. This leads to a high unemployment rate amongst the youth who are trapped in hopelessness. Politicians and senior civil servants take their children to private schools. This explains why public schools are not a priority for them.

Our public transport system is appalling. Every morning and night our people are packed into taxis, buses and trains like sardines. The queues are long and the fares are high. Our leaders, the rich and senior civil servants have big subsidies to get private transport. Some of our ministers can buy cars worth millions with tax payers’ money.

The townships are generally badly serviced. The houses are small and millions are forced to live in shacks. The RDP houses built by our black government are worse than the matchbox houses built during apartheid. Our leaders live in mansions, while the people are forced to live in rat-infested townships.

A living wage, the ANC and DA parties have legislated starvation minimum wages for our people. Farm workers earn a shocking R105 a day. Our government kills workers when they demand a living wage as in Marikana but cabinet ministers and members of parliament give themselves millions in salaries.

Land For 20 years of the ANC has delivered only 8% of land to black. It would take 100s of years to buy back our land. Why are we buying our land back? We demand that all the land be nationalised without compensation and be equitably redistributed amongst the people.

We hereby commit ourselves to struggle to realize this legislation to hold public representatives and servants accountable to the people!

Together let’s make this law a reality.

This campaign is undertaken in the memory of Andries Tatane who was killed by our government for demanding quality services for all!

Issued by the September National Imbizo (SNI).

BLACK FIRST LAND FIRST MOVEMENT REMEMBERS MARIKANA

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Black First Land First

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7WF8Toi9y4]
The Marikana massacre brutally thrust blacks into naked enemy fire at the ANC barricades. Objectively, this moment in history marked the spiritual death of black faith in the ANC and the birth of a revolutionary consciousness seeking a revolutionary home. That home has not been found since the promise of the Black First Land First (BLF) Movement. Today an ocean of blood divides the ANC from blacks and it is time for blacks to continue the struggle for freedom without the ANC.

Since Marikana, when the black workers were murdered by the ANC for demanding a living wage, South Africa has never been the same again. ANC boldly put the blame on the striking blacks for, in the first place, daring to go against white monopoly capital. The voices of the Marikana workers are the voices of the millions of blacks who until Marikana could blindly believe in the ANC and seek relief from it regarding their unbearable condition.

As the Black First Land First (BLF) movement we maintain that the fight for a living wage, which the Marikana workers died for, is essentially a battle for land and the return of our mineral wealth. Only by the confiscation of our land without compensation in the interests of blacks and by nationalization of the mines while bringing them under direct worker’s and people’s control can we say that the fight for a living wage is over!

500 years of dehumanization by white supremacy, rendering blacks to a life of slavery and cut off from the civilized world of whiteness, tended to strengthen this faith in the ANC via the miracle of 27 April 1994. Marikana, however, has produced thousands of advanced warriors who have consciously broken with this faith in the ANC. The Marikana legacy will continue to educate blacks in whom the instinct of revolution, strengthened in the protest movement and fostered by political organisation, will destroy this faith to its very foundations.

Apart from those being conscientised by Marikana are millions of blacks, who continue to suffer the anti blackness of white supremacy, in whom this faith in the ANC could still survive. They are not ready for revolution and to replace the ANC’s neo liberal regime with a fully responsive state form. These people, for lack of a revolutionary consciousness, could only plead for acceptance within the ANC’s anti black agenda. But the memory and legacy of Marikana compels the destruction of this faith our people have in the ANC as the agent of revolutionary change. To this end, this historical legacy finds its logical consolidation in the ideas of the Black First, Land First movement.

The magnetism of the basic call to revolution around the organizing ideas of Black First Land First has the potential to influence even the most backward strata of the black masses with its Sankofa approach to politics of drawing lessons from the past to move forward. To this end BLF draws lessons from Marikana with the spirit of no return until the land is returned to our people.

History, which blacks were conducting via mainstream politics without a black first land first approach, has confirmed the correctness of the view that that there can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory, and that revolutionary theory delinked from the organized mass struggle is to no revolutionary end.

Blacks who who still harbour a shred of faith in the ANC were not ready for black freedom. Since August 16, 2012 the potential for blacks being ready to embark on a path to overthrow ANC rule was very evident but the absence of a revolutionary movement kept this initiative in a stranglehold of neo-liberalism. With the birth of BLF, which puts black first for land first, the Marikana legacy can be driven to its revolutionary conclusion. The ANC by cowardly driving blacks to the wall gave them their first lessons in barricade fighting. The lessons of the Marikana massacre will not be lost.

May the Marikana warriors who died fighting for a living wage be avenged by the fires of revolution through Black First for Land First.

The BLF rejects the establishment of the presidential commission of inquiry and its pseudo truth findings. We regard the function of the Commission of Inquiry as serving to hide the truth, to manage the justified anger of blacks and to interrupt their revolutionary demands. We demand that the ANC government pay reparations to the families for their pain, suffering and loss of income.

We say that the mines must be nationalised and placed under worker control and the dependents of the murdered should get shares in those mines. Lonmin belongs to the murdered workers! Also BLF calls for all workers to get a minimum wage of R12 500. It’s a reasonable demand, and what the Marikana workers died for.

ISSUED BY THE INTERIM COMMITTEE OF THE BLACK FIRST LAND FIRST MOVEMENT
16 AUGUST 2015

Contact Details

Black First Land First Mail: [email protected]

Zanele Lwana
(National Spokesperson)
Cell: +27 79 486 9087
Mail: [email protected]

Lindsay Maasdorp
(National Spokesperson)
Cell: +27 79 915 2957
Mail: [email protected]