EPW: Marikana and the Subaltern

Camalita Naicker, Economic & Political Weekly

This article addresses recent debates around the strikes and the massacre of the mine workers at South Africa’s Lonmin Platinum Mine in Marikana from 2012 onwards. It argues that there is a failure to delve deeper into the culture of people who come from Mpondoland in the Eastern Cape of South Africa and to link culture to the political in the way workers’ actions have been reported and understood. Culture has been used as a way to explain away an aberration rather than exploring the use of cultural political tools within the strike. The article offers an analysis which takes seriously the political implications of culture.