New forces will ensure that there is no return to business as usual after the mine strike, writes Richard Pithouse. The Daily News
The name Marikana and the date August 16, 2012, have been carved into our history with the same brutality, blood and resolve that have shaped so many of the events that have brought us to where we are.
Around the world massacres and long and bitter strikes have often been decisive turning points in societies.
From Algeria to India and Zimbabwe, the first massacre after independence from colonialism has often come to mark the point at which the collective innocence about the claims of parties that were once national liberation movements to incarnate the national interest has begun to unravel. In many cases it has also begun a turn from above and, important, sometimes also from below, away from democratic modes of politics.