Online event on July 14 2022, 2022, 2pm CEST
Registration via kasa[at]woek.de
The struggle for fair wages and compensation in the 10th year of the Marikana massacre.
The Marikana massacre on August 16, 2012 shook not only South African society, but also those in solidarity with South Africa in Europe. Suddenly, memories of the darkest chapters of South African apartheid, such as the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 or the Soweto youth uprising in 1976, were alive again. But what was incomprehensible about this new, dramatic event was that the Marikana massacre had not been committed by a regime of injustice, but by a democratically legitimized government, headed by the once-liberation movement ANC. Marikana became a watershed for South African democracy by revealing the “toxic mix of state and capital.”
Bishop Jo Seoka, who together with the Plough back the fruits campaign has been fighting for compensation for the bereaved since 2015, especially with BASF, shared his manuscript with KASA about his work with the miners of Marikana over the last ten years. The German publication will be released at the end of June and will be launched with an online event on July 14.
The book is an eyewitness account of the horrific events surrounding August 16, but it is also a reckoning with the local churches, which Seoka says left the workers and their families alone. And it is a description of how local actors and international solidarity work can merge and create synergies to fight together for compensation or a supply chain law, for example.
Speaker: Bishop Jo Seoka
Moderation: Simone Knapp
