RON DERBY: ANC colours will not be on stage for this week's Marikana day
It's telling that this Wednesday, when we commemorate the tragedy of 2012, it won't be led by the ANC, or any of its trusted allies
My marker for our economic and political descent has always been the events of Marikana. It was to the South African economy what the collapse of the US subprime market was to the world's biggest economy - and its European neighbour across the Atlantic. Much as in the US, it spoke of a deeper malaise, and it shook the country's very foundations, which at the time we thought were getting steadier. What the events of that day told us was the story of South African workers who were desperate for breathing space from a decade-long binge of unsecured lending. Their obligations had become crippling, and for those men who lost their lives on that winter's day, perhaps the coldest in the 23-year history of this democracy, there was simply no escape. Mining houses, now shaken about their own prospects, weren't throwing double-digit increases at their trusted lieutenants in the once powerful National Union of Mineworkers any more. So drunk were they on the price of the white metal, which brea...
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