On this day in 2012, the Marikana Massacre took place when South African police fired on striking workers, killing 34 and injuring 76 in the most lethal use of force by the state in half a century.

The shootings have been compared to the infamous Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when police fired on a crowd of anti-Pass Law protesters, killing 69 people, including 10 children. The Marikana Massacre took place on the 25-year anniversary of a nationwide strike by over 300,000 South African workers.

On August 10th, miners had initiated a wildcat strike at a site owned by Lonmin in the Marikana area, close to Rustenburg, South Africa. Although ten people (mostly workers) had been killed before August 16th, it was on that day that an elite force from the South African Police Service fired into a crowd of strikers with rifles, killing 34 and injuring 76.

After surveying the aftermath of the violence, photojournalist Greg Marinovich concluded that “[it is clear] that heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood.”

Following the massacre, a massive wave of strikes occurred across the South African mining sector - in early October, analysts estimated that approximately 75,000 miners were on strike from various gold and platinum mines and companies across South Africa, most of them doing so illegally.

A year after the Marikana Massacre, author Benjamin Fogel wrote “Perhaps the most important lesson of Marikana is that the state can gun down dozens of black workers with little or no backlash from ‘civil society’, the judicial system or from within the institutions that supposedly form the bedrock of democracy.”

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  • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Employers should be legally mandated to reply to job applications for a listing in a timely manner or face heavy penalties.

    Furthermore, they should be barred from reposting a listing unless they have replied to all previous applicants.

    Will be opening donations for my constitutionally impossible 2024 presidential run shortly 😎

      • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        My record is about a month and a half. My dad has had some rejections come in 6-8 months after applying with complete radio silence in between

    • TerminalEncounter [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      It’d be great if you get paid a bounty as an applicant for when employers do this shit. You could be a professional job hunter until they get their acts together

      • viva_la_juche [they/them, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        There was that guy who basically did that in Canada where he sent in two identical resumes but with one with a more typical white american/Canadian name and one with his actual non-western name (I forget what his ethnicity was) and then would sue the company when they’d only call back the white name