‘Protests are echoes of Marikana revolt’

THE #OutsourcingMustFall protests at universities are a carry-over of salary revolts that erupted in Marikana in 2012, says activist Mametlwe Sebei.

Sebei is well known as one of the protest organisers in Marikana following the police shooting that claimed the lives of 34 mineworkers.

The leader of the Workers and Socialist Party is now involved in outsourcing protests in Pretoria.

Protests in the capital have targeted universities based there and the City of Tshwane.

General workers are demanding salary increases of up to R10 000, benefits and direct employment.

The unrest in Marikana, where Lonmin mineworkers demanded salary hikes to R12 500, prompted low-paid workers across the country to question their own salaries, Sebei said.

“Just as the workers of Marikana began that revolt, that revolt has now engulfed all industries and the rest of society,” he told Sowetan.

“It’s a general revolt of the working class against a system that for the past 20 years has continued policies of cheap slave wages that were in place under apartheid.

“In actual fact, even the #FeesMustFall movement [is led] by the sons and the daughters of those mineworkers and these cleaners.”

Sebei predicted that more general workers in other sectors will also revolt.

“The working class and the poor of this country have drawn a line in the sand. They have become irreconcilable to the system of cheap slave labour. ”–