The Rise of the South African Platinum Mining Industry and the Nature of the Post-Apartheid Order

On 11 and 12 September, Stephanie Booker of Natural Justice attended an international colloquium anchored by leading researchers, co-organised by the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) and the Review of African Political Economy entitled “Meanings of Marikana Colloquium: The Rise of the South African Platinum Mining Industry and the Nature of the Post-Apartheid Order”.  Over one hundred diverse participants attended representing different perspectives, including community members, NGOs and CSOs, union leaders, academics, government, researchers and students.

Held at the University of Witswatersrand, experts and researchers presented on a range of different issues with respect to South Africa’s platinum industry.  Specifically, there were robust discussions on the following:

• The political economy of platinum;
• Platinum and the ANC’s New Resource Nationalism;
• International Comparisons: Southern Africa and Latin America;
• New rural transformations on the platinum belt;
• Change and continuity in the platinum mine-labour regime;
• Regulating reproduction: the state, informal settlement and health and safety;
• The great strike wave: NUM’s crisis and new forms of worker organisation; and,
• Meanings of Marikana: implications for the post-apartheid order.

Sponsored by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Ford Foundation, the colloquium was a unique opportunity for experts and participants to engage in robust discussions on the rise of the platinum mining industry in South Africa and the issues causing and emerging from the events at Marikana on 16 August 2012.  For more information, see SWOP’s website here.

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