South Africa leaders ignore Marikana lessons at their peril

This blocks the possibility of shaking up South Africa’s labour laws to encourage businesses to flourish.

President Jacob Zuma has been accused by all sides for failing to show the political courage to deal with this sensitive issue and for protecting vested interests within his own party.

Meanwhile, figures like Mr Malema have a ready market in the disillusioned poor, who are ready to seize upon his every word. Nationalisation – his mantra – is the solution to South Africa’s inequality problems.

So where is the responsibility of the mine owners in all this? Shouldn’t Lonmin, which is listed on both the Johannesburg and London Stock Exchanges, have seen this coming, given that workers’ appalling conditions have persisted for years?

Lonmin executive Abey Kgotle says:

“People have chosen to use means that are out of the ordinary when it comes to collective bargaining. We have the Labour Relations Act but clearly people have acted outside that scope.”

The phrase that keeps coming up time and time again during commentary on the Marikana dispute, is leadership.

Failure of leadership within business, within the trade unions and within a governing party that is trying to straddle both the political left and right.

Collectively many argue, they have failed to address South Africa’s very pressing problems of inequality.

The miners may not be at the “bottom of the pile” in terms of pay, as many commentators have pointed out, but with 36% of South Africans having no job whatsoever or unions to argue their case, leaders ignore inequalities at their peril.