South Africa between the Past and the Future

The slaughter of 34 striking mineworkers by South African police on 16 August 2012 buried the democracy's hopes of equal rights for all. Cyril Ramaphosa - erstwhile anti-apartheid firebrand who had launched the once powerful National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) - played a key role in the events preceding the killings. Ramaphosa, a non-executive director of British-owned Lonmin, the mineworkers' employer, described the strike as 'dastardly criminal' and called for 'concomitant action' by the police. Over the previous three years, Lonmin had paid Ramaphosa's company, Incwala Resources, US$46 million in dividends, while ignoring workers' demands for decent housing and fair wages. Despite Ramaphosa's words, he was elected deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC) in December 2012, and in May 2014 President Jacob Zuma appointed him deputy president of the country. Although growing numbers of South Africans are disenchanted with the ANC, the prospects of voting it out of power seem dim.