Marikana and the limits of biopolitics: Themes in the recent scholarship of South African mining

Abstract

"...In this essay I will review four books, two published immediately in the wake of the massacre and two shortly before it. Interestingly the books emphasize quite distinct themes, which suggests that understanding the political and social crisis of mining in South Africa, and of the platinum belt in particular, requires a careful act of synthesis. I think that this can be done. What combines all of these different issues and problems is a radically constrained pattern of governance both in the mines and around them: below ground workers face brutal, exhausting and very dangerous work; above ground many of them live out their lives in polluted, informal, dangerous and unregulated shack settlements. ...."