Malema returns to Marikana with a promise to workers

1. The Koppie Still Watches

The Workers’ Day gathering in Marikana did not explode into life with a thunderous slogan; it crept in on the wheeze of a brass band fighting to stay in tune while the mercury climbed.
Julius Malema entered the scarred rugby ground at walking pace, boots raising small clouds of pale dust that had already swallowed the ghosts of August 2012.
Behind him, the rocky outcrop that once served as both fortress and graveyard hovered like a silent referee, while tin-roofed shacks pressed against the fence line, refusing to be pruned by either time or platinum money.

When he finally stepped onto the crimson-draped stage, he let the microphone howl for three heartbeats - long enough for 4 000 people to understand this would not be a carnival of catch-phrases.
Instead of greeting, he confessed that his attorneys had begged him to stay home; another public appearance, they warned, could tighten the screws of his bail.
“I told them I’d rather stand on this koppie than sit in that courtroom,” he shot back, “because affidavits can’t resurrect the dead.”
The reply detonated a roar that rolled until it slapped the steel headgear a kilometre away, the same structure that now moonlights as the country’s bleakest liberation monument.

T-shirts screamed the official slogan - “Reclaim the Wealth, Rebuild the House” - but Malema began with forensic detail rather than economics.
He described the exact calibre of the bullet that punched through strike leader Mgcineni Noki’s head, the trajectory it took, the 130-metre gap between the official police tape and the place the casing landed.
A grainy mortuary photo was lifted like a host; thousands of phone cameras zoomed in on the star-shaped crack left by a hollow-point round legal for strikers yet outlawed for soldiers.
The crowd exhaled a single Xhosa chant - “Comrades, we won’t abandon him” - and in that instant the rally morphed into a people’s court where pain counted as sworn testimony.

2. Maps, Payslips and the Planetary Gulf

Having reopened the wound, the commander-in-chief switched on a portable projector and threw a satellite image against a bedsheet jury-rigged between two goal posts.
Six candy-coloured mine logos - Lonmin, Anglo, Impala, Northam, Royal Bafokeng, Sibanye - loomed over tiny rectangles representing hostels, shacks and government houses.
The visual ratio drew an audible hiss: corporate branding dwarfed human settlement like a cartoon whale hovering over sardines.
“Each tonne of rock leaves here valued at fourteen hundred US dollars,” Malema tapped, “yet Joseph at the face still owes the spaza shop on payday - call that a wage gap if you like; I call it a solar-system gap.”

To turn numbers into nerve, three workers were beckoned onstage: a 57-year-old rock-driller with three decades underground who takes home R12 800, a 24-year-old “emergency porter” hired through a labour broker for R4 200, and a woman who tightens 2 000 kg of ore per shift for R7 900 and still buys her own gloves.
They stood like human bar charts while their payslips were translated into troy ounces of platinum: the veteran’s monthly effort equals 0.28 oz, less metal than a middle-class wedding band.
No abstract policy could compete with the sight of three calloused strangers becoming living spreadsheets; even induna headmen who normally scoff at “red overall politics” leaned in.

The policy punch followed, but it was deliberately narrower than the old clarion call to nationalise everything that moves.
Any shaft churning out more than half-a-million ounces a year, Malema proposed, must surrender 35 % of gross revenue to a tripartite fund run by workers, traditional councils and the local municipality.
Miss a quarter, pay a 3 % withholding levy ring-fenced for houses, clinics and tech colleges - no constitutional amendment required, only a tougher social-and-labour-plan regulation.
It was the kind of clause technocrats could sneer at, yet its very specificity baited community gatekeepers who had long since stopped reading manifestos.

3. Robots, “Illegal” Europeans and Green Gold

Foreboding came next.
Malema warned that driverless rigs and AI drills will erase 80 000 Bushveld jobs inside a decade, “an unseen algorithmic tsunami”.
His counter was a so-called robot tax: every automated truck or rig would be billed 110 % of the median wage it deletes, proceeds paid into a sovereign minerals fund that mails a basic-income cheque to each retrenched miner.
The idea is not original - Bill Gates floated it in 2017 - but grafted onto Marikana soil it felt less TED-Talk and more last-will-and-testament.
He dared President Ramaphosa to pilfer the concept, promising to applaud as long as “the money reaches the people before the consultants eat it”.

Then came the segment that broke South African Twitter for three-quarters of an hour: the “immigration interlude”.
Hands shot up when he asked who had laboured beside Basotho nationals; the same hands stayed raised when he asked who had seen those colleagues crammed into mine hostels while locals slept in plastic shacks.
In a rhetorical back-flip, he slammed “illegal white immigrants” in Cape Town restaurants - claiming 38 000 undocumented Europeans - turning the racial polarity of the migrant debate inside-out.
Africa Check later trimmed the figure to roughly 11 000, but accuracy was less important than the jolt: liberals who reflexively equate “undocumented” with “black” were forced to audit their own default settings.
The gag worked; a 29-year-old barman from Khayelitsha vowed to vote “just to watch them choke on their rooibos,” proving that spectacle can sometimes preface citizenship.

Energy closed the daylight section.
Malema reminded the audience that the richest platinum reef on earth also hides “green gold”: palladium and platinum needed for hydrogen fuel cells.
Rather than shipping ore to Belgium and re-importing catalytic converters at a ten-fold markup, he wants state-led assembly of hydrogen minibuses in Rustenburg, a plan he claims could create 14 000 artisan posts and trim the 42 % transport cost that gnaws at a miner’s disposable income.
Funding would come from prescribed-assets reform - forcing pension funds to bankroll developmental bonds - an apartheid-era ghost that still makes Cosatu shudder.
Yet he framed it as a moral hedge: “If your retirement prospers while the pit neighbours still boil bath water on a paraffin stove, your balanced fund is a crime scene.”

4. Candles, Caveats and a 14-Year-Old’s Robot

Twilight flipped the rally into night-time Methodist ritual.
Old Lonmin safety helmets had been gutted and turned into candle holders, each inked with a fallen worker’s name; widows in red berets sang “Senzeni Na?” while a drone live-streamed to 42 000 YouTube devices.
Malema lowered his voice to a near-whisper and unveiled what insiders already call the “Marikana Covenant”: five promises to be enacted within one hundred days of an EFF national victory.
Exhumation and state funeral for every miner dumped in unmarked graves; re-opening of the Farlam Commission docket with fresh murder charges; a R6 billion class-action suit whose winnings seed an education trust paying varsity fees for all children of the 34; a new law routing half of platinum royalties straight into local infrastructure; and finally, a Marikana Memorial University dedicated to mining automation and hydrogen tech, admission quotas reserved for victims’ families.
Each clause was read twice - English, then seTswana - while the crowd answered “Amandla!” turning white paper into liturgy.

Constitutional lawyers may scoff, Treasury may faint, but on the field the pact felt as binding as any blood oath.
Smaller human sparks flared: 14-year-old Sibusiso carried a cardboard sign - ”My father died for two centimetres of platinum; I want two centimetres of justice” - and told reporters he needs a science lab to “build a robot that mines without killing.”
The clip detonated on TikTok, Hugh Masekela’s “Stimela” remixed over trap beats, proof that old wounds migrate to new platforms where they pick up audiences not yet born when the volleys rang out.

As a red flare arced into the dark, Malema issued one last instruction: “Go home, photograph your shack, date-stamp it. We will come back and you will show me the ‘before’ picture.”
The crowd filed past vendors selling curry-laden bunny chows and sorrow, past taxis idling like patient raptors, past police Nyalas recording every face.
Behind them the field lay empty except for a tattered banner: “We are not the wretched of the earth; we are its creditors.”
Whether that ledger will ever balance is a question that now travels from Marikana’s dust to the 2026 ballot boxes, carrying the weight of platinum, the memory of bullets, and the obstinate conviction that a mountain of ore can still be alchemised into a mountain of justice.

[{"question": "

What is Malema's Marikana Manifesto?

", "answer": "Julius Malema's Marikana Manifesto is a comprehensive plan to address historical injustices and economic disparities within South Africa's mining sector, particularly focusing on the Marikana region. It proposes significant reforms aimed at redistributing wealth and fostering local development."}, {"question": "

What are the key financial proposals in the Manifesto?

", "answer": "A central proposal is that communities should receive 35% of the gross revenue from profitable mines. Additionally, Malema suggests implementing a 'robot tax' on automated mining equipment, with the proceeds funding a basic income for miners displaced by automation. He also advocates for prescribed-asset reform to fund developmental projects."}, {"question": "

How does the Manifesto address job creation and economic diversification?

", "answer": "To create jobs and reduce transport costs, Malema proposes state-led assembly of hydrogen minibuses in Rustenburg, leveraging South Africa's rich palladium and platinum resources. This initiative, referred to as 'green gold,' aims to create approximately 14,000 artisan jobs and diversify the local economy beyond traditional mining."}, {"question": "

What is the 'robot tax' and its purpose?

", "answer": "The 'robot tax' is a proposed levy on every automated truck or rig in the mining sector. It would be billed at 110% of the median wage that the automated equipment replaces. The funds collected from this tax would go into a sovereign minerals fund to provide a basic income for retrenched miners, addressing the impact of increasing automation on employment."}, {"question": "

What specific promises are made in the 'Marikana Covenant'?

", "answer": "The 'Marikana Covenant' outlines five promises to be enacted within 100 days of an EFF national victory: exhumation and state funerals for miners in unmarked graves; reopening of the Farlam Commission docket with fresh murder charges; a R6 billion class-action suit to fund an education trust for the children of the 34 fallen miners; a new law routing half of platinum royalties to local infrastructure; and the establishment of a Marikana Memorial University focused on mining automation and hydrogen technology, with admission quotas for victims' families."}, {"question": "

How does the Manifesto aim to rectify past injustices, particularly related to the 2012 Marikana massacre?

", "answer": "Beyond direct financial proposals, the Manifesto explicitly seeks to rectify past injustices. This includes promises to re-examine the circumstances of the 2012 Marikana massacre, ensure state funerals for victims, pursue justice through fresh murder charges based on the Farlam Commission findings, and establish an education trust and a university to benefit the victims' families and the broader community, aiming for both material and symbolic restitution."}]