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Eighteen years after the end of white minority rule in South Africa, 34 mine workers were shot and killed by police at the Lonmin platinum mine last Thursday. The workers were protesting at the mine in Marikana which is about 60 miles outside Johannesburg. The police, who were armed with semi automatic weapons shot into a crowd of 3,000 protesters who were seeking better wages and safer conditions. The situation had been escalating from clashes the weekend before when ten people had been killed.

The Marikana mine is the third largest platinum mine in the world and is owned by the London based company Lonmin. While platinum prices hover at over $1,500 an ounce, workers at the mine earn poverty level wages of less than $500 dollars a month. Most workers live close to the mine in shanty towns where they have no proper water or electricity services and many of them have high rates of lung disease and HIV/AIDS.

Julius Malema, former head of the ruling African National Congress’ youth league pointed to the unjust treatment of workers and the overall inequities among blacks and whites in South African society and demanded that the mines be nationalized. The Sowetan newspaper stated, “[i]t has happened in this country before where the apartheid regime treated black people like objects. It is continuing in a different guise now.”

GUEST: Douglas Foster, is the former editor of Mother Jones Magazine and is the author of the forthcoming book, After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa.

Douglas Foster will be speaking at Book Soup in Los Angeles on September 20th, discussing his new book, After Mandela.