ANTARSYA (Anticapitalist Left Cooperation for the Overthrow, the anti-capitalist front of the Greek Left) expresses its unreserved support and solidarity to the working class of South-Africa. The working class will always remember and honor the miners who were assassinated during their strike.

On the 10th of August, in the city of Marikana, over 3,000 miners went on strike demanding pay raises. The multinational company «Lonmin», the third greatest metal-mining company in the world, with immense profits, assures that the strike is declared illegal. The company threatens to fire the strikers, sets up a strikebreaking mechanism and asks for police intervention. The police, following the company's appeals, assassinated 36 workers and wounds more than 80.

The responsibility for this hideous crime lies in the supposedly «progressive» government of the African National Congress, but also to the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the COSATU confederation of unions who support it. Despite the fact that it has been 18 years since the collapse of the racist Apartheid regime, the majority of workers in South Africa still suffer under the reign of multinational companies and large landowners. As long as the wealth lies in the hands of the employers and the banks, as long as the state imposes their interests, no government may give workers what they deserve.

This mass murder constitutes a crime against all the workers of the world. From the steel-workers in Greece to the miners in Spain and South Africa the police brutality and the state crimes multiply and escalate. The capitalists and their governments sacrifice everything in the altar of their interests, not only with the everyday exploitation of the workers' labour power but even with the brutal termination of their life. The sacrifices demanded by Capital all around the world as a means to surpass the structural crisis of capitalism not only can they not lead to a better distant future, but they have already led to extreme exploitation, to the impoverishment of the social majority and to bloodsheds.

The murders of the South African workers reveal the true nature of capitalist exploitation. The sad attempt to downgrade this issue into a mere dispute between unions and the general appeals to justice constitute complicity and an attempt to conceal the truth.

Our duty is to continue the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism by strengthening the workers’ and popular struggles in every country and by building ties of solidarity and joint internationalist action. The everyday struggle for survival and for the abolition of exploitation is the homage we pay for the dead of our class.

Athens, 19.8.2012