The Marikana Massacre and the Unstable Geographies of Capital: Spatialising Financialisation

ABSTRACT

On the 16th of August 2012, a protracted strike at a platinum mine in Marikana culminated in the killing of 34 mineworkers by local security officers. As literature on the historical significance of this event in post-apartheid South Africa grows, the many socio-spatial legacies of apartheid become exposed. This article builds on these discussions and considers how financialisation in the post-Bretton Woods era has reworked historical tensions between labour, capital, and state regulation. Financial markets, their intermediaries and interests have become central to the articulation of value, with finance centres like Wall Street and London dominating evaluations of worth, profit, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, as the Marikana massacre made clear, these articulations go far beyond the cloistered markets and exchanges of New York and London. Instead, the articulation and circulation of value resembles the functioning of an infrastructural assemblage that brings together multiple geographies of power in uneven and unstable ways. During times of disruption, like the Marikana massacre, we are able to expose and challenge the unequal politics of power and opportunity this infrastructure creates and stabilise.

Acknowledgements

A special thanks to the anonymous reviewers for your contributions and specifically, Jaco du Plessis (Frankie), for your input and editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Cecilia Schultz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2239-1183