Free Essay on Htet Pyo Wai and Shari Ann Pan-oy

Uploaded by sharianne on Nov 02, 2012

Is it the return of the unacceptable face?
-Htet Pyo Wai and Shari Ann Pan-oy

"It's the Marikana incident that bringing back the unpleasant criticism."

Simon Scott who was appointed as the temporary chief executive of Lonmin Company (former Lonrho) a week after the Marikana incident was welcomed by the violence and tensions that the company is facing. Would he be able to erase the company’s criticism “the unacceptable face”?
“The unpleasant and unacceptable face of the Capitalism” was a criticism by the British Minister Edward Heath to the head of Lonrho Company in the 1970s. Lonrho was founded in 1909 as the London and Rhodesian Land and Mining Company limited and in 1963 Tiny Rowland was recruited as the chief of the company. He seemed to be visionary and looked only for his profits but under his control, the company expanded within Africa, from a mining company to the multi-million pound international cooperation. His position became a case of the High court to be criticized by the politicians including the Prime Minister but no further actions were taken to Mr. Rowland until he was expelled in 1992. Yet, because of his contributions to South Africa in terms of economics and political sectors, he was highly valued by the African leaders including Nelson Mandela.
And Rowland’s response to the Prime Minister’s words was “I don’t want to be an ACCEPTABLE FACE of the capitalism”.

The Marikana incident is bringing back the past stories of capitalism in South Africa and showed that the roots of the capitalism are still growing. Although South Africa is under the rule of black majority, the white minority are still in firm control of the ‘economics’ lever. Still, we cannot merely blame the leaderships of the company and their ideology. The government and the unions were also played a vital role in the occurrences of the incident. Despite of these political and ideological factors behind, the main focus is what had brought these mineworkers to the protest.

The continuous complain by the mine workers are their poor condition of livings. There is no doubt of how badly affects their angers. Majority of them are living in the informal settlements that they call shacks or mkhukus and in the winter with some ices on the roof and leak to the rooms. There is no concrete road, no clean water but has a polluted environment due to lack of garbage...