Marikana: Voices from South Africa's Mining Massacre

About the Authors

7 About the authors Peter Alexander is a professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg and holds the South African Research Chair in Social Change. In the UK, he gained degrees from London University, was an academic at Oxford University, and held leadership positions in the Southern Africa Solidarity Campaign, Anti-Nazi League, Miners’ Defence League and Socialist Workers Party. He moved permanently to South Africa in 1998. His interests include labour history, specifically Witbank miners, and community protests. He is a co-author of Class in Soweto, published by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press at the beginning of 2013. Thapelo Lekgowa isafreelanceresearchfieldworkerworkingwiththeSouth AfricanResearchChairinSocialChange.Afterschoolheworkedforaplatinum mine. He is a full-time political activist, who learns and teaches on the street. A co-founder of the Che Guevara Film Club and a member of the Qinamsebemzi Collective, he is a member of the Marikana Support Committee. Botsang Mmope is a herbal healer associated with Green World Africa. Over the past seven years he has worked on various projects with the University of Johannesburg, including research on class, strikes and, recently, the Chair in Social Change’s ‘Rebellion of the Poor’. He is an active member of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee. Luke Sinwell is a Senior Researcher with the Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. He obtained a PhD in Development Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2009. His interests include the politics and conceptualisation of participatory development and governance, direct action and action research. He is co-editor of Contesting Transformation: Popular Resistance in Twenty-FirstCentury South Africa published by Pluto Press at the end of 2012. Bongani Xezwi is a freelance research fieldworker who has done work on waste pickers, food production, police brutality and service delivery protests. Recently he conducted life history interviews for the book Mining Faces. He was Gauteng organiser of the Landless People’s Movement and is currently the Gauteng organiser for the Right to Know Campaign. ...