Mineworkers will not vote for the African National Congress at the next national elections, a worker at Lonmin's Marikana operation said in Johannesburg on Thursday.
"We might not be educated, but we understand politics... and in politics people do not die as they did in Marikana. We are not telling people not to vote... vote, but not for the ANC," Tholakele Dlunga said at the University of Johannesburg. He was speaking at the launch of a book about the events at Marikana.
Dlunga accused the government of killing 34 of his colleagues during a violent wage strike on 16 August. Police opened fire on the striking miners near a koppie in Wonderkop.
The book, Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer was authored by UJ's head of sociology Professor Peter Alexander and four others.
Dlunga said he cursed the ANC's upcoming elective conference in Mangaung.
"If Mangaung caused Marikana, then I curse it."
Later, Professor Alexander said that the Farlam commission of inquiry was not neutral.
"The inquiry is a lawyers' paradise. The torture on the workers, their pain and suffering is not being brought to the commission's chairman. It is not neutral," Alexander said.
