Text in English / This research focuses upon the killing on 16 August 2012, by the South African Police Service, of miners working in Marikana, in the North West Province, in their struggle for a just wage. This experience highlighted the ethical question of the relationship between the employee and the employer. This research investigates this question by reference to the evolution of the doctrine of the “just wage” and the “just price” in Western moral philosophy. The investigation shows that this Western doctrine is a significant basis for an ethical evaluation of the relationship between employee and the employer. However, the doctrine does require expansion by taking the woman as an indispensable factor in labour relations. Also, it requires deepening by engaging in dialogue with other philosophies of the world, in this particular case, the philosophy of Ubuntu. The dialogue with Ubuntu is justified by the fact that the majority of the miners, the actual diggers of the mineral wealth, are born into and nurtured through the philosophy of Ubuntu, even if some may have reservations about it. The dialogue reveals a specific philosophical issue, namely, a clash of the epistemological and moral paradigms. The Ubuntu epistemological-ethical maxim of feta kgomo o tshware motho (if and when one must choose between the continual accumulation of wealth and the preservation of human life then one ought to opt for the latter) is fundamentally at odds with capitalism, an economic system that elevates wealth and money to the status of a deity. A resolution of this conflict is an ethical imperative. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Philosophy)

This thesis aims to open up the realm of what counts as political in the context of the Marikana strikes and subsequent massacre. It does primarily by taking into account the social, political and cultural context of Mpondo workers on the mines. Many narrow Marxist and liberal frameworks have circumscribed the conception of the ‘modern’ and the ‘political’ so much so that political organisation which falls outside of this conceptualisation is often regarded as ‘backward’ or ‘archaic’. It will provide an examination of the history, culture and custom of men, who have, for almost a hundred years migrated back and forth between South African mines and Mpondoland. This not only reveals differing modes of organising and engaging in political action, but also that the praxis of democracy takes many forms, some of which are different and opposed to what counts as democratic in Western liberal democracy. By considering what I argue, following some of the insights from the Subaltern Studies collective in India, to be a subaltern sphere of politics and history, it is possible to better understand the way workers organised and acted. The thesis also argues that most labour and nationalist historiography has been silent on the political contributions of women because of how Marxist/liberal analysis frames struggles through disciplined notions of work and resistance. Rather than objectifying workers as representatives of a homogenous and universal class of people devoid of context, the thesis has linked ‘the worker’ to the community from which s/he comes and community specific struggles, which are supported and sustained, often, by the parallel struggles of women in the community.