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The Marikana Massacre of August 16, 2012, was the single most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the end of apartheid. Those killed were mineworkers in support of a pay raise. Through a series of interviews conducted with workers who survived the attack, this account documents and examines the controversial shootings in great detail, beginning with a valuable history of the events leading up to the killing of workers, and including eyewitness accounts of the violence and interviews with family members of those who perished.

While the official Farlam Commission investigation of the massacre is still ongoing, many South Africans do not hold much confidence in the government’s ability to examine its own complicity in these events. Marikana, on the other hand, examines the various roles played by the African National Congress, the mine company, and the National Union of Mineworkers in creating the conditions that led to the massacre. While the commission’s investigations take place in a courtroom setting tilted toward those in power, Marikana documents testimony from the mineworkers in the days before official statements were even gathered, offering an unusually immediate and unfiltered look at the reality from the perspective of those most directly affected. Enhanced by vivid maps that make clear the setting and situation of the events, Marikana is an invaluable work of history, journalism, sociology, and activism.

"Karl Marx aspired to a world in which our animal needs would be satisfied and our human needs could be addressed. It is a realistic possibility now, as William Robinson outlines—or the alternative that is taking shape before our eyes: a 'global police state' controlled by narrowly concentrated capital with 'surplus humanity' left to survive somehow on its own. The choice is in our hands."
—Noam Chomsky, author of Who Rules the World?
 
As the world becomes ever more unequal, people become ever more “disposable.” Today, governments systematically exclude sections of their populations from society through heavy-handed policing. But it doesn't always go to plan.
 
William I. Robinson exposes the nature and dynamics of this out-of-control system, arguing for the urgency of creating a movement capable of overthrowing it. The global police state uses a variety of ingenious methods of control, including mass incarceration, police violence, US-led wars, the persecution of immigrants and refugees, and the repression of environmental activists.
 
He writes in his Introduction, “I offer a ‘big picture” of the emerging global police state in a short book that is eminently readable. The pages to follow may startle many readers and make them angry. I trust the work will serve as a warning of the dystopic future that is upon us. More importantly, by exposing the nature and dynamic of this out-of-control system, I hope it will contribute to the struggles to bring about an alternative future based on human freedom and liberation.”
 
Movements have emerged to combat the increasing militarization, surveillance and social cleansing; however, many of them appeal to a moral sense of social justice rather than addressing its root: global capitalism.
 
Using shocking data which reveals how far capitalism has become a system of repression, Robinson argues that the emerging megacities of the world are becoming the battlegrounds where the excluded and the oppressed face off against the global police state.