Marikana’s wounds still bleed 14 years after police massacre

Fourteen years after police opened fire on striking mineworkers at Marikana, the massacre is remembered not only for the 34 men who were killed, but for their absence in the lives of their families.

For some, the memory is of a father who never came home. For others, it is the loss of a breadwinner, a brother or a son. And for those who were children when the killings happened, it is the experience of growing up with memories that have become increasingly distant, while the questions about justice remain.

At a commemoration marking 14 years since the massacre, the families, activists and academics reflected on what Marikana means more than a decade later – and on its place in South Africa’s longer history of protest, police violence and struggles for dignity.

For the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (Seri), which has represented the families since 2012, the central question remains accountability. Seri secured payments for 35 of the 37 families whose loved ones were killed by police. Two families have received no compensation.

Seri’s executive director, Nomzamo Zondo said the compensation process itself reflected a deeper problem in how the state understood the loss suffered by the families. “Part of that is a narrative that what the state is interested in compensating is the income that the miners would have earned. They do not want to account for the husbands, brothers, sons and fathers that they took away from the families,” she said.

For Zondo, compensation alone cannot address the significance of Marikana. The state also needs to acknowledge that the massacre should never have happened, she argued: “That’s what a public holiday on the 16th of August would mean. It would say: we are saying never, never again.”

She said this was particularly important given the continued use of force by police in managing protests. “We’ve seen that police continue to manage protests through the use of violence. They have continuously refused to accept that their role is to facilitate protests as a constitutional right.”

Zondo also pointed to the failure to implement recommendations made by the panel of experts on public order policing and the management of protests. The panel completed its work in 2018, but its recommendations remain largely unimplemented.

Squalid living conditions in the informal settlement, Nkaneng, in the shadow of Marikana platinum mine, a source of immense wealth for the owners in 2012, Lonmin. Archive photo by The Benchmarks Foundation

Another major concern, she said, was the failure of the National Prosecuting Authority to bring those responsible for the 16 August killings to court. “Every year, of course, when the anniversary comes, there is an explanation that work is being done,” Zondo said. “But now we are like one year short from 15 years since the massacre. We are just 12 years since the Commission finalised its report and recommended that the NPA must investigate and charge whoever is responsible.”

The question, she said, was whether there was “really an intention to hold anyone accountable for the deaths of the 16th of August”.

For the families, however, the consequences of Marikana are not measured only by the progress of criminal investigations or compensation claims. They are lived in the absence of loved ones.

‘I still have that memory’

NowilI Nungu was 15 when her father, Jackson Lehopa, was killed at Marikana. Today, at 29, she remembers him through the ordinary moments of their life together: travelling to school on a bicycle, buying him a Coke and watching him repair the bicycle whenever it broke.

“I have so many memories with my dad,” Nungu said. She was the only girl among six children and had been living with her father in Rustenburg while her mother moved back to the Eastern Cape.

By the time of the massacre, Nungu had moved to the Eastern Cape with her mother. The family did not have electricity and relied on the radio for news. Her father normally called every day after returning from the koppie to tell them he was safe. But that day, he did not call.

Crosses erected at the koppie as a symbol of lives lost on 16 August 2012. Archive photo by Muzi Mzoyi

Sebolai Liau lost his father, the late Janefeke Raphael Liau, at Marikana. For him, the question of justice remains unresolved. “I think regarding the Marikana massacre, there is no justice. I don’t think it will ever be served, but for now it has not been, and there are no signs that it will be,” he said.

His father had been the only employed person in the household. “You can just imagine, to us, losing a breadwinner, how it feels to survive without somebody who used to provide for your daily needs. It took a toll on us financially because he was the only person working, so we had to make means on how to survive,” Liau said.

From Soweto to Marikana

For University of the Witwatersrand associate professor of political studies, Julian Brown, the significance of Marikana cannot be separated from South Africa’s longer history of protest and state violence. Brown, author of Marikana: A People’s History and Soweto Uprising, said his role as an academic was to bring together the experiences of the dead, survivors and those who lived through these events.

He said the immediate reporting of Marikana had been dominated by what he described as “a tissue of lies” and repeated claims that the mineworkers had been violent and that the police had acted in self-defence.

It was investigative journalists who began challenging that narrative by examining forensic evidence and the circumstances in which the workers were killed. “There was clear evidence that people were murdered, that they were shot in the backs of their heads by the police, that people were shot while trying to surrender,” Brown said.

He acknowledged that there had been violence during the week preceding 16 August, but said there was no question that the workers were not violent on the day of the massacre. “The police acted precipitously, brutally and violently to murder the people that they killed on June the 16th…” he said, correcting himself before continuing: “There is no question that on the day of the massacre in Marikana, the workers were not violent. It was the police who were violent.”

Brown said the myth of Marikana as an exceptionally violent strike continues to be repeated 14 years later. “In fact, in the overall history of mineworkers’ strikes in South Africa, the strike in Marikana was one of the least violent.” What made Marikana distinctive, he said, was the scale of deaths at the hands of the police.

Brown also drew a connection between Marikana and the 1976 Soweto uprising. The immediate issues differed – education in 1976 and wages at Marikana in 2012 – but both represented broader demands for dignity and recognition. “The immediate protest, for education or a wage, is always a symbol for a much wider range of interconnected demands that boil down in some sense to the demand to be heard,” he said.

Marikana remembered at a battle site of the Rand Revolt in Johannesburg. Archive Photo by Ramatamo Sehoai

The young people behind 1976

Dinga Sikwebu, a retired head of education at the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and currently a research associate at the Global Labour University at Wits, was a form 2 high school student when he took part in the 1976 youth rebellion in Cape Town.

He deliberately placed the events of 1976 alongside Marikana, arguing that South Africa’s history should be understood through its recurring cycles of protest and violence. “I’m doing this to underline that we have a history of violence, and that when we look at a moment in time, it is important to make connections between these different cycles of violence,” Sikwebu said.

Learners joining #FeesMustFall protests in Cape Town, 2015. Archive Photo by Mzi Velapi.

On 11 August, students at two of Cape Town’s five high schools decided not to go to class after assembly. At Langa High School, students carried posters declaring: “We sympathise with Soweto.”

The Cape Town uprising came two months after the Soweto uprising. But Sikwebu said the trigger was not the Afrikaans language policy. By then, students in Soweto had already forced the withdrawal of the circular that had made Afrikaans an effective language of instruction. “The trigger for us in 1976 in Cape Town was not Afrikaans. It was that it won,” he said. “It was an act of solidarity. It wasn’t triggered by Afrikaans.”

The students initially planned to march within the school grounds, but rain changed their plans. They decided instead to march to other schools and encourage more students to join them. For Sikwebu, remembering these details matters because history should not strip participants of their humanity. “These were young people who had aspirations, who had dreams. And they just felt that things could not continue to be the same.”

And that may be the thread connecting the histories of 1976 and Marikana: young people and workers demanding to be heard, families carrying the consequences of state violence, and a country still wrestling with how to remember those who were killed.