By Kim Heller
With all her majesty, Mother Nature beautifies our skies with glorious Rainbows after the wreck of vicious storms. It is in the rise of the Rainbow, that even the most sceptical among us, find wonder, hope and rejuvenation.
But at times, in the scorch of the earth, there are storms that come after Rainbows. The 2012 Marikana Massacre was such a storm. So fierce that it cast a black cloud over the hard won but rather fragile democracy heralded in in 1994. Marikana was a breach of our democracy. It was a physical and psychological massacre.
Friday marks the 12th anniversary of the massacre of thirty-four mineworkers on August 16, 2012. The workers were protesting for a living wage. The massacre occurred in a milieu of ongoing exploitation of workers, punishing working and living conditions, failed promises by the mine to provide adequate housing, and growing competition and strife between trade unions, NUM and AMCU.
Before the fateful massacre, the strike which began on August 10 had already claimed ten lives, including two police officers, and two mine security guards. Rather than recognising the strike as a storm warning, the government, gun-in-hand with white capital, ended the strike with might. On August 15, 2012, the current President, Cyril Ramaphosa, who was at the time a board member of Lonmin described the labour dispute as “dastardly criminal” and called for “concomitant action to address the situation”. This was a deeply disturbing and dangerous response to the legitimate rage of black workers against injustice and inequality,
Author of Marikana: Voices from South Africa’s Mining Massacre, Kate Alexander, wrote that the Marikana miners had hoped that Lonmin would respond favourably to their call for a decent wage. Alexander argues that this would have not only threatened Lonmin profits but protected the privileges of the National Union of Mineworkers. This, she writes, led to a decision to exercise “maximum force” against the protestors.
The President of South Africa and the Commander-In- Chief of the country's security forces, Jacob Zuma, who was out of the country when the massacre took place, condemned the “senseless violence”, called for a week of mourning and was quick to establish a commission of inquiry. But for Julius Malema, the recently expelled leader of the ANCYL this was not enough. He called for the resignation of the Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, as well as President Zuma who Malema argued had “presided over the killing of our people”.
In an opinion piece written a year after the Marikana massacre, the DA’s Helen Zille posed the question, “Was Marikana the beginning of the end for the ANC?” Zille described the Marikana massacre as “one of many catalytic events that are shaking up our political landscape as we know it.” She was correct. The EFF was “born out of the blood of Marikana,” and AMCU gained a strong foothold in the mining sector. The choice of the ANC, NUM, and mother body COSATU to protect the interests of white capital rather than the wellbeing and dignity of black workers, is a permanent scab on the legacy of the liberation movement.
Justice has yet to be done. A number of families have not received reparations and there have been no prosecutions or apologies. At a commemoration of the Marikana Massacre held by SERI (Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa) this week, attorney Asenati Tukela, said that there are certain individuals who “still need to face the music for Marikana.” SERI has urged the state to take steps to finalise reparations and prosecution to bring “truth, justice and closure for the victims and the country”.
The lack of apology and accountability by the ANC to the victims of the Marikana Massacre is both a betrayal of workers and a breach of democracy. Twelve years after the massacre, many workers in South Africa do not earn the minimum wage. Worker exploitation is rife.
At the SERI commemoration service, activist Koketso Moeti, spoke of the Marikana Massacre as a “testament to the reality of labour exploitation in South Africa. He said: “Marikana is not just a call for justice for Marikana but all worker exploitation in South Africa. It is also a reminder of that exploitation.”
Today, the Marikana Massacre is a deadly reminder of the government’s inability to confront deep set patterns and systemic racial inequalities. And sadly, the fault lines of South Africa’s democracy, its structural racism and inequality, and disempowering labour relations, are unlikely to be addressed any time soon.
In her 2013 article on Marikana, Helen Zille wrote: “The once formidable African National Congress is coming apart. Over the next ten years (probably sooner) South Africa will have a new, realigned political dispensation.”
A “new, realigned political dispensation” in the form of a government of national unity, is now in place. This does not bode well for those hoping for justice for the Marikana massacre. The pro-business DA, the major partner of the ANC in government, has proudly campaigned for the scrapping of the minimum wage.
In all likelihood, the memory of the massacre will fade over time. Lonmin has rebranded itself as Sibanye Stillwater. Clouds loom over the GNU. The ANC’s sunny days have passed. A new national consciousness, based on true justice and unity in South Africa, is unlikely to feature on the political horizon.
In a passionate speech to the Association of Ethical Shareholders in Germany, Ndikho Jokanisi Bomela, whose father, Semi Jokanisi, was killed in Marikana on 13 August 2012, shared his deep pain.
Bomela said: “My father died for a wage of R12,500, which BASF’s suppliers of platinum, Lonmin, refused to engage with the striking mineworkers about — colluding instead to have the strike resolved by the South African police. Their position would contribute to forty-four men dying that week. But he also died for the idea that the conditions of the workers, their families and their communities could be made much, much better. That they didn’t have to live among pigs and sewage, in shacks without electricity or running water, expect for when they leaked from the rain”.
The storm of inequality and injustice continues. There is no Rainbow in sight for the wretched of the earth.
* Kim Heller is a political analyst and author of ‘No White Lies: Black Politics and White Power in South Africa’.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.