I gingerly made my way into the Lonmin mine in Marikana. I had gone to Marikana for the memorial service in honour of those killed. It was Thursday August 23, 2012.
As I was taking in the suffocating air of that Godforsaken place, I was reminded of the severity with which Nelson Mandela described his first encounter with Crown Mines in Croesus, Johannesburg - “barren and pockmarked, all dirt and no trees, fenced in on all sides” and resembling “a war-torn battlefield”.
The Lonmin mine facility looked like an ugly pimple on the face of the land of Bapo ba Mohale. Its thin and long chimneys poked into the beautiful skies, like the long-nailed fingers of Satan.
Beyond the perimeter fence of the mine precinct, stood the Nkaneng informal settlement.
The crooked streets of Nkaneng were riddled and punctuated by small, medium and large garbage dumps, soaking in slow-flowing sewage.
I saw kids, dogs, goats, donkeys and pigs rummaging together in the dumps. Nkaneng itself looked like a human dumping site. I have visited Nkaneng several times ever since.
To this day, I have a recurring nightmare during which I am desperately trying to rescue the children of Nkaneng, drowning in sewage dongas. I run from one donga to the next, calling out for help.
But the louder I scream, the louder the mongrel dogs howl, and the louder the children cry out. By the time I snap out of the nightmare, I am gasping and shaking.
As I approached Wonderkop, I bowed my head and silently read out their names - all 44 of them, starting with the following:
Sello Lepaaku and Hendrick Tsietsi Monene: Policemen who were hacked to death by a group of striking miners.
Hassan Fundi: A Lonmin security guard and a devout Muslim, whose wife Aisha Fundi waited in vain for him to come home for evening prayers.
Thabiso Thelejane: Describing him, one of his fellow Catholic Church members in Paballong, Matatiele said, “no man loved Jesus like Ntate Thabiso”. Mgcineni ‘Mambush’ Noki: Leader and symbol of the Marikana massacre, whom the police shot 14 times. Mongezeleli ‘Bhayi’ Ntenetya: His wife Nosipho expected him to come home to Idutywa during the week of his death, to slaughter a goat, as part of a sacred family ritual.
Sitelega Gadlela: Together with at least 16 others, he was killed by the police, while hiding between the crevices of the rocks. Thobile Mpumza: He was killed by a policeman who, shortly afterwards, was recorded boasting: “that mother f****r, I shot him 10 times. Ke mo thubile”(meaning I have blown him apart).
Like the televised killing of Andries Tatane in 2011, the Marikana massacre was a negation of the fundamental promise of our democracy. Try this experiment. Watch Rehad Desai’s Miners Shot Down on mute. Play instead, the sound of Mandela’s inauguration address.
As the miners are being mowed down, listen to Mandela saying: “We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts. Assured of their inalienable right to human dignity - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world”. Now, tell me what you feel!
On August 16, 2012, the South African democratic government defaulted to the massacring ways of the apartheid government.
Marikana is almost a carbon copy of the Bulhoek Massacre of 1921, when 183 members of the Israelites church, camping on Ntabelanga hill, were mowed down by the police. It takes us back to Sharpeville, Langa (1960) and Soweto (1976).
Like the 144 lives in the Life Esidimeni “massacre”, the 44 lives of Marikana could have been spared. But it seems Lonmin and the police were determined to ensure a gory ending.
Like villains in a tragic Shakespearean play, they proceeded as if they were under the spell of capricious gods who wanted nothing less than human blood. “We are ending this today. Don’t ask me how, but today we are ending this,” said Lieutenant-General Zukiswa Mbombo on the morning of the massacre.
Surely the massacre was neither the kind of “concomitant action” nor the “more pointed” action Ramaphosa was calling for from the police minister, in the email he wrote to his Lonmin colleagues a day before the massacre!
The morning after the massacre, in a speech to police officers, former police commissioner Phiyega noted that “whatever happened represents the best of responsible policing” and proceeded to ask the police to applaud themselves. Surely, the killing of 34 South Africans in half an hour is not “whatever happened”!
The striking miners and their feuding unions must take some of the responsibility for aspects of the Marikana massacre. But it is noteworthy that, of the 44 people killed, up to 37 were killed by the police.
There is, of course, a “golden thread” that connects Marikana to all “our” other massacres.
To maintain their wealth and power, political and economic elites have for centuries, unleashed the police or the army, again and again. For the wealthy and the powerful, it seems that the poor exist either to be exploited or to be killed when they refuse to be exploited.
And yet, as a nation, we seem either unable or unwilling to call Marikana what it was. Instead, we call it some “tragic event”, an “incident”, an “accident”, an “unfortunate event”, et cetera. What happened in Marikana on August 16, 2012 was nothing but a bloody massacre.
The reluctance to name Marikana appropriately may be an indication that we have been grooming ourselves to embrace the next set of massacres more readily.
* Professor Maluleke is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria. He writes in his personal capacity. You can follow him on Twitter @ProfTinyiko