August 2024 marks twelve years since the Marikana massacre. Forty-four people were killed between 12 and 16 August, including 34 miners on 16 August 2012. In addition, at least 78 miners were injured and approximately 250 arrested. The Marikana massacre was the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the Soweto uprising of 16 June 1976.
Miners were on strike because of low wages and poor working conditions in one of the country’s most dangerous and exploitative industries. The management of Lonmin plc platinum mine (now Sibanye-Stillwater) and the government decided to end the strike that had started on 10 August. The massacre was the outcome.
Since 2012, SERI has represented the families of 36 murdered mineworkers both in their demands for accountability for the massacre and in their civil suit against the state for compensatory damages. The deceased miners’ employment provided support to over 300 dependents. The state’s actions in 2012, and since then, have fundamentally altered the families’ lives with disruption, loss, and denial. Each year the families are re-traumatised without accountability, redress, and meaningful acknowledgment of the massacre by the state.
According to the Office of the Solicitor General, the state has settled about R71 million in loss of support to 34 of the families. However, of the 315 claimants, about 129 people have received nothing, including all eleven family members of the murdered Thobile Mpumza, something the Office of the Solicitor General chooses not to publicise. By so doing the state has, over the years, reduced addressing the Marikana massacre to a purely financial exercise. Having failed to reach a settlement on the outstanding pleas of the family’s civil claims, the matter will be argued before the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.
The denial of accountability is also a consistent theme in the criminal case against the state. On 16 August, about 400 deployed police officers enclosed the miners at the koppie with a barbed wire fence. The miners were peacefully dispersing, but the police fired at them with R5 rifles capable of automatic fire at ‘scene 1’, killing sixteen miners. Despite police efforts to tamper with ‘scene 2’, we now know that the police pursued and killed another sixteen miners many of whom had their hands in the air, visibly surrendering and retreating. Only nine officials have faced criminal charges, all of whom have pleaded not guilty, and four have been acquitted for matters relating to the circumstances of Mr Segalala’s death. Six officers are currently standing trial for the crimes relating to the events of 13 August 2012 in which three miners and two police officers were killed. No one has been charged for the events of 16 August.
Nothing prepares a family for the disruption caused by the death of a family member – more so when it is not only televised but is also perpetrated by institutions established to protect them. Indeed, news of the massacre caused Mam’Kholiseni Sokanyile, mother of Pumzile Sokanyile, to collapse and die on her way to the hospital after learning of her son’s death. The police’s actions destabilised the families by robbing them of husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, and breadwinners all at once.
As SERI Executive Director, Nomzamo Zondo, explains:
“As SERI, we have tried our best to make the State understand that Mr. Ntsenyeho was also a mentor and a coach for boys in Sasolburg and that Mr. Monesa was a lover, a friend, and a father to an unborn child before he was taken away from them. The state’s position confirms what President Joseph Mathunjwa said on the koppie on that day that ‘a black life is cheap’ and that ‘they will kill you and employ other people to do this work.’ At the very core of the State’s position is a denial of the humanity of the men gunned down on the 13th and 16th of August 2012. If you translate the position of refusing to compensate anything more than the salaries that the miners would have supported their families with, it is that men like Stelega Gadlela and Mgcineni Noki were machines meant to generate Lonmin’s income – they were not fathers meant to raise their children, or uncles meant to look after their orphaned nieces and nephews, or husbands meant to comfort and support their wives.”
Unfortunately, the State continues to hold the line they took during the strike: the concerns of the mine and capital matter. The cries of the families of those they killed do not. Once again, we are calling on the state to acknowledge both the humanity of the deceased miners and what was taken from their families.
Contact details:
- Asenati Tukela, SERI attorney: Asenati[at]seri-sa.org / 066 473 5182.
- Nomzamo Zondo, SERI executive director: Nomzamo[at]seri-sa.org / 071 301 9676.
- Thato Masiangoako, SERI researcher: Thato[at]seri-sa.org / 082 590 8973.
- Download the statement here.