This opinion contribution is based upon a letter of mine published in the Mail and Guardian in July 2015.
Tinyiko Maluleka is very angry. "Is this all that 44 men’s lives are worth?" (MG 3-9 July) the professor asks, departing from his usually measured political commentary. Was Marikana "just a little atrocity…Was (it) a mere diversion in the triumphal march of a state that is slowly developing a knack for intolerance of dissent, brutality and heartlessness toward the poor?"
Indeed his anger is that of countless others. Official statements at the time focused on exonerating everyone involved: the policemen who performed the killings, their commanders, the responsible politicians and did not augur well for the effectiveness of the Farlam Commission. Nominally sub judice over three years the worst concerns of commentators have been confirmed and Maluleke expresses these vehemently.
He sees the Sharpeville massacre as the first of a "catalogue of carnage" but does not dwell on it. The events have similarities. Both concerned mainly migrant workers and evoked shock and horror both locally and abroad. The Farlam commission sat for three years with all the potential of an in-depth appraisal of the factors shaping the horrendous events in Augst 2012. The justice Wessels commission on the bloodbath at Sharpeville in 1960 produced a report within six months. Both were justifiably berated for not apportioning responsibility or culpability.
There are, however, major differences. Sharpeville occurred 12 years into the formal apartheid era; Marikana 18 years into the democratic era. The former occurred in a township housing migrant workers established by the then government in dwellings still occupied today. The Lonmin Marikana mine with the deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa a board member had its migrant workers live in a squatter camp. In the former, the shooting was done by white policemen; in the latter the shooters were black.
By far the worst contrast however is the clear evidence, both from the commission and reporters at the scene, that when the fusillade from within the Sharpeville police station perimeter fence ceased no further shooting took place. At Marikana, the world saw the main and repeated fusillades at scene 1. What it did not get to see was what occurred at scene 2. There, miners trying to escape around the razor wire barricade were hunted and run down by Casspirs, shot in cold blood where they were hiding in the koppie. When the shooting ended, the captured and wounded irrespective of their condition were indiscriminately loaded into vans and imprisoned without immediate medical treatment.
After the shooting at Sharpeville in 1960, the police station’s telephone connections had been cut. Two (white) officers ran into the township to find medical assistance for the injured. All this was in the Wessels report of 1960.
All this needs to be reflected on, particularly on this Human Rights Day when the country that had been plunged for a second time into exploitation, corruption and state capture by the Mbeki-Zuma succession is now given another lease on life by a seriously reformist government.
The clear lesson is that neither cruelty nor compassion is characteristic of any one population group, such as also seen so starkly in the Life Esidimeni saga. Experiencing and extending human rights should be both a right and duty of every individual in whatever walk of life.
The second is that after having seen our moment of renewal snatched away from us in 1994 due to dissention, bickering and expediency we should all reflect deeply about our individual responsibilities in keeping the faith and making it work this time round.
Furthermore, after having seen our moment of renewal snatched away from us in 1994 due to dissention and bickering, could one hope that this time we should all reflect deeply about our individual responsibilities in keeping the faith and making it work this time round?
