Five years ago this week 44 people were killed in the course of an industrial dispute at a platinum mine in South Africa’s North West Province owned by Lonmin. It became known as the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marikana massacre</a>.
For many observers, Marikana was a turning point in the presidency of Jacob Zuma – who came to power in 2009 – and in the history of democratic South Africa. Even more so, it gave an early indication of the abuse of state power that’s been the hallmark of the Zuma government.
Thirty-four miners were shot dead by members of the South African Police Service in a single day, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">16 August 2012</a>. Seventeen were gunned down by heavily armed members of police tactical response teams as they left the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2016.1223477?scroll=top&amp;needAccess=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">small hill (or koppie)</a> they’d been occupying. Others died at the hands of the police in the course of a brutal mopping up operation that followed.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/08/16/marikana-promise-kept-tears-grief/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marikana: A Promise Kept Through Tears Of Grief</a>
Five years on, and two years after the official <a href="http://www.marikanacomm.org.za/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Farlam Commission of Inquiry</a> into the Marikana tragedy, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/08/south-africa-five-years-on-marikana-victims-still-wait-for-justice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">no-one has been held to account</a>. Ministers have moved to new portfolios, police commanders have retired on ample pensions, or been <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/riah-phiyega-leaves-the-police-today-glad-she-ran-the-course-9708513" target="_blank" rel="noopener">replaced </a> in a blaze of litigation.
<h2>Lack of accountability</h2>
Only last week Zuma survived a vote of no confidence in parliament in the wake of a series of scandals. These included compelling evidence that he and his government are in thrall to the influential <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-24-00-the-gupta-owned-state-enterprises" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gupta family</a>.
Zuma’s reputation as the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-08-08-motion-of-no-confidence-teflon-zuma-survives-but-vote-closer-than-expected/#.WZK6fraQy70" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Teflon President”</a> – able to shrug off charges of everything from bribery to rape and allowing the South African state to be <a href="http://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“captured” by the Guptas and their acolytes</a> – dates back well beyond 2012. But, when it comes to Marikana, Zuma is not the only one with non-stick credentials.
In March this year, the country’s <a href="https://nationalgovernment.co.za/units/view/20/Department-Independent-Police-Investigative-Directorate-IPID" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Independent Police Investigative Directorate</a>, the police oversight body, announced that it had identified <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/72-cops-to-be-charged-over-marikana-20170319-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">72 police officers to face charges</a>. These ranged from murder to perjury and defeating the ends of justice. Since then, no further action has been taken.
Important though this is, the responsibility for the massacre doesn’t stop at those who pulled the triggers. At the outset of the Farlam Commission’s public hearings, <a href="http://www.incwajana.com/dali-mpofu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dali Mpofu</a>, counsel for the miners injured at Marikana, blamed many of the deaths on <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2014-07-30-toxic-lonmin-police-collusion-blamed-for-marikana-massacre" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘toxic collusion’</a>between the police and the mining company Lonmin.
As the inquiry progressed, Mpofu and others made strenuous efforts to blame Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy president of South Africa for the bloody denouement of 16 August. At the time Ramaphosa was a shareholder and non-executive director of Lonmin as well as a member of the ruling <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/officials/national-executive-committee-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ANC’s National Executive Committee</a>.
The commission itself uncovered evidence that collusion went some way beyond the police commanders and Lonmin executives on the ground. At a special briefing two days before the massacre the police commissioner for the North West province, Lieutenant General Miriam Mbombo, told a senior Lonmin executive that police were planning to move in to “kill” the strikers’ protest.
Mbombo revealed that she was acutely aware of the influence wielded by Ramaphosa. She also admitted being alive to the risk of allowing Julius Malema, who had been expelled as leader of the ANC’s Youth League, to make political capital out of the dispute.
Based on the transcript of this briefing, the Commission found that both Mbombo and the then National Commissioner of police, General Riah Phiyega, were complicit in raising political factors in their discussions about <a href="http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/marikana-report-1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policing in Marikana</a>. It found these discussions to be “inappropriate” and inconsistent with the constitutional requirement that policing should be conducted in an impartial and unbiased manner.
The Commission also determined that the fatal decision to forcibly remove the striking miners from the koppie they were occupying was taken by Mbombo and not by tactical commanders with expertise in public order policing. It was then endorsed at an extraordinary session of the South African Police Service’s national management forum late on 15 August.
The commission did not find a direct link between anyone in political authority having ordered the police to take action. It did, however, conclude that the decision to remove the strikers from the koppie was at least partly the consequence of the senior police officials feeling the need to act and to be seen to act.
This idea that the police commanders at Marikana did not need to be told what to do, or how to do it, is consistent with the social theorist Steven Lukes’ three-dimensional view of power and the ability of the powerful to secure the compliance of those they dominate without either making decisions or giving orders. The generals knew what had to be done to end a costly and politically damaging protest. They knew that it had to be done without further delay, and, if necessary, with the use of force. The result, as we now know, was the loss of 34 lives.
The way in which power, subtly but with far reaching consequences, was used at Marikana may also tell us something about how it’s used in contemporary South Africa more generally to control, perhaps even to capture, not just the police but other state institutions far beyond the criminal justice system. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bill-dixon-137304" rel="author">Bill Dixon, </a>Professor of Criminology, University of Nottingham
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>
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The Misery Commission

What the lack of accountability for Marikana says about Zuma’s government

On cold day in June, hundreds of young and elderly villagers in Mqanduli, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, some with faces painted with white clay and others smoking pipes, joined members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) who wore heavy green jackets to keep the cold at bay. Among them were Joseph Mathunjwa, Amcu’s fearless president, lawyers Dumisa Ntsebeza and James Nichol, the latter a pro bono lawyer from Britain. Mathunjwa, and his union members, were back at the village to fulfil a promise made to the Marikana families. Upon seeing desperation at the funeral of Noki in this village, Mathunjwa vowed to build 37 three-bedroom houses for the families of the deceased.
Mathunjwa tried in vain to stop the fatal charge of his men towards police during the Marikana massacre. He often wept at his failure. Now five years after the biggest incident of police brutality since democracy in South Africa, where 34 miners lost their lives, 78 were wounded and 250 sent to jail, Amcu returned to Mqanduli, to rejoice with the family of Noki, known as the man with the green blanket.
It took five years of struggle to raise the money to build the houses; Noki’s family was the first to benefit. The face-brick house stands among scattered mud houses standing on the side a hill next to a dusty road. Poverty is palpable in these parts of the Eastern Cape; as a result many young men are attracted to the mines, far from home, even before finishing school.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2014/03/01/time-fool-around-black-people/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8216;The Time To Fool Around With Black People Is Over&#8217;</a>
Mathunjwa, before cutting the ribbon to the house and handing it over to the 30-year-old widow of Noki, spoke harshly about youth who drop out of school and run to the mines. He did not spare the government either.
“If our government, led by the ANC, could change the economic policies that will retain our raw material and create jobs for the youth – there’s nothing we cannot do on our own here in Africa with the resources that God blessed us with – this unemployment rate of 27%, we can reduce it to zero. In Germany, about 4.3% of people are unemployed. I don’t see a reason why we cannot do the same,” says Mathunjwa.
“All other nations come here to amass wealth and they leave us with nothing. We have turned into consumers; we are incapable of producing things for ourselves. No, Africans let’s be liberated in our minds. There’s not a politician that is going to liberate you… Look at East and West Germany right now. Those people spent many years in wars but see them today, when you enter Berlin it is so advanced because of our platinum and economy to enrich other nationalities,” says the scathing Mathunjwa.
Mathunjwa said we cannot be a nation that is too dependent on the government. It’s a shame that 17 million people in South Africa are beneficiaries of government grants, he said.
The villagers remembered Noki as their hero. He was merciless on the football field, something that his lanky 15-year-old son got from him. To the miners who sang revolutionary songs about him, Noki was the fearless leader. Mathunjwa told the villagers that Noki didn’t die in vain as the union was close to achieving the minimum wage of R12,500 ($960) the miners demanded in 2012.
“Mambush was a hero. I am proud of him. I was very angry at first but over time I have come to peace with what happened to my husband and his fellow unionists who died in the hands of police,” says Mathapelo Lekoetje, Noki’s customary wife, who’s a clerk at the mine hospital in Carletonville, outside Johannesburg.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/12/01/they-dig-they-die/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">They Dig, They Die</a>
Lekoetje, who is left with five children to raise, says she could not grieve for long after her husband died. Noki, who would have turned 35 this year, worked as an underground miner for a platinum mine in Rustenburg. He was driven by the pittance he earned to join the strike that ended his life.
“Amcu has been fabulous to the families. Since the tragic death of my husband, and throughout the <a href="http://www.marikanacomm.org.za/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Farlam Commission</a>, we never felt alone,” says Lekoetje.
“The spirit of Mambush lives on far and wide, beyond the boundaries of South Africa. His name is known in trade unions in many, many countries. I have spoken at meetings in the United States of America, Germany, Switzerland, France, Denmark and many other countries about the atrocity and murders of Marikana miners. But each time I speak, my mind is directed towards that courageous man who sought a peaceful solution to the tragedy of Marikana and that man was Mambush. His spirit lives on, his light is a beacon to all those burdened,” says Nichol.
“In 10 years’ time, when your children ask what happened in Marikana, you will tell them about Mambush. And in 50 years when the grandchildren ask what happened in Marikana, you will tell them about Mambush. And in 100 years’ time when their children ask what happened in Marikana, you will tell them about Mambush. Mambush is now part of South African history and his name will live on forever,” says Nichol.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2014/08/01/the-misery-commission/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Misery Commission</a>
Since the Marikana massacre, Nichol has been traveling between Britain and South Africa representing Amcu for free. He was part of the team of lawyers representing the union at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry, led by retired judge Ian Farlam.
“I have tried leaving South Africa and going back to London, but each time I get money I find myself booking an airline ticket back to Johannesburg and then to the Eastern Cape to meet my African family,” says Nichol.
Houses will help. It is all the Marikana families have for now. The families hope they will get justice too.

Marikana: A Promise Kept Through Tears Of Grief

August 16 2012. Thirty-four miners, mostly employed by Lonmin, on strike for a wage hike, were shot and killed by South African police in Marikana in Rustenburg, South Africa.
The men who died left behind wives and children who have suffered both pain and poverty in their loss.
FORBES WOMAN AFRICA visited six young widows who have now relocated to Marikana to work and be their families’ sole bread-winners. Most of them are cleaners earning a little more than their husbands did, living in a hostel at the Vulindlela Training Institute (that trains miners). They all share the same anger at the cops who shot down their men and changed their lives forever.
Walking around Vulindlela, you soon realize most of those affected by the Marikana massacre are resident in this area. It is now a community of the inconsolable, as they go about their lives at work or at school, returning to neighbourly chats, and time alone reflecting their fate.
They speak in chaste isiXhosa and seSotho, languages tough for an average Johannesburg-born city dweller like me to comprehend. But their emotions convey more than any language can ever do, as these pictures that follow show.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30795 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Nombulelo-099-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nombulelo-099-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nombulelo-099-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nombulelo-099-600x903.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nombulelo-099-681x1024.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nombulelo-099.jpg 680w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
Double tragedy
When Lesotho-born Mathabile Monesa, 25, lost her husband Khanane Elias Monesa that fateful day in Marikana, she was pregnant. At the time, she was living with her in-laws in Lesotho and her husband was the sole provider to a family of nine.
There was more tragedy in store.
Weeks after his death, she was admitted to hospital and lost their unborn child, a son. Doctors put it down to stress and depression.
“It was painful knowing that our provider was killed, knowing that I now have to put food on the table for the family with the money I made from sewing,” says Monesa.
Monesa hopes the R12,500 ($900) the miners were fighting for will also be given to the widows in the future.
&nbsp;
Loved dearly, missed sorely
Just two rooms from Monesa’s, 35-year-old Nombulelo Ntongo from the Eastern Cape is on the phone with her seven-year-old daughter, who suffers epilepsy, and who she only sees during the Easter break and the December holidays.
Before losing her husband Bongani Nqongophele, she lived with her mother-in-law, daughter and five other family members in the Eastern Cape.
“After the death of Bongani, it was hard, our child was sick and I couldn’t take her to the doctor; she was small and epileptic and I couldn’t even buy food and clothes, nobody could take Bongani’s place because he was the only one who could take care of us,” she says.
Today, Ntongo sends money home to her mother-in-law for food and doctor fees, as well as for her daughter’s school uniform. Lonmin pays the school fees.
“If I had an alternative, I would leave this job and go back home. I’m not here because I want to, I’m here because I don’t have a choice; it is not nice living here and the child living back home.”
Nqongophele’s memory lives on. In Ntongo’s little bedroom are pictures and messages from her daughter pasted on the door. Nqongophele was loved dearly by his family.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30793 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Masebolai-116-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Masebolai-116-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Masebolai-116-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Masebolai-116-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Masebolai-116.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
‘He was left to die’
Rebuselelitsoe Lefulebe, 26, from Lesotho and speaking Xhosa, can’t supress her incessant tears, even now, three years after her husband Bongani Mdze’s death in the Marikana massacre. She remembers the day like it was yesterday, when she was visiting him.
“He died upon arrival at hospital, he was left for more than an hour at the scene after he was shot; he was left to die; if he had received help, he would still be alive,” says Lefulebe.
Lefulebe recalls how Mdze had looked after his sister’s three children and his own child with his meager pay.
“Today, the children aren’t happy living with relatives back home; they tell me everything and mention things are not the same since daddy has gone.”
Mdze had applied and passed the test for a supervisor position. Had he been alive, Mdze would have earned more than Lefulebe does now.
&nbsp;
The mother far away
A few blocks away, we visit a mother of five, Nosakhe Nokamba. Today, she is her family’s only bread-winner. Currently living with two of her children, she sends money home to the care-taker to feed the three others who she also sends to school.
When her husband Ntandazo died, he was 36, leaving young children.
“It’s been hard around here, when I sit alone and think you know you are not at home and the only reason I’m here is because my husband left us, and now I’m separated from our children,” says Nokamba.
&nbsp;
‘Where is daddy?’
Twenty nine-year-old Nosihle Ngweyi is miner Michael Ngweyi’s widow. Before his death, Ngweyi lived with their two children in the Eastern Cape.
“The challenges I’m facing are the children. They ask questions I sometimes may not be able to answer. They would ask, ‘where is daddy? When is he coming home?’ I would respond by telling them not to ask that question again because daddy is not coming home,” says Ngweyi painfully.
She says after her husband’s death, she was left with a lot of responsibility and an incomplete house with only a fence. With the compensation she received after the tragedy, she built a two-room house and lived there.
Ngweyi’s therapy is school. She says after work she would rather go to school and learn and be busy, rather than dwell on the past.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30794 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Mathabisile-042-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mathabisile-042-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mathabisile-042-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mathabisile-042-600x903.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mathabisile-042-681x1024.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mathabisile-042.jpg 680w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
‘I have to sustain them’
Masebolai Liau was married to Janfeke Liau and they were both from Lesotho. Today, she lives far away from her village, her home and the cows and sheep she has left with care-takers she remunerates every month.
She knows not in what state her livestock is.
“I try but it’s hard. I do this because I have to sustain the people and the belongings my husband left. His family, our family, our farmers and the farm, he could do this all by himself,” she says.
Liau wishes for a support group so people can express their feelings and find comfort in each other’s pain.

Hill-054-bw

Wives.Widows. Survivors.

Mmusi Maimane – Democratic Alliance leader: It is an insult to them [miners and their families] that three years later, not a single person has been criminally prosecuted or taken political responsibility for the tragic events. The report that was supposed to provide some sense of closure has now called for further investigations. But how many more years will it be before those responsible are held to account? The constitution clearly vests political accountability for the South African Police Service with the Minister and National Commissioner; at the very least former Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, and the National Police Commissioner, Riah Phiyega, should take political responsibility for the events that occurred under their watch. There is something very wrong with a system that allows those who presided over the slaughter to remain in office without any penalties.
Dali Mpofu – Miners’ lawyer: The commission did not look at the underlying issues. It confined itself to the issues of who pulled the trigger and all sorts of technicalities about who was standing where without really interrogating the fundamental underlying issues that caused the conflict in the first place.
Julius Malema – Economic Freedom Fighters leader: While the commission of inquiry had the power and mandate to recommend further actions and persecutions in certain cases, the Economic Freedom Fighters believes that the actions of [Deputy President] Cyril Ramaphosa and Mthethwa had a casual effect on the mass killings in Marikana. We think Judge Farlam did a good job. He did what he was asked to do, although within a short period because of the terms of reference, he did not have an opportunity to dig deep.
Livhuwani Mammburu – National Union of Mineworkers spokesperson:  We welcome the report, but from the beginning we were worried when the strike started. The commission found that the strikers who marched to NUM’s offices did so with violent intent and found that the actions of the NUM can’t be criticized. We welcome the recommendation for further investigation. We maintain that NUM officials and members acted within the parameters of private defence.
Joseph Mathunjwa – Head of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union: There is no truth, no justice. I think the commission was made as a gesture not to find the truth. This was another two years wasted. If there is no truth that is unearthed, there will be no healing. This was just a cover up exercise to cover the executives and the blunder of the government.
Zwelinzima Vavi – Former General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions: I find this insulting and insensitive. A new commission of inquiry must look at the conditions of both work and living conditions. Once the terms of the commission were amended, with the president writing another letter in April reminding the commission of inquiry that it can do everything except to make a finding on the executives, then you must know that by design the commission by Farlam was a fuss. It was never intended to give the victims and South Africa a point of knowing that they now are in a better position because the facts are out and they know who is responsible for all the deaths of the workers that perished. There is no truth, there is no justice… Where is the commission on the fitness of those who appointed them, the President for example? The commission is designed not to find the truth. It is designed to put junior officials as the fall guys.
Mosiuoa Lekota – Congress of the People leader: The moment that the terms of reference were amended to say the commission may not make any findings on the executives is one of the most shocking things that suggest that it was an order not to probe the central issue of political accountability to the people and to the nation.
Gareth Newham – Head of the Governance, Crime and Justice Division at the Institute for Security Studies: The deaths of the miners are unjustifiable. There is no finding that the police were under attack. The four commanders who testified, who stood in front of those members who shot, said they didn’t feel under attack. The police have not showed that what happened at scene two was self-defence.

No Truth, No Justice

As a journalist, I will always remember the evening of June 25, 2015. At 7PM, I was driving in the darkness along the Magaliesberg Mountains, with my eyes trained on the tar of the N4 highway and my ears straining to hear the radio over the engine, towards Marikana the land of despair.
On this night, Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa, spoke over the radio the findings of the Marikana Commission overseen by retired Judge Ian Farlam. It was a long and painstaking business the FORBES AFRICA team dubbed the Misery Commission.
The Marikana Massacre, between 11 and 16 August 2012, sprang from a wildcat strike, outside the Lonmin mine, along South Africa’s Rustenburg platinum belt, 120 kilometers north west of Johannesburg. Forty-four people, including miners, security guards and police, were killed.
It was on May 14, 2013, nine months after the massacre, when I first laid eyes on this hill where people died. It rang with the chants of thousands of miners on another wildcat strike. The protestors littered the hill, dressed in the green of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and carrying knobkerries. The atmosphere was tense as they marched to the Wonderkop Stadium, a kilometer away.
I remember asking journalists then, where they had been when the gunfire started on August 16, 2012? They would point, like hounds to a scent, at patches of dirt etched in their memories. The spots where they dived for cover from the gunfire that brought an end to the lives of 34 miners.
On June 25, 2015, as the report outlining that day was released and the expected portion of blame given, the night air held a deafening silence. I remember jumping out the car, opening the boot and shivering to set up a tripod and camera. The hill was cold and barren under the starry sky.
We drove around the township searching for people who had been listening to the broadcast. To our disappointment, many that were awake did not watch, or even know the report was being released. On this night, Bongikhaya Ndumndum, a former pipe maintenance worker at the mine, was in his home on the corner of the township, meters away from the quiet hill. He didn’t hear the news.
“I remember the police being here. When the police started shooting I ran,” recalls Ndumndum.
The Commission sat for 300 days, ringed by journalists from around the world, in the heart of Pretoria. Among suits, laptops and lever arch files were the truths of how the massacre happened.
Farlam’s 600-page document was summarized by Zuma in 24 minutes.
The report absolved a number of key players. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, a shareholder of Lonmin, who allegedly sent an email to other shareholders to deal with the problem; Minister of Women in the Presidency, and former Mining Minster, Susan Shabangu; Minister of Arts and Culture, and former Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa; and Joseph Mathunjwa, the Head of Amcu, were exonerated.
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Others, according to the enquiry, did not easily escape. The Commission recommended a full investigation into the criminal liability of all the members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) involved. The killings and assaults prior to August 16, 2012, should be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions‚ for further investigation.
The Commission also ordered a probe in National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega’s fitness to hold office. Both the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Amcu are accused of not exercising control over its members and endangering bystanders. Lonmin is accused of failing to comply with its housing obligations, which created the environment to begin the strike.
It also issued that a panel should revise the strategies of public order policing within SAPS and implement proper protocols to best dissolve violent clashes. The SAPS training methods were proved to be inadequate and should be revised, including basic first aid training.
It was not closure for all. As the night stretched on, we found a group of journalists who had returned from inside the iron fences of Lonmin. In a small TV room, the families of the victims and their legal representatives waited anxiously for the findings, but by the time the president had finished, the mines had not set up the TV, a small but telling irritation for the families.
Just another cold night on the fields of the Misery Commission.

The Slaughter Of 34 Miners That Shocked The World

It’s hard to believe that two years have passed since the tragic killing of 34 miners in Marikana. The horrific visuals of the shooting on August 16, 2012, remain fresh in the mind. Thousands of mine workers had been protesting against their meagre wages and poor living conditions when police opened fire, killing 34 of them. Police say they were provoked. South African’s were in shock like the rest of the world. Many believe the disaster was waiting to happen while others say the tragic events started a revolution. What did become clear that day is that despite the courageous fight against apartheid being won, the battle against inequality in South Africa is far from over. But has anything changed in the last two years?
<div id="attachment_2969" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2969" class="size-medium wp-image-2969" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/051201050-Desai-683x1024-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Amsterdam, 30-11-2005 International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam IDFA 2005 Rehad DESAI Jury Amnesty Award Foto Felix Kalkman</div>
South Africa has some of the most valuable minerals in the world. For decades, men have slogged, under poor safety conditions, to recover these precious assets from deep beneath the ground, touching and feeling the gems, but never having ownership of them. The mining industry remains South Africa’s biggest revenue earner. Considering the importance, one would assume employees in this sector would be well taken care of, if not by their employers, at least by the government.
For years, mine workers and labor unions have raised their concerns, hoping for change. The recent Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) strike in the platinum sector made sure that this time the pleas of workers will be heard. Relentlessly, for five months, workers were gripped with poverty, hunger and cold until finally there was some respite. The unprecedented 22-week strike made history. The three major platinum producers finally agreed to higher wages, not what Amcu was demanding but enough to get them to return to the mines.
Reaction to the wage deal was mixed with many industry analysts calling it a loss for the workers.  Amcu called it a victory. But will this victory see real transformation in the mining industry?
Amcu leader Joseph Mathunjwa, now a household name, says the strike was not just for social justice but also to honor the workers that were killed at Marikana. Two years later, the Farlam Commission of Inquiry set up to probe the shooting is still trying to find out what led to the tragedy and who was responsible.
Political activist and filmmaker, Rehad Desai, has placed together his account of what happened on that day. In his new documentary Miners Shot Down, Desai pieces together witness accounts, interviews with political heavyweights and even victims that survived the shooting, to expose the social injustices that exist on the mining grounds of Rustenburg, 120 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg.
The film also tells a story of how the ANC, a party once obsessed with fighting for human rights and social and economic equality, lost its way and ended up in Marikana.
Miners Shot Down is a chilling account of the events that led to what has been dubbed the Marikana massacre, using video footage and interviews from the seven days in which miners were striking for better wages.
“I thought it was very important to attempt to set the record straight, to show people what happened and in the process of showing people what happened you begin to understand why it happened,” he says.
Desai was born into a politically active family. His father, Barney, was a leader of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the family had to flee South Africa in 1963. Desai grew up in Britain but his parents constantly reminded him of his roots. While still a teenager, he joined his father in politics, passionate about fighting racism and capitalism. Both returned to South Africa in 1990. Rehad became a trade unionist with socialist ideals but after his father died, he ventured into television and film producing. To date, he has a string of documentaries to his name, many of which have garnered international acclaim for human rights.
His latest film is a story of working class South Africans that have been failed by their government, a government they believed was on their side.
“I think the revolution is coming back, the question is will there be a mature enough leadership to lead it or will the ANC, our ruling party, be mature enough to lead it, to be able to address the very real issues that this country faces or will they continue to follow the same path where the bulk of our people are excluded from the benefits?” asks Desai.
He is steadfast that the shooting on that fateful day was no accident, no measure of self-defense, but a conspired action to eliminate a problem. The film pieces together footage not seen by the public, scenes of the days before the shooting.
“It didn’t just happen, there were events that led to the shooting,” says Desai.
Horrific scenes of dead miners lying on the ground gives you an instant jolt back in time to the attacks carried out on innocent black people under apartheid, children scrambling for safety from gunshots. Desai admits that miners retaliated, but only after they were shot at first.
“Just as they were nearing their informal settlement, a number of vehicles moved in quick succession to sort of box them in, block them off and as that happened and as the miners drew nearer, teargas was fired at them, birdshot and rubber bullets, one of the mineworkers got his pistol out and fired back.”
This was the scene captured by television crews, played out on screens across the world, leading many to believe that the police fired in self-defense. But, Desai wants to know why police had live ammunition and why they had 8,000 rounds of ammunition that day. It is a question that is still being probed by the Farlam Commission of Enquiry. For Desai, it is clear cut; someone from the top gave the order.
Desai’s film takes a poignant look at the ANC as a movement and ruling party over the last 20 years, by following Cyril Ramaphosa.
“Cyril’s story from the 1980s, tells the story of the ANC, a movement which was heroic, courageous, vibrant, responsive, democratic which led a struggle against a white minority regime and succeeded,” says Desai.
Ramaphosa, once passionate about worker’s rights, formed the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1982. He later became a politician serving under Nelson Mandela. He left in 1999 to become a successful businessman, returning to politics in 2013.
At the time of the Marikana shooting, Ramaphosa was a non-executive member on the Lonmin board. The Marikana mine belongs to Lonmin.
“With the political kingdom the ANC gained, they lost sight of the bigger issues related to our economic democracy and we can see that story encapsulated inside the life trajectory of the man who’s become the deputy president of the ANC,” says Desai.
In March, Miners Shot Down was released at the One World film festival in Prague. The film took top honors, winning the Vaclav Havel Jury award for its exceptional contribution to human rights. It also won the Camera Justitia Award at the Movies that Matter Festival in the Netherlands.
The documentary is part of an ongoing campaign for justice by the miners and their families. They want the police to be prosecuted. Instead, miners are facing murder charges for the police that were killed. Explosive evidence recently emerged at the commission about killings committed by mine workers.  Witness accounts of atrocities committed by Amcu members, attacks on their fellow members for defying strike orders, the brutal mutilation and murders of police and of members of the rival union NUM. The commission expects to continue for some time as more new evidence comes to light.
The latest evidence again raises questions, what kind of struggle is this? No doubt there will be more stories to be told about Marikana.

Holding Up A Mirror To A Massacre

It is a Tuesday morning in Rustenburg, the heart of the platinum belt, in the north west of South Africa. On days like this, at the end of the month, this town is usually buzzing with business. The hardship of months of striking at the platinum mines has turned Rustenburg into a ghost town – a poor one at that.
“There’s no business at all here, sales have dropped drastically since the strike resumed in January. We don’t even come close to the business target. Food is going to waste as there are no customers buying. The business has reached its all-time low figures,” laments a restaurant manager who has put her staff on short time.
The manager at this restaurant, who asked not to be named, says because of the long Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) strike she was instructed to reduce her staff’s working hours and pay.
“The bosses are aware of the situation. Generally, a sound business practice is that if you fail to make profit, you either close shop or downsize the staff. I have a fear this will happen if the strike does not end soon. People are suffering; I have a fear that crime will rise because people are desperate to make ends meet. In this shop we also fear for our lives. What if someone walks in armed and demands we hand him chicken,” she says.
At around lunchtime, Marikana Fruit and Veg co-owner, Michael Bendu, was removing rotten bananas from the shelves. He says he hasn’t had a customer all day.
“For me the business is 80% down and I am about to close shop if it continues like this in this month. Electricity, salaries, the rent of this shop and my house are taking their toll. I can’t deal with it.”
Bendu supplies mine hawkers and was making $955 a day before the strike.
“You can stay with me for the day; I promise you will hardly see customers entering the shop. Those who come are not buying in bulk. We can’t carry on like this. I have plenty of credit accounts with my customers but they can’t pay and I understand their plight,” he says.
Bendu often ends up giving away his fruit rather than see it rot.
“Here we survive by mineworkers. The mines are the backbone of our economy. I don’t know what will happen when the backbone collapses,” Bendu.
A few hundred meters from Bendu’s shop stands Marikana Wholesalers, operating since 2006, a stone’s throw away from where miners camp.
Owner, David Neto, says he lost around $955 though rotting food in March alone. In the past, he used to lend money to his hard-up workers but he can’t afford that anymore.
“I am at my bones. I can’t afford to further cut down the prices. It doesn’t make business sense,” says Neto.
“My staff is currently on flexi-hours. I have to force them to take leave, taking advantage of the poor business. The current situation is hurting everyone, I can’t afford a fulltime domestic worker anymore and I need a plumber but I can’t call him. The situation is creating all kinds of nonsense. Everyone is desperate these days. Taxis are forcing passengers off buses. It’s chaos here. My turnover is half of what it used to be. It is painful that I am paying my workers to look at passing people and watch the sun turning,” says Neto.
The taxis that ferry thousands of miners are also feeling the pain.
“Business is bad; the strike is the worst in the history of platinum mines. These are the days we would be seen busy but people are not using our services. This strike must come to an end because the banks will repossess our taxis as we are failing to pay our debts,” says Mojalefa Rantoa, a taxi driver.
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On the side of the road, two Mozambican hawkers, Gina Javana and Julia Makwakwa, watch their pile of spinach and tomatoes rot, along with their dreams.
“Worst time ever. We are so despondent. We came to Marikana to make ends meet but now we don’t know why we should stay when things have turned this bad. We couldn’t return home in December and Good Friday is here. We have no means to see our families, we are stuck here,” says Makwakwa.
Godfrey Jakaya, a 30-year-old Tanzanian herbalist, says in his five years in Marikana it’s never been so bad. He has had to move to a smaller shop to save rent.
“The business is not doing well, my family is living off my savings but it’s drying up. I am just glad my two children are too young to understand what we are going through with my unemployed wife. No more KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) meat for them.”
The strike has led to increased violence in the area. Business owners are the targets of robbers who are desperate to get their hands on their stock. Some striking miners have also been involved in clashes with police and workers on their way to the mines.
It has been tough on the strikers, who used to earn around $400 a month, as well. A group of striking Amcu members is seen walking aimlessly in the market area.
“Our landlords are on strike as we are. They understand we can’t pay as we are not earning a penny. But we have an understanding that we hustle for electricity and that’s all we can manage,” says one striker, who refused to give his name.
If the strike is still on when you read this, the hustle of Rustenburg can only get worse.

Rotten Food,  Rotten Strike

On a dirt road, outside the mining shafts of Lonmin, 120 kilometers north west of Johannesburg there are 34 white crosses.
Days before the first anniversary of Marikana, miners ripped them up and threw them among the nearby rocks. The beating sun and biting wind eats at their enamel sheen.
A South African opposition party put up these crosses to commemorate the bloodbath. A year on, rock drill operator Siphiwe Booi, who has worked in the depths of Lonmin’s mine for 23 years, is tearing them down.
“The DA [Democratic Alliance] put these crosses up, not us [the miners]. It was a ploy to win votes. We are going to surround this hill with a fence and put up a headstone with all the names of those who fell. Us. The miners,” says Booi.
<div id="attachment_2111" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2111" class="size-medium wp-image-2111" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_8437-300x226.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="226" />Head of the Marikana Commission, Ian Farlam, leaves after postponing proceedings again</div>
In many ways the rise and fall of the crosses is one of the precious few manifestations of change in the post-Marikana world.
Miners, such as Booi, want justice rather than memorials, for the 34 miners who died on August 16, 2012, in a wildcat strike.
“I woke up that day to find the verdict of the wage negotiations. Little did I know, I was waking up to death. I remember the line of police shouting: ‘Media get back’. The police stepped forward in a line. Then the sound came: ta-ta-ta-ta. The next I saw was a man in a Bafana Bafana shirt dropping next to me,” says Booi.
He fumbles in his jeans and pulls out a cellphone. He points to a picture.
“This was my friend, my work colleague, that was August 16,” he says.
Booi feels nothing has changed since that day. He is also one of the many witnesses who stood in the hallway of the Farlam Commission, an hour-and-a-half drive from his home in Marikana West. The commission, in Centurion near Pretoria, was charged by President Jacob Zuma to find out who was to blame for Marikana.
On the same day Booi was pulling up the crosses, the families of mine workers and police alike rubbed shoulders, a world away, at the commission. They sat, ringed by cameramen, united by the need for closure. Among suits, laptops and lever arch files the truth is expected to emerge.
The commission has sent a year sifting through 12,000 pages of statements, inspections, video footage and evidence. The end, expected on October 13, is nowhere in sight. The commission has not moved at the speed he wished, admits Ian Farlam, head of the commission and retired Supreme Court judge, days before the anniversary.
The delay has been hard for Lizy Maubane, sister of one of the policemen who was killed on August 13 2012.  Since his death she has been depressed, at times suicidal. All she wants is closure.
Accusations of unequal funding have also delayed the commission, admits Farlam.
Advocate Dali Mpofu, who represents the injured miners, walked out of the commission after he was not paid. The miners must pay R400,000 ($40,000) a month for Mpofu&#8217;s services. The tax payers collect a R36 million ($3.6 million) bill for the defense of the police.
Mpofu refuses to defend the miners until he has taken the matter to the South African Constitutional Court. Here, he hopes to be granted state funds.
The 12 parties at the commission are allowed to cross-examine each witness—testimony that has to be heard in several languages. This is an issue, says Farlam.
“With so many witnesses and cross-examinations it was inevitable that the process would not be rapid,&#8221; he says.
The good news is that the commission has been granted funds to install a simultaneous translation device, which will speed up the fact checking process, says Farlam.
In the interim, Farlam is eager to push through with proceedings, hoping a secret financial backer can pay Mpofu’s bill. A large scale walkout could spell disaster.
“I just want to say one thing to the government, please pay the lawyers,” says Booi.
The mining industry is also struggling, post Marikana. According to the Chamber of Mines, 60% of the gold mines in South Africa are unprofitable. Costs are rising amid the threat of more wildcat strikes. Even the time honored pay negotiations are in dispute and disarray.
For the miners, who sweat underground, the future of mining is a far away concept. They are too busy struggling to live. At the very least in Centurion, it’s the lawyers, wearing suits that cost more than a year’s wages in the mines, that have the job of unearthing the truth so that justice can be done.

Little Did I Know,  I Was Waking Up To Death

Less than nine months after the shooting that shocked the world, conflict and tension are back at the richest mines in Africa. Thirty four miners were shot and killed, on August 16, following a week of wildcat strikes in Marikana, South Africa. Now the platinum belt is at war once again.
Miners at Lonmin downed tools for two days following the death of a union leader. The wildcat strike sent share prices tumbling a day after the company had posted positive results. Lonmin shares fell more than 10% over the two days while the rand retreated to a three-week low against the dollar, on fears that the unrest might spread across a sector that accounts for nearly half of South Africa’s foreign exchange earnings.
As an inquiry into the deaths of the 34 miners continued around 40kms away, in Rustenburg, hundreds of miners belonging to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) marched to the infamous koppie, where the massacre occurred.
In 2012, the strike was over wages; this time around it was union rivalry. Amcu accused the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of killing one of their office bearers. NUM denies it. Amcu, which has 70% of the membership at Lonmin, is demanding NUM leave their offices at the mine.
In the scorching heat of Marikana, it was a menacing site as miners chanted and danced their way to Wonderkop Stadium. More than 6,000 Amcu members chanted anti-NUM slogans and sang: “Who killed Steve, the man we loved so much”. This referred to the killing of 46-year-old Mawethu Steven, a shop steward who was shot dead while watching football at a tavern on May 11.
“If they have proof of us committing the killings then they must take it to the police,” says Lesiba Seshoka, spokesperson of NUM.
Following a marathon of meetings with Lonmin management, Amcu regional leaders addressed members at the packed stadium just after 4PM on a day where they vowed not to return to work until Lonmin management had kicked out NUM.
Addressing members, who were sitting on the grass using a loudspeaker system, an Amcu leader said the meeting they had attended yielded no results, as Lonmin management had declined to shut down NUM offices.
“The main issue at the meeting was our demand for the closure of NUM offices. After a meeting that started at 5AM, there’s nothing we’re bringing to you. What they [Lonmin] are saying is that they want you to go back to work,” says the leader.
Members reacted angrily and refused to go back to work at the 13 shafts that lay idle at Lonmin. Following deliberations, the leaders invited six workers from the 13 shafts, which have been affected by the strike to respond to the outcome of the meeting.
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All six workers said their co-workers would not return to work because management and government are colluding with NUM. They added that they [Lonmin and government] are allowing their members to carry dangerous weapons to the shafts.
“The employer is clearly showing that he is sleeping with NUM and government. We are not going back to work until NUM vacates the mine,” he says.
Another miner refusing to go back to work said: “What management is saying is the same as farting under water—you can’t hear it”.
Three days later, miners made a U-turn and returned underground.
Meanwhile at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) Rustenburg, the planned retrenchment of 6,000 miners is set to get ugly. Miners are prepared to fight back and embark on a massive strike that will halt production and send shockwaves around platinum shares.
Workers committee member Evans Ramokga says the company is not backing down on retrenchments, and workers had taken it upon themselves to fight. He says after mass meetings at different shafts, workers have decided to go on strike.
“Unions have done their part and negotiated on our behalves. Now the workers have decided to lead their cause. No one is happy about the retrenchments. Workers are saying if Amplats cannot run the mines they must leave and surrender the mines to another company that will save jobs,” says Ramokga.
Meanwhile on May 21, security guards fired rubber bullets at strikers at Lanxess mine, Rustenburg—one of the biggest suppliers of chrome ore. Five people were injured. The illegal strike was over bonuses.
Days of unrest lie ahead.

The Ghosts Of Marikana

The wise, white-haired lawyer who has seen a thousand trials, nodded sagely as he spoke about the shooting that shocked the world. He believes the South African Police Services and government will pay for the deaths of 34 miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in Rustenburg, north-west of Johannesburg.
London-based criminal defense lawyer James Nichol traveled 5,600 miles to Johannesburg for a couple of weeks, to give his services for free. Those weeks turned into months of shocking evidence.
<div id="attachment_1590" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1590" class="size-medium wp-image-1590" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_1167-300x235.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="235" />James Nichol</div>
“There is no question of self-defense here, these are police officers who had gone completely berserk and had fired into these people. And in some cases there’s evidence of a number of strikers who had been shot in the back,” says Nichol.
The hearings are revealing evidence on how the miners died and 78 others were injured. The week before, 10 people—six miners, two police officers and two Lonmin security guards—were killed as thousands went on a wildcat strike, over pay.
When Nichol saw the images of the Marikana massacre in his living room in England, it reminded the 67-year-old of the shock he felt about the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. On that fateful day in the township south of Johannesburg, the police shot into a crowd of around 5,000 unarmed anti-pass protestors, killing 69 people—many shot in the back—and wounding more than 200.
At 15 years of age, he took to the streets, in his hometown of Newcastle, calling to boycott the apartheid regime.
Nichol knows how hard mining is. He started work as a miner at 15, while his father worked at a coal mine from age 14 near Newcastle. Nichol senior died from dust related heart disease when he was just 40. It left Nichol bringing up his siblings—their mother had died earlier from tuberculosis.
Nichol worked his way up to specialize in miscarriages of justice and is a lawyer for the Socialist Workers Party, of which he is a member. He defended miners during the famous miners’ strike in Britain between 1984-1985.
With the help of a legal team from the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), Nichol represents the families at the commission, which is chaired by retired judge Ian Farlam. It is examining whether the police were justified in using lethal force, whether union rivalry triggered the violent strike and whether Lonmin played a role.
Nichol says the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) had abandoned its members. He says the union did not write to the bereaved families or represent them at the commission.
“I can think of no graver betrayal than to do nothing for the family of a dead member of your union.”
The families were wholly ignored by the state until Nichol and Joseph Mathunjwa, the president of rival union the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU),  found them.
“It seemed to me that it was wrong. I knew then that I was here to stay,” says the lawyer.
However, NUM’s general secretary, Frans Baleni, says that it is the responsibility of the company or the owner of the infrastructure where the incident happened, to call or write to the bereaved families. He added that the families would have had to give consent to be represented by the union and its lawyers.
Nichol believes that the killings could have been avoided because stopping the strike was not about public order but more about strike breaking.
The evidence suggests the police set up an operation of 800 officers the night before the massacre, including several machine guns, rifles with stun grenades, gas grenades and water cannons, plus helicopters and razor wire. The operation also organized ambulances and fire brigades.
“The decisive point for me that this was not about public order and more about strike breaking came on the morning of August 16, when two statements were made: one by the police commissioners when she said: ‘This strike stops today’ and one by the head of press for SAPS when he said: ‘Today is D-day.’ Why? Why did it have to be today?”
Many witnesses will appear over the next few months. A ruling by Farlam is expected in May. Nichol will be listening.

“It Seemed To Me That It Was Wrong”

When Her Royal Majesty, Queen Mother Semane Bonolo Molotlegi of the Royal Bafokeng, woke up one morning to the news that miners were refusing to go underground demanding higher wages from one of the mines in which her 300,000-strong community owns shares, she immediately called the Royal Bafokeng Holdings CEO.
South Africa had made world headlines on August 16, when 34 miners in the small mining town of Marikana, in the North West province, were mowed down by police in the most brutal shootings to have hit the country since the days of apartheid.
For someone who says she’s not only unfamiliar with the workings of the corporate world, but is not involved in the family’s business affairs, didn’t it occur to her that she was crossing the line when she made that call?
Clearing it all up during our interview, she insisted that she was merely sharing a concern as “our mines are in the villages. If something like that [Marikana shooting] could happen, things would be worse in our case.”
Hers was to merely advise the CEO: “Try to be proactive. Maybe you should consider giving it [the wage increase] to them.”
Whatever the CEO was going to do with her advice, she would maintain, was entirely up to him.
As the nominal head of the royal family—their net worth is estimated at more than $5 billion—Queen Molotlegi presides over a range of mining, telecommunications and financial sector assets.
Their investment arm, the Royal Bafokeng Holdings (RBH), has substantial investments in platinum mining companies, Implats and Royal Bafokeng Platinum, and in ferrochrome miner Merafe. It also owns 1.97% of Vodacom SA, a cellular communications company with a 54% share of the South African market. RBH’s financial sector investments include a 15% interest in diversified financial services holding company RMB Holdings, as well as a related 15% interest in RMI Holdings, a company that owns stakes in some of South Africa’s largest and wealthiest insurance companies.
Royal Bafokeng also owns Platinum Stars, a team that plays in the richest football league on the African continent, South Africa’s Premier Soccer League.
“It’s all on behalf of the Bafokeng, whatever we get from the assets is of community benefit,” she says.
And it’s been like that at least from the day she joined the family after tying the knot with her children’s father in an arranged marriage back in 1963.
“My husband would get the royalties, then use the money to build infrastructure like schools, roads, bridges and clinics. When he passed away, and our eldest son took over, he continued from where his father left. And when my eldest died, too, his younger brother, who took over, followed from where his brother left.”
The Queen Mother insists she doesn’t get treated differently. She gets a salary and, like everybody else, has to work for it.
She has to submit to her boss, Kgosi Leruo Tshekedi Molotlegi, her third son and the present King of the Royal Bafokeng, who is currently running all royal affairs.
“He is in charge, I don’t meddle. I respect the fact that he is in charge,” the Queen Mother says.
What, then, is your role? I ask.
“Do I have one? I don’t think so. I jump from one role to another. I’ve ended up advising. If something is brewing, I intervene,” she says.
The Bafokeng Nation, as they prefer to call themselves, is a tight knit community, which Queen Molotlegi says has one of the most advanced political and administrative systems around.
The highest decision-making body is the Supreme Council, a kind of Parliament comprising of 92 representatives.
Twenty members of the council are elected regional representatives, while 72 are from the hereditary council of herdsmen drawn from the 72 villages that make up the Setswana-speaking nation.
The council sits at least twice a year, ostensibly “to discuss the needs of the people” and then take decisions either by consensus or through voting. The CEO of the nation’s investment company is often invited to attend the council and to report back.
Before the Supreme Council sits, the various regions hold public meetings called “makgotla”, where they thrash out matters to be taken up by their herdsmen and regional representatives to the Supreme Council.
It was at one of the Supreme Council meetings, more than 10 years ago, that the Queen Mother says the Royal House took a decision to move away from taking royalties and to get into owning mines as well as other forms of active investments. Years later, this would be followed by diversification into financial services and telecommunications.
“Knowing that mines are going to deplete at some point, does it mean we would also perish as Bafokeng? That’s when we formed RBH, realizing we can no longer have our eggs in one basket.”
As would be expected of a traditional leader, the Queen maintains the Royal House has done very well to keep its subjects—or rather, the nation—together and happy.
Not that it’s been easy.
“You are never able to please everybody”, the Queen Mother says, citing times when some “bad potatoes” from the kingdom would ask “Why don’t we take all the money and share it among everybody?”
“Some people came forward to say, ‘We know that land can secure bank loans, so can we please get our piece of land’.”
A staunch Christian, she says she “prayed and prayed”—until everyone saw sense in her and her family’s point of view.
“We had to unfortunately say we can’t do that because this is communal land. We had to ask: ‘What if you don’t pay, when the banks would have gotten in?’ The bank would take over your land.”
The land issue hasn’t come up again, leaving her with enough time nowadays to focus on her charity work, which she does through her own foundation and educational trust.
She also spends a great deal of her time going to schools to encourage learners to study.
A patron of South Africa’s national women’s football team, Banyana Banyana, she often goes to some of their matches to encourage them.
She is also the patron of Girl Guides Association of South African—the voluntary, girls-only organization, which teaches good citizenship, practical skills and moral values.
Like the girl guides, she finds herself wanting to do good, but in a world that is full of contradictions and competing priorities.
While, for example, she believed workers should just be given the wages they were asking for, to avoid a bigger crisis, her fellow investors at Impala Platinum and Royal Bafokeng thought it was something they could not afford—if they were to keep the mines sustainable and preserve the thousands of jobs their mines provide.
There is little doubt, though, about the fact that one of the things that motivate her—apart from her professed primary objective of wanting to do all things good for her nation—is the urge to stave off danger and to avoid seeing fingers pointing at her family.
And for that she relies on her own deep sense of pragmatism, and her apparent adroitness at handling conflicts—something that is missing in South Africa’s mining industry at the moment.
But that’s not to suggest she isn’t aware of her family’s privileged position and her particular place in it.
It was when I walked into the room where the Queen Mother and I were going to do the interview, that I almost immediately formulated an impression, a positive one at that. I even murmured to myself: “Mothers don’t come as simple, warm, graceful and mature”.
It was after our hour-long conversation that I realized, that beneath this benign, seemingly unsophisticated, naïve look, in fact, lay a royal who—while not oblivious to fact that she’s privileged and occupies a place in society that’s high above most—has found a way of juxtaposing humility and pride, and of looking well after her family.
Isn’t she good at her role? Whatever that role is.

The Platinum Queen

South African mining is in tatters after weeks of spreading violence and chaos that has cost R4.5 billion ($544 million) in lost production and threatened many of the country’s erstwhile prosperous mines.
More than 1,000 soldiers have been posted to Marikana and a tight police cordon thrown around the operation.The Lonmin strike has seen one shaft mothballed and 1,200 contract workers sacked.
This is the bitter aftermath of the shootings at the Marikana operations of Lonmin, near Rustenburg north west of Johannesburg, in which 45 people were killed. In the weeks that followed, the wildcat strikes and wage demands spread. It is a sign of dangerous times that Anglo American Platinum (Angloplats) decided to suspend its Rustenburg operations, on September 12, to protect its workers from intimidation—a blow to the international image of South African mining.
“Well, it has been hurt, it has been damaged. You can’t have such a serious incident during a democracy. We have to work towards making sure that we bring back the image and the sanity of the industry,” says Susan Shabangu, South Africa’s minister of mineral resources.
Then there were more wage demands at nearby Implats, strikers stopped workers going underground at Royal Bafokeng Platinum, there was a wildcat strike by 15,000 workers at Gold Fields in Carletonville, 79 kilometers west of Johannesburg; at Marikana 28,000 thousand workers refused to go back and marched with weapons as peace talks failed and wage offers were rejected. The workers want a minimum of R12,500-a-month—triple the current wage.
The unions couldn’t call the workers back and the management appeared powerless to dismiss—often a swift way of squashing an illegal strike—for fear of even more unrest.
The biggest upshot of all this is the highly regulated labor relations procedures—which has helped keep the number of mine strikes down over the years—has been bypassed, at best, mocked at worst. In the past, under the eye of independent mediators, the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, wage demands went through extensive talks and delicate mediation. Only an irrevocable breakdown would lead to a strike certificate and a legal walk out. Even then, at best there would be at most a day or two of posturing on the picket line, or even a last minute deal before a drill was downed.
“They are opening up the entire mining industry to pay demands and illegal strike action, you are not going to be able to control illegal strike action&#8230; My biggest fear is that we are not working towards a long term solution,” says the national spokesman of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Lesiba Seshoka.
The first bitter legacy of Marikana is growing distrust and animosity between workers and management in an industry where the deeper underground you work, the less you get paid.
“Let’s be fair, when CEOs get millions we say nothing, when miners ask for twelve thousand Rand everybody make a noise. The manner the economy is structured doesn’t benefit everyone,” says the president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), Joseph Mathunjwa, on August 31.
During question time in Parliament in Cape Town, on September 13, President Jacob Zuma blamed Lonmin for the unrest at Marikana saying the living conditions in the hostels left a lot to be desired and the company should have built family homes instead.
“Lonmin acknowledges that living conditions are not ideal but it is working towards better living conditions. We accept the criticism, but improving living conditions is a long process,” says Lonmin spokeswoman Sue Vey.
The second legacy of Marikana will be higher costs for mining companies, at a time when they can ill afford it, as workers appear to have proved they can ask for more wages when they want. In mining, most pay negotiations are run, in an orderly fashion, through the Chamber of Mines every two years. Gold and coal miners do this; there are proposals to bring platinum into these pay talks, but it may be too late.
Peter Major, a mining analyst with Cadiz Corporate Solutions, who has studied South African mining for more than 30 years, believes costs in platinum mining are likely to soar.
“Profit margins have fallen from 50%, a few years ago, to 10% now, quite simply the industry is running out of rope… We are getting to a point where people won’t be able to make money even at these platinum prices&#8230; It is terrifying, costs have been going up around 20% a year and these wage demands are likely to send these costs soaring even higher,” says Major.
In the angry chaos of South Africa’s mine, costs may prove the least of its problems.

Tag: Marikana

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