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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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‘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.

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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.

Tag: Miners

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Wives.Widows. Survivors.

No Truth, No Justice

The Slaughter Of 34 Miners That Shocked The World