Marikana - As the country marks five years since the Marikana Massacre, two families who lost breadwinners in the days before the mass shooting have lamented being treated like the “forgotten filth” of the tragedy.
The families of Thapelo Mabebe, a mineworker and Tsietsi Monene, a police officer, who were savagely killed in the days leading up to the tragedy of August 16, 2012 where 34 mineworkers were gunned down by police officers, said yesterday their lives had changed irrevocably.
The families described how painful it was to be discarded like “filth” by the government, political parties, Lonmin and the media - saying that all the attention fell on the mineworkers’ families, “as if our loved ones were not human”.
The two were among the 10 killed days before 34 mineworkers died.
Five years on, the people of Marikana and surrounding areas will converge on the infamous koppie in the mining community outside of Rustenburg, where 34 striking miners were shot. Picture: Matthews Baloyi/ANA Pictures
Mabebe’s older sister Hester, said her brother was murdered, because he refused to take part in the illegal strike that led to the bloodbath.
“He was violently hacked to death with a panga inside the Lonmin premises, while he was on his way to work. It looked like he was trying to run away from his assailants, because his blood trail was all over the mine’s premises,” she said.
Hester said that Mabebe’s two eldest children, who were teenagers at the time, had to drop out of school because they could not afford their monthly bus fare. Mabebe’s youngest son, aged eight, is in primary school.
His children, Hester said, live in Taung, in North West, but went to school in Pampierstad nearly 40km away, because there’s no high school in their village.
“We are heartbroken, because every year around this time we think about how life would’ve been a bit better with Thapelo around. He would have helped out financially and emotionally, as he used to do.”
Her pain is echoed by Monene’s older sister, Elizabeth Maubane, who related what she felt was the brutality meted out to her brother, claiming that Monene was killed by mineworkers who her brother, a policeman, was protecting.
“My brother was hacked with a panga on the head. He was also shot three times and there were multiple stab wounds on his body. I know this, because I was one of the people who identified his body in the government mortuary,” Maubane said.
She described the trauma suffered by her brother’s six children, the youngest of whom was only four-months-old when his father died. “The children had a lot of anger in the beginning, but they went for counselling. They are still traumatised, I don’t think they will cope for a while.”
Both families expressed their displeasure with Judge Ian Farlam’s Commission of Inquiry set up by President Jacob Zuma to ascertain whether anyone was to blame for Marikana. No individual was held accountable for the killings.
The families said the commission did not help them get closure. No one bothers to invite them to Marikana commemorations, they said.
The Star on Tuesday visited Marikana and found that it was still largely undeveloped, especially the Nkanini informal settlement.
Lungisile Madwantsi, one of the Marikana Massacre survivors, who is partially paralysed from a bullet lodged in his skull, said despite Lonmin building low-cost housing for its workers, nothing much has changed in their living conditions.
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Lungisile Madwantsi, who has a bullet lodged in his head. Picture: Matthews Baloyi/ANA Pictures
Nkanini is still untarred with erratic water-supply, lack of toilets and recreational facilities.
Bongani Hlopo, a mineworker in Nkanini, said: “It’s like our lives are standing still, because most of us have not benefited from the spilling of our blood five years ago. We keep hearing promises from the government and Lonmin, but nothing changes.”
The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) regional co-ordinator Patrick Moepa-
dira said the community was still angry because of the lack of progress and that nobody had taken responsibility for the massacre.
But Madwantsi said he did not regret taking part in the strike action that left 44 people dead.
He said he was willing to do it again. “I don’t have any regrets about it. I was only helping myself and my fellow workers address something that was making us unhappy.
“I didn’t know that it would end in a bloodbath and with me almost losing my life. Nobody could have predicted that, but I’m happy that I was part of that history,” said Madwantsi, 35, speaking from his one-bedroom flat in Wonderkop Hostel in Marikana yesterday.
Madwantsi was among hundreds of Lonmin mineworkers who spent days on a nearby koppie, demanding a
R12500 salary and better housing from their employer in August 2012.
Madwantsi was shot in the head. He believes the bullet came from one of the three police helicopters that were hovering over the koppie.
He spent at least an hour lying on the ground without medical attention. He was later admitted to three hospitals for almost three months and lost the use of his left leg and arm.
Last month he received his first R12 500 salary, an increase of R1000. Two years ago, Lonmin relocated him from his shack in Nkanini informal settlement to his flat in the hostel. “I’m happy to finally reap the rewards of my sacrifice, but I’m still not sure if all of us have received the increase. The house is smaller than what I’m used to, but its better than a shack in a muddy squatter camp.”
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