Union battleground as Marikana widows plead for peace, conciliation
WIDOWS of the 10 men whose husbands were killed before the Marikana massacre on August 16, 2012, have called for peace and healing on the platinum belt as the bloodshed continues among mineworkers.
This follows reports that two people were gunned down this month in what many have described as continued union rivalry, with one of the two reportedly being shot a day after the commemoration of the massacre at the Wonderkop koppie. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the widows said the violence should stop.
“Let us sit down and solve this thing. Let us forget Marikana and fold it down, learn from us, learn from Marikana and move on. It was a chapter in our lives and learn from it,” said a widow.
Last week the rivalry between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) workers union reared its ugly head again, five years after the massacre. The widows said that they wanted to be treated equally with the widows of the 34 mineworkers who were killed on August 16, 2014.
“Everybody is talking about the 34 mineworkers who were killed on August 16, the very same 34 that were responsible for the killing of the 10 before the massacre,” says a widow who spoke to Business Report. “Now they want a holiday, for what? You cannot compare Marikana with June 16, because those people were fighting with one spirit and for a common cause.”
The widow is referring to a call by Economic Freedom Fighter leader Julius Malema last week for August 16 to be declared a national holiday.
More than 44 people were killed in mid-August 2012 in a violent unprotected strike for a R12 500 monthly salary at Lonmin, the world’s third largest platinum producer.
Among the 44 people who were killed were police officers, security guards and Lonmin employees whose wives feel that their husbands’ deaths were not given the same prominence than the 34 who died in the police shootout received. “We all lost, all death is the same,” she said. The union blamed Amcu for dividing the widows.
Amcu was not available for comment.
The husbands, who were killed prior to August 16, were members of the NUM, which was a majority union at the time with a membership of 90 000 before the massacre.
The NUM’s head of safety, Eric Gcilitshana, says NUM membership at Lonmin declined drastically to around 30 000 members to date after losing membership to Amcu in 2012, which is now the majority union and has exclusive recognition rights.
The union was having internal discussion on how to help the widows. “We are trying to regain membership. Our comrades have been discharged from their homes, it is difficult to do things freely. It is not only the widows that have been victimised,” said Gcilitshana.
The NUM said it was in discussions with ANC tripartite alliance partners on whether it could lead its own Marikana commemoration.