Marikana: Tragic how no one cares

FOR THOSE of us who saw it, and there were many, it’s a sight that can never be unseen. Police officers – our police officers – shooting in full view of the media and their cameras into a crowd of miners.

The shooting went on and on. Automatic fire that was so sustained, so chaotic, it remains a mystery why none of the police shot their own colleagues as they advanced on the miners.

The scene was Marikana. Today, five years ago.

It remains one of the greatest tragedies in post-apartheid South Africa.

It’s one of the worst in our history, too, not as bad as Sharpeville when police killed 69 – officially. At Marikana, on the afternoon of August 16, 2012, the death toll was 34. Seventy others were injured.

There are many parts to the Marikana story. The miners deserve their own share of the blame: The strike had already claimed 10 lives, including two police officers butchered by striking miners before the massacre on the koppie.

But nothing can ever explain away the police brutality or the complicity of their officers – all the way to the very highest office in the land. Nobody has taken responsibility.

There has been a long, intensive judicial inquiry, there have been recommendations, but nothing has been done.

The police commissioner at the time, the woefully inept and inexperienced Riah Phiyega, has been unceremoniously axed from her post after an age on suspension, but she has not been criminally charged with the murder of those miners.

None of the police officers has been indicted. No ministers have lost their jobs because of Marikana.

The man who was once a director of the company that owned the affected mine, who urged the police to take “concomitant action”, is today deputy president of the country and a serious contender to become president of the ANC at the end of the year.

For the families of the 34 breadwinners slain five years ago, life has not just been harder; it’s been full of unanswered questions with only one possible answer:

No one really cares.

And that is perhaps the worst tragedy of all.