Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
What about the 10 killed before August 16?
AS the country commemorates the 6th anniversary of Marikana, the sad and brutal truth is that the story has not been fully told.
Academics, researchers, the media, political parties and civil society alike, invariably when they consider this tragedy, the deaths of the 10 people who died leading to this tragic day are de-emphasised.
They are just treated as a footnote leading up to the so-called “real tragedy” and main event which captured the local and international imagination when the police killed the 34 miners. The suffering of the families of these victims is ignored and they have been sidelined in this matter. Why is this so?
Is society so ashamed to take the bull by the horns and speak the truth that some of the striking miners were responsible for these 10 murders?
That so-called “man in a green blanket” and his cohorts who led this strike because the unions were not involved as they had abdicated their responsibility of leading workers, must shoulder the blame for those deaths. They clearly let irresponsible colleagues brutally murder these security people and police.
What this attests to is that we are just a sick society whose attention is only caught by issues that are made important by the fact that they were covered by local and international media. It is shameful that because these other murders were perpetrated by these striking miners were not caught on camera, they should be ignored. I was incensed these past few days when civil society organisations were sounding high and mighty, endlessly bemoaning that no policeman has been convicted for the killing of the 34 miners, and some of them are still at work. But they were mum like the moon and never highlighted that no miner has been convicted for the murder of these 10 other victims. These other victims deserve the same respect as the 34 miners who were killed. Just because their deaths were not “newsworthy” does not erase this history.