Marikana probe drags on
THE Marikana commission of inquiry was appointed on August 23 last year, a week after the tragedy. It was originally supposed to report back within five months.
More than a year and many hours of expensive legal time later, it seems to be nowhere near the end of its hearings. And whatever its findings and recommendations prove to be, they will surely be too late to be of much use to the miners, the mines, or SA itself.
This week’s court ruling that Legal Aid SA must fund the miners’ legal representation will at least remove one of the delaying factors, and provide comfort to those who doubted that the process would be inclusive and miners’ voices heard — even though Legal Aid SA does raise a concern that providing this funding will have to be at the expense of funding for indigent and vulnerable people who might need help with civil or criminal cases.
But it is worth remembering that the reason so much money was needed for legal representation was precisely because the commission’s hearings have been allowed to take so long, and the process has been so tortuous.
The commission, led by retired judge Ian Farlam, was meant to answer four quite simple questions on the conduct of Lonmin, the police, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and the National Union of Mineworkers.
It should have been a tightly disciplined, effective process with the judge clearly in charge. But it lost the plot somehow. And as the South African Communist Party put it earlier this year, it became a “lawyerheavy, quasicriminal court process” in which some of the lawyers were more interested in “vying for the limelight and claiming billable hours” than in contributing to finding the truth.
The commission had made a new ruling a while ago, before the recent round of postponements, adjournments and delays, tightening up the presentation of evidence to make it more effective, more efficient and less of a free-for-all. This could also help to pick up the pace of the commission hearings and make them less costly for all concerned.
It is hoped that the steps the commission has put in place will make for more effective presentation of evidence, while ensuring that all interested parties have the opportunity to be heard — and that a conclusion is reached sooner rather than later.