No acquittal for the guilty

THE PRESIDENT finally broke his silence on the Marikana massacre this week, releasing the Farlam Report, which his office had received as far back as March this year. The findings of retired judge Ian Farlam were, as expected, mostly fair and just: Lonmin must make good its promises on housing or face sanctions; the two warring unions must bear responsibility; the police must be retrained and demilitarised. All of those involved in the tragedy of August 2012 must be investigated for possible prosecution. The relevant commissioners of police must have their fitness for office examined and dealt with appropriately.

The problem though remains that Marikana wasn’t purely a catastrophic failure of public order policing, nor was it a toxic labour dispute that turned tragic. Instead Marikana was a political disaster of the single greatest magnitude to befall post-apartheid South Africa to date.

Not for nothing is the closest corollary Sharpeville of 1960 and, like Sharpeville, the massacre is a metaphor of something far worse – the lack of accountability for a crisis whose genesis lay in the broader overarching political superstructure.

Sharpeville was about inhumane and legalised segregation in favour of an elite racial minority. Marikana was about segregation built on the dashed promises of a better life and the enrichment of an elite economic minority. The culpability cannot stop with the commissioner of police, the finger of blame points inexorably all the way to the top.

In the absence of political will to prosecute, at best they will be convicted in the dock of their own conscience, at worst they could well be burnt on the pyre of counter-revolution.