It is time to close the graves of Marikana
Dear Ntate Matamela … Let’s Talk Frankly about Marikana’s open grave. Six years ago a company in which you had shares and a government that you now lead conspired to murder the Marikana miners. That massacre was the lowest point in the new SA. Such callous acts were associated with the apartheid regime when it unleashed bullets in
Sharpeville and Soweto. One thought that the New Dawn would also be for the widows who lost their loved ones in that sordid act of cowardice and incompetence six years ago. But it remains a sad day for the children who battle without breadwinners years after the government made lofty promises of compensation. The Farlam commission seems to have been a way in which you and your comrades washed your hands of the whole mess. The commission was, quite frankly, a whitewash. According to it, no-one other than Riah Phiyega, who was on the job as police commissioner for a few weeks, should fall. One would have thought that once the whitewash project was complete some ubuntu would have kicked in. In our culture we don’t leave an open grave after a tragedy. The Marikana graves are wide open, Mr President. Your ubuntu has not kicked in — the families have not yet seen your tears.
I wonder who is telling you that this is OK. Because it is not. Why do you need six years to visit the widows of the tragedy you and your government occasioned? You are a billionaire who has done well for himself thanks to BEE. What is stopping you from taking from your own money to send each of the orphans to school while your government twiddles its thumbs over the settlement? What is stopping you from building 44 houses with all the capacity that the government has in all the provinces where these families live. Oh — you are waiting for the courts to tell you to do the right thing, Jacob Zuma style? How can the ANC as a leader of society fail so dismally? I can understand an ANC led by Zuma and its selfishness and dead conscience — but we were promised a new dawn when you ascended to the high office. Why can’t you act decisively to ensure that the widows of Marikana don’t starve? It took you five years to say sorry. How long will it take you to show that you are sorry? Please go and close that grave.
It is clear that you have terrible advisers who are afraid to tell you to humble yourself to the Marikana families. Advisers who don’t think you should have attended the memorial service on Thursday and risk being booed. Your advisers believe it’s better if you are not booed but are seen to be aloof. Your minister of communications gave us a wonderful excuse that you are building peace in the Southern African Development Community. You could have sent DD Mabuza to Namibia and shown the Marikana families compassion. Or are you waiting to do this next year, on the eve of an election?
The lethargic response to Marikana seems to be a trend that expresses itself in our children drowning in latrines and others dying needlessly in our health facilities. The lack of compassion saw your minister of basic education fighting compensation for the distraught families. Only after another death did you spring into action to make unrealistic declarations that in three months pit toilets will be a thing of the past. This culture of false promises makes citizens lose faith in government.
Ntate Matamela, some of us believe in you and believe that you will make a difference, but your sun seems to be taking a tad too long to rise. There seems to be no sense of urgency on things that matter to people. What angers me on the Marikana lethargy is how much money was stolen from public coffers in the ensuing time. A fraction of that money could have helped the families heal. With political will you could have helped close the gaping wound, the open graves.
I am appealing to you, Ntate, to put this at the top of your agenda. Clear your schedule and go and humble yourself to each bereaved family. You will lose nothing.
Saddened … Yours Frankly.
This culture of broken promises makes citizens lose faith in government