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Reflecting on the 28 years of South Africa’s democracy, the president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), Joseph Mathunjwa, did not mince his words while expressing how “South Africa, as a country, was more functional during apartheid than it currently is”.
“Love or hate white people who were in power before 1994, they gave us a functional country. In as much as the Nationalist Party was cruel, they left us with a functioning state, and then the ANC, the corrupt ANC, took over,” said Mathunjwa.
He was delivering his keynote address to scores of mine workers and community members who made their way to the 10th commemoration of the Marikana Massacre on Tuesday. Mathunjwa said:
“And that is because when they took over the country, they took with them nothing of value - no gold, no silver - they only took the political positions in their heads with nothing else they could offer the country and its people,” he said.
READ: Community questions why Marikana tragedy is not remembered as a holiday
Mathunjwa expressed how since democracy, South Africa had several presidents with none of them ensuring the progress of “black people’s lives”.
He expressed how issues of unemployment, gender-based-violence as well as crime had, under the current governing party had skyrocketed.
He said: “Since 2013, regarding this annual commemoration, we have never been sponsored by white monopoly capital. We kept this going ourselves as Amcu to show them that we as black people can do things on our own.”
In August 2012, mine workers embarked on a strike to demand R12 500 pay from Lonmin Platinum Mine. Police opened fire on the mine workers and 34 people were killed.
Mathunjwa called for the disbandment of the current Parliament, explaining that new leadership that would “bring back to black people what belonged to them, was what the country needed”.
‘Where is the commemoration for this day?’
A decade later, those who have religiously attended the massacre’s yearly observance have questioned why August 16 has not been declared a public holiday to commemorate the lives lost.
Vukani Vula (42), who was at the infamous koppie for the commemoration on Tuesday, lamented how the government had seemingly neglected to acknowledge the plight of those who lost their lives.
“Ten years ago, those mine workers lost their lives for the sake and betterment of all mine workers, and it is therefore only right that we all gather on this day to celebrate them,” he told City Press.
Advocate Dali Mpofu SC, who is representing 349 miners who survived the police’s fatal shooting of 34 of their colleagues in 2012, was among those in attendance and said that the civil claim against President Cyril Ramaphosa, Sibanye-Stillwater Mine and the government was one he and his legal team would fight till the end.
While he addressed the scores of people at Marikana, Mpofu said no money would ever be enough to ease the pain of those who lost their loved ones on that fateful day.
“We do not just want money,” he told the crowd.
“We want this area, the Marikana koppie, where lives were lost, to be fenced, respected and honoured. Secondly, we want a monument with the names of those whose lives were lost erected here, and lastly, we want you all to ask for forgiveness.”
One SA Movement leader Mmusi Maimane, who was also in attendance, said: “If as a country we were on a quest to fix the history of mining in the country, there shall never be mine ownership in the country without those who mine being a part of it.”
