Monday, April 3, 2017

Who Owns The Story Of South Africa’s Marikana Massacre?

In 2012, South African police gunned down 34 miners in Marikana during the miners' strike for a living wage. It was the most lethal use of force since apartheid. The majority of the miners were shot in the back or from long range.

Government statements in response defied logic, blaming the miners for their own deaths. The police, state, and Lonmin mine officials all shirked responsibility and publicly portrayed the miners as violent thugs on the attack. Their narrative prevailed and, unsurprisingly, insulated officials from accountability.

Keaton Allen-Gessesse, SERI litigation volunteer and Harvard Public Service Venture Fellow
But this “official” account wasn’t the whole story. And so this national tragedy highlights a social and legal imperative: We must fight to memorialize the people’s truth and disseminate that history as widely as possible.
Miners during the commemoration rally of the second anniversary of the Marikana
massacre on August 16, 2014 in Rustenburg, South Africa. Thirty-four miners were
killed by police on 16 August 2012 during a violent wage increase protest.

Demanding truth and accountability

A short film, Bringing the Truth Home, documents efforts by the miners’ own communities and of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) to do just that. Most of the slain miners hailed from rural Eastern Cape, one of South Africa’s poorest regions. Following the massacre, the communities were left with unanswered questions and undignified accounts of their loved ones’ deaths. But the miners’ widows refused to allow injustice to prevail. For the past four years, these bereaved women have mobilized to demand the truth, accountability, and compensation for their deep loss.

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