Fourteen years after 34 striking mineworkers were shot and killed by police at Marikana, the families of the deceased and surviving miners mark today's solemn anniversary still waiting for answers, accountability and justice.
The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA (SERI) said the anniversary of the August 16 massacre was a painful reminder that many families were still carrying the consequences of the violence.
Between August 12 and 13, 2012, 10 people were killed, including two Lonmin security guards, two police officers and six mineworkers. On August 16, police shot and killed 34 striking mineworkers, while at least 78 others were injured and approximately 250 were arrested.
“The families and survivors of the Marikana massacre still await justice,” SERI said.
The massacre remains the deadliest use of force by South African police since the Soweto student uprising of June 16, 1976, when police opened fire on young people protesting against the apartheid education system.
SERI said there were painful parallels between the two events, particularly the use of state violence against young black people demanding their rights.
Fourteen years later, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has not successfully prosecuted anyone for the events of August 16, 2012.
Nine police officers were charged in cases relating to the events of August 13 and the death of mineworker Modisaotsile van Wyk Sagalala, but all were acquitted.
In March 2021, the Mahikeng High Court acquitted four police officers in connection with Sagalala's death. He was shot and injured at what became known as Scene 2 on August 16 but died in a police van transporting arrested mineworkers.
In September 2024, the High Court acquitted six police officers who had stood trial over the events of August 13, 2012, which resulted in the deaths of three mineworkers and two police officers.
SERI said the failed prosecutions highlighted the consequences of delays in pursuing accountability.
“These failed prosecutions demonstrated the corrosive impact that the passage of time has on the strength of the state’s cases,” the organisation said.
The NPA cited personnel and resource constraints in 2023 as reasons for its failure to prosecute the Marikana cases.
Following the 2024 acquittals, the NPA said it would reinstate the case and conduct a formal inquest. However, SERI said the current status of the matter remained unclear and that families and survivors had yet to see meaningful progress.
The financial consequences of the massacre have also continued to unfold.
According to SERI, the state has paid approximately R352 million in settlements relating to some of the 36 civil claims brought by injured survivors, unlawfully arrested miners and families.
Of the 36 families represented by SERI, 34 – comprising more than 300 individual dependants – received about R71 million in loss-of-support claims.
However, more than 120 people from the families received nothing, according to SERI.
The organisation stressed that compensation could not substitute for criminal accountability or answers about what happened to the mineworkers.
“Civil liability without criminal accountability is not justice, but the price the state has agreed to pay to avoid it,” SERI said.
SERI has called on the NPA to provide a detailed account of the status of all outstanding Marikana prosecutions and to provide a concrete timeline for further prosecutorial action.
It has also called for non-prosecution certificates if the NPA is unwilling or unable to proceed, which would allow families to consider private prosecutions.
SERI is also calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to issue a formal apology to the Marikana families – a promise it said had previously been made by both former president Jacob Zuma and Ramaphosa but never fulfilled.
“Even after fourteen years, the South African state’s obligation to account for what happened in Marikana does not diminish with time, nor does the pain inflicted on the victims,” SERI said.
Speaking at the 14th commemoration of the Marikana Massacre event held on Wednesday, Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) president Joseph Mathunjwa said:
“We must remember that those workers did not gather because they wanted to die. They gathered because they wanted to live. They wanted wages that could sustain their families. They wanted recognition as human beings whose lives mattered. The bullets were faster than economic emancipation. But 14 years later, the question is no longer only why the bullets moved so quickly. The question is why justice, accountability, and economic emancipation has continued to move so slowly. History will not judge us only by what happened at Marikana on the 16th of August 2012.
“History will judge us by what we did after we understood what the Marikana massacre had revealed. Will future generations say that the massacre awakened South Africa or will they say that we mourn the workers, praise their courage and then allow the system that killed them to continue unchanged. That is the question we must answer through what we do next.” l Additional Reporting The National Reporter