LETTER: Marikana’s 34 miners versus 34 abakwetha minors
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The needless deaths of 34 young men can trigger vengeful anger that lasts for a decade. Or casual sympathy that’s gone before the page is turned. When it comes to mortality, it’s not the count that matters but the cause. It’s not the suffering of the victims that drives the political classes, but the machinations of the villains.
Thirty-four is, notoriously, the number of miners who were shot dead at Marikana in August 2012. But it is also, coincidentally, the number of “Abakwetha” minors who died in the same year in the Eastern Cape. The different ways the two episodes have been treated says a lot about the (parlous) state of our collective national project.
The Marikana shootings were tragic and avoidable, and exposed serious weaknesses in SA’s public order policing practices. What is equally plain, though, is that the officers acted out of fear and panic (rather than the kind of malevolence that is routinely imputed to them), and also that the miners bore a meaningful amount of culpability themselves. Not those who died, necessarily, but those in the union ranks who were responsible for the killing of two policemen the previous day.
Marikana has been portrayed, ad nauseam, as a simple clash between good and evil, even though it was nothing of the sort. What makes this portrayal all the more problematic is that the same pundits who have cast it that way have been uniformly mute in the face of an even more egregious societal failure. Marikana has become a shorthand for establishment brutality, but you’ll search in vain for any serious comment on the other 34 casualties. Or on the multiples of 34 who have perished since, in agony.
The differences between the two groups of victims are striking. While the mineworkers were armed and angry adults, the initiates were defenceless, uncomprehending children. Where the Amcu members arrived at the killing field spoiling for a fight, the abakwetha were only there because their parents believed it was the right place to be.
Arguably the most significant difference, though, is that whereas the authorities at Marikana were taken by surprise, the same cannot be said of those who are tasked with looking after the interests of our youth. There are thousands of people in a position to intercede and stop the (continuing) carnage — including cabinet ministers, public servants, clerics, social workers and prosecutors — but for ...
Thirty-four is, notoriously, the number of miners who were shot dead at Marikana in August 2012. But it is also, coincidentally, the number of “Abakwetha” minors who died in the same year in the Eastern Cape. The different ways the two episodes have been treated says a lot about the (parlous) state of our collective national project.
The Marikana shootings were tragic and avoidable, and exposed serious weaknesses in SA’s public order policing practices. What is equally plain, though, is that the officers acted out of fear and panic (rather than the kind of malevolence that is routinely imputed to them), and also that the miners bore a meaningful amount of culpability themselves. Not those who died, necessarily, but those in the union ranks who were responsible for the killing of two policemen the previous day.
Marikana has been portrayed, ad nauseam, as a simple clash between good and evil, even though it was nothing of the sort. What makes this portrayal all the more problematic is that the same pundits who have cast it that way have been uniformly mute in the face of an even more egregious societal failure. Marikana has become a shorthand for establishment brutality, but you’ll search in vain for any serious comment on the other 34 casualties. Or on the multiples of 34 who have perished since, in agony.
The differences between the two groups of victims are striking. While the mineworkers were armed and angry adults, the initiates were defenceless, uncomprehending children. Where the Amcu members arrived at the killing field spoiling for a fight, the abakwetha were only there because their parents believed it was the right place to be.
Arguably the most significant difference, though, is that whereas the authorities at Marikana were taken by surprise, the same cannot be said of those who are tasked with looking after the interests of our youth. There are thousands of people in a position to intercede and stop the (continuing) carnage — including cabinet ministers, public servants, clerics, social workers and prosecutors — but for ...
