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week before, six miners had been killed plus two police officers and two security guards. The final body count in this fortnight of madness was 48.
Thus, the Marikana killing fields in Rustenberg will forever be remembered not for the precious mineral they produce, nor for the fact that the mine — the third largest in the world employing more than 20 000 miners — is owned by Lonmin, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, but for the most unthinkable police brutality and the massacre of mine workers, since the end of apartheid in 1994.
A fortnight ago I wrote about art and illusion. I continue the thread. As an actor in the anti-apartheid play, “Katsha-a: The Sound of the AK-47”, I remember when our group acted scenes like the Battle of Isandlwana fought between the British and the Zulu people on January 22 1879. On so many stages, we fell “dead” on the sound of a drumbeat, which signified the sound of the settlers’ guns. We also staged the student uprising of June 16 1976 that resulted in the Soweto massacre.
However, last week was a re-awakening that although art mimics reality, it is still an illusion. Watching the firepower against people armed with traditional weapons like their ancestors at Isandlwana in 1879, I was left with so many questions.
The Marikana mine massacre is too sensitive an issue, not only for South Africa but the whole continent. It defies all logic, irrespective of how people might want to gloss over the issues that led to the bloody killings. People being butchered while protesting for better living wages; people, who were not even asking for decent accommodation, considering the tin shacks and squalor they lived in, conditions that revealed the disparities in wealth ownership and control in a free South Africa. 
Life is too precious, and the miners that were brutally murdered by South African police were first of all human beings before they became miners.
We are being asked not to finger-point. I sincerely wish that this standard was applied equally all over Africa. It has already been pointed out that if these massacres had taken place in Zimbabwe, it would be an issue not for the Parliament of Zimbabwe, but the United Nations Security Council. There would have been calls for implementing the UNSC Chapter VII, and maybe by now there would have been a no-fly zone implemented, with drones hitting out at our security institutions. So much for double standards!
But since this is about protecting the interests of white capital, the international community and the so-called human rights watchdogs have been conspicuous by their silence.    
It is in this context that I found South African police commissioner Riah Phiyega’s remarks about the deaths and injury of the miners not only insensitive, but so out of touch with reality. I wondered whose interests she is representing.
During the burial of one of the two officers who died in the debacle, Commissioner Phiyega told police officers that they should not feel sorry about the massacre of the protesting miners at the Lonmin mine in Marikana. “Safety of the public is not negotiable. Don’t feel sorry about what happened,” she was quoted as saying by the Sowetan newspaper.
Commissioner Phiyega made these remarks while President Jacob Zuma was announcing a week of national mourning for the 34 miners. What a contrast!
The same contrast that observers made when President Zuma, who had cut short his attendance of the Sadc Summit in Maputo to return to South Africa, that he had time to visit the injured and have meetings with the mine management, but could not meet the striking miners and get their side of the story, and console them.
When expelled ANC Youth League member Julius Malema went to Marikana to address workers and hear their grievances, others saw it as opportunism and playing politics. The police chief has not only shown gross lack of compassion for the victims, their families and friends, but this self-serving remark also lacked empathy for the people of South Africa who have been robbed of so many citizens in so short a period.
Unfortunately, the statement will not diminish the fact that it was the police who opened fire at the protesting miners, using live ammunition. It is for the commission of inquiry to establish how much of a threat to police the protesting miners were.
The miners who work under difficult conditions and live in squalid quarters, despite generating huge amounts of wealth for the mine owners, also contribute immensely to the South African fiscus.
Their tax dollars pay the police commissioner’s salary. Painting them with the same brush as common criminals that the SA police force deal with daily was grossly unfair. Also failing to realise that lives were needlessly lost and that the deceased were breadwinners who have left behind families, is unfortunate.
This is no longer apartheid-ruled South Africa where the police force used brutal force to silence dissent among the black majority. In all democracies, the duty of the police force is to maintain law and order and not expose people to danger.
The Marikana killing fields have given us moments to pause and ask a zillion questions, but Commissioner Phiyega has provided us with some of the clues. As tensions rose, it looks like the most important commodity that needed to be safeguarded was the platinum mine, and not the miners.
Instead of putting the blame on the dead miners who can no longer speak for themselves, the police commissioner should tell the world who gave the police the orders to use live ammunition. Was this the only way to quell the violence? After the deaths of the first 10 people, police officers included, why was the situation allowed to deteriorate to what the world witnessed last Thursday?
Is the commissioner telling us that for the whole duration that the miners were on that hill, they could not gather intelligence information on the types of weapons the protesters had, and how lethal they were?
If the alleged power struggle at the mine between the National Union of Mineworkers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) was a known fact, why was it not addressed on time by the mine’s management and relevant authorities?
The blame on the miners is also endorsed by images on the Internet. Since last Thursday, there have been more images showing the miners and the “traditional” weapons they were armed with, compared to images about the police and the shooting. 
This writer was also surprised by some of the remarks made by Solidarity deputy general-secretary Gideon du Plessis, who said: “The protesters’ violent behaviour, the brutal murders of innocent people and the use of witchdoctors and traditional murder weapons rather indicate a political motivation and an opportunistic positioning instead of an attempt to negotiate a solution.”
If du Plessis had all this information, did it have to wait for the deaths of so many people? Inasmuch as everyone would want to see normalcy and production returning to Lonmin, we also believe that the Lonmin management has been insensitive to the miners’ plight.
For them, super profits are more important than the people’s well-being. Unfortunately, threatening to fire workers who did not turn up for work will not resolve the centuries-old issues that led to this massacre.
They set up a counselling service centre. Who was supposed to benefit if affected workers are being intimidated, or was it just a face-saving gesture? If workers are brutally killed for asking for a better wage, we wonder what will happen to them when they seek total ownership of South Africa’s resources.
The Zimbabwean model of indigenisation and economic empowerment, which our brothers and sisters in South Africa tend to shun, fearing loss of investment on wealth owned by others, will soon be a reality. Nothing is forever. The ruling ANC celebrated 100 years since its formation. It is time indigenous South Africans enjoyed the fruits of the liberation struggle. If the people had been economically empowered and owned the means of production, there would be no Marikana killing fields to talk about today.
The people cannot continue to be second-class citizens in a country that belongs to them, while others enjoy a First World lifestyle just like they did during the apartheid era.