No one's safe in Marikana - Thought Leader

I met Marikana community member, mineworker and activist Tsepo M at a coffee shop in Melville. He had some business to attend to in Johannesburg and a colleague set up the meeting for me to discuss the current situation in Marikana.

A man in his late 50s, Tsepo’s face bears the markings of years of hard work and struggle.

He tells me that he has been attending the Farlam Commission – an intense situation, which is infused with painful moments and trauma. In addition to the struggles of the community members and witnesses in getting to the commission, many are the victims of the psychological and physical warfare being waged on the participants by the police.

He describes one such incident when he and a group of about 40 residents were coming back home from the commission. When they reached their village they were ambushed by a group of armed police officers who forced them all to lie on the ground. What followed after was what seemed like an hour of taunting and abuse as policemen threatened them by holding guns to their heads and whispering in their ears that they would end up like those massacred in September. They were told not to look at the faces of the police and kicked and slapped. Their identity books were checked and their names recorded. The message was clear – they were being watched – they were being tailed and no one is safe in Marikana.

Tsepo suggested to the group who were with him when this happened that they go to the police station to report – but almost all said they were too terrified to do this.

“It is happening intermittently,” he says. “We never really know when they will pounce on us.”

This is an ongoing war on the people of Marikana – to weaken their resolve. “It is terrifying,” Tsepo tells me. “We are living as if we are back in the days of apartheid – constant fear. Women are terrified. They do not escape the intimidation, physical and emotional, dished out by the police. To us it is clear that they work on behalf of the capitalists.”

I ask him if he is able to verify the rumours that women were being raped by the police in Marikana. He answers that this is the most difficult thing to verify because women are mostly way too afraid to speak out. He did hear these stories and one woman who spoke of it eventually fled the village. “It is the whole matter of the community shame. Once you have been raped the community will treat you differently. How will they look at your husband? Even those women whose husbands were shot will not talk about it if they were raped.”

“Women have a very hard time in communities like ours. They are vulnerable to rape and exploitation. There are cases of sexual contracts between men and unemployed women and sometimes daughters are sold for sex. It is sheer economics and poverty that drive women this far. Also the rates of literacy are very low on this mine so women have few options for work. Those who go underground also become vulnerable to abuse. You know and this all leads to unsafe sex and a high prevalence of HIV.”

Tsepo tells me that the literacy rates on mines are low. “This is because of the history of migrant labour. If you bring in men from other provinces you do not have their families to look after so it suits the mine owners to not employ from the local area. They just have never bothered to change anything since then. It is clear that families live around the mine but they still have not built a crèche or a school. The one local school in Mooi Nooi is really for those in supervisory positions and our kids do not get to go there. It is a real procedure to get into the school and it depends on who you know.”

I ask Tsepo about the experience of living with no services. His face darkens. He tells me that there are some services at the hostels but that is all. There are about five toilets to every 80 men. The toilets are door-less. I enquire as to who removed the doors and he tells me that there were never any doors. “It cuts costs to have no doors – but for us it tells us that they think we are not the same as white people – that we do not need privacy like them.”

I feel my heart shrink. There are times when I hate my own kind and what they have done to the indigenous people of South Africa. I want to know from Tsepo what it is like to know that there is so little value placed on the life of a black worker in South Africa. He looks me in the eye and describes the pain. “It hurts you know. Really it hurts. It is like they think we have no ambitions – that we accept and deserve to live like dogs … or maybe they think we do not notice or mind the fact that we live in shacks. That is not true – we have needs like any other human. We want a better life for our children. We want to live a decent life of our own. We want toilets with doors, access to water and housing.”

“As it is we can only fetch water at midnight because the mine is using the water up until then and we have no pressure. You will see little children walking to taps far away from their homes to collect water at this time. Here it seems that human rights do not apply.”

I tell him that if I were him I would see the white man as the main enemy – yet I never heard the terms “white” in any of the struggle songs sang during the strike.

“No, they were there – we refer to them as the employers and we all know who the employers are.”

I ask how the community feels about Cyril Ramaphosa’s betrayal of them. “We are very disappointed that he has never even bothered to interact with us. When he was given shares he should have come to us and asked what we needed. He could have put plans and pressure in place to help us with education and infrastructure. But he did not. Instead he gave the order to deal with us like animals going to the slaughter.”

Tsepo and other workers from mines are currently organising into worker-support committees. “This is what will create solidarity with all workers around South African mines and give us autonomy. You know, we took it for a long time but the anger was building and building inside us. That is why the strikes happened. We are still angry and we will never accept this treatment again. It is the workers who will stand up for their own rights now through our autonomous structures. We are human beings and we demand to be treated as such. I know that the world sees us as boys when it suits them and as savage men when we stand up for our rights. We are human beings. We are fathers. We are men.”

**The name of the interviewee has been changed to protect his identity for fear of further police intimidation.

This was first published on the South African Civil Society Information Service website.