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As we commemorate Marikana, reconciliation should be our priority

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Luphert Chilwane is media officer for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

As we remember the 44 victims and others who were killed seven years ago in Marikana, much still needs to be done to address the plight of mineworkers across the country.

As the country commemorates the Marikana massacre seven years ago, we should all join hands in remembering the economic and social struggle faced by most families of the deceased. Let this terrible incident never happen again in democratic South Africa.

It should be in the best interests of everyone, locally and internationally, to realise that the current arrangements of commemorating the event tend to be insensitive. They undermine and exclude other victims’ families. Ten workers, including two police officers and two Lonmin security guards, were killed in the preceding week of the actual shootings.

Families lost their loved ones, husbands, sons, and brothers, and in most cases have also lost their only breadwinner.

While no compensation can replace the lives lost and injuries suffered at Marikana, it is vital that all parties participating in the discussions regarding compensation conclude this matter in the interests of the orphans, widows, widowers and the injured.

The families affected by this tragedy come from all over South Africa, not just around the mines, but in areas established by the apartheid regime to facilitate the supply of cheap labour to the mines, and also from neighbouring states.

We should applaud the fact that government has resolved to pay R1.1-billion in compensation for the people who were killed in Marikana in 2012. Once again, we hope that this compensation is meant for all victims including those who died as a result of the chaos created by the platinum mining companies around Rustenburg before and after 16 August, 2012. It would be prudent for these companies to have contributed a large portion of this compensation money.

We should avoid using this tragedy to score political points. Workers should avoid being used by those intending to play the blame game, or use the remembrance day to organise or recruit membership.

Opportunists and political vultures will use the anger that workers and their communities are experiencing to drive sentiments against the government or anyone. Instead, let the commemoration of 16 August 2012 be used to unite workers across all sectors of the economy.

The Marikana incidents must be a lesson to all that society must unite against exploitation of the poor and the working class.

Seven years since that day, many spectators are still questioning whether all the parties involved will ever be at peace with one another.

We are still witnessing senseless killings and intimidation. It is even more dangerous today to be a mineworker than it was before 2012. Workers are being denied rights to choose trade unions of choice, and are barred from freely walking or speaking their own workplace politics.

As the day is commemorated, reconciliation should be a top priority. Reconciling workers and families of the deceased could help heal persistent anger and violence in the mining communities. DM

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