"There are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted,” Martin Luther King said in a speech to the American Psychological Association in 1967, months before he was assassinated. His words have been used over the past nearly 50 years to fire up the unending cause of civil rights.
MLK called this “creative maladjustment”.
“Men and women should be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries: ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,’ or as maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, could scratch across the pages of history, words lifted to cosmic proportions: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’” he rallied.
As we mark the four years since the Marikana massacre today, we could say that South Africa needs the creatively maladjusted – those who have the courage to defy – more than ever. After all, justice is still waiting to be served for the many families of the 34 men killed on that day of terror outside Rustenburg.
It was only the outsiders who kept up the fight for justice, even for the findings of the Farlam Commission of Inquiry – which effectively cleared Lonmin and other cold definitions of capital – to be released.
Film-maker Rehad Desai was primary among those, his now-legendary film Miners Shot Down finally being screened after significant protest and an Emmy Award, only on e.tv in January.
He was supported by maladjusted allies like Right2Know, SOS (Support Public Broadcasting), the Amadiba Crisis Committee and amandla.mobi.
In August 2012, as South Africa tried to take in what had just happened at Marikana in our post-democratic state, there was a psychological trek back to 1902 and the height of the Second Boer War when Boer leader Manie Maritz showed no mercy to British missionaries at the church station of Leliefontein in the Northern Cape. Khoi residents there, who wished to protect the foreigners, bravely stood up, but ruthlessly, the Boer general did not hesitate. He saw to the summary execution of 35 people as punishment.
Four years ago, we contemplated how Leliefontein would be last century’s first of seven massacres, followed by Sharpeville, 1976, Boipatong, Saint James Church, Shell House and Bhisho. Marikana was the first of this century, but the horror has continued to trail us as a nation in a way the other mass killings – with the exception of Sharpeville and '76 – have not.
Since the miners were murdered, we have increasingly feared such an event happening again. Every major protest – from Vuwani to Thembelihle – sends a shiver down the collective spine. We’ve lost our trust in our police force, which was even a focus of the UN's Human Rights Committee as recently as March this year.
The committee is mandated to monitor states parties’ realisation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and members are required to report periodically. South Africa’s initial report was filed 14 years late, with the UN this year having to ask our government to provide updated information, including on Marikana.
It wanted to know what measures had been taken to prosecute the perpetrators and to prevent such events in the future.
Thinking about what happened four years ago compels us to remember that the lead-up and the murders happened within two weeks as workers at Lonmin’s platinum mine in the dry North West town started showing their muscle in a fight for better wages.
Living in shocking conditions from which Lonmin distanced itself, the workers staged an illegal strike, which flashed up on a Friday. By the Sunday, a story of deep unhappiness in the broader mining community was beginning to go public as violence – months in the making – grew.
Four mineworkers were then found dead and two security guards shot, and still, nobody predicted the entire bloody unfolding. But it happened in a week in which Trevor Manuel and his National Planning Commission were to present the dream for a prosperous, caring South Africa to President Jacob Zuma.
Zuma – prosperous, but not caring – was otherwise travelling to a SADC conference in Mozambique, while North West Premier Thandi Modise and former minister of mineral resources Susan Shabangu hadn’t yet responded to the very serious events taking place on and around a premium platinum mine. Only the police’s Tactical Response Team was being bulked up.
Four years later, the Portfolio Committee on Police in May examined a new, post-Farlam police training programme which requires recruits to undergo 21, instead of 24, months of training. Meanwhile, suspended national police commissioner Riah Phiyega has applied to the high court in Pretoria to review and set aside the findings and recommendations of the commission.
Other than that, where are we?
On Monday, Amnesty International released a bleak report into Marikana, saying “the catastrophic events of August 2012 should have been a decisive wake-up call to Lonmin that it must address truly appalling living conditions”.
But as Deprose Muchena, the international human rights group’s director for southern Africa, informed the world: “The company’s failure to improve employees’ housing is baffling and irresponsible in the extreme.
“Lonmin is aware that dire housing contributed to the unrest four years ago that ultimately led to the death of dozens of miners.”
Voters did, however, finally reveal their power during the municipal elections, giving Madibeng municipality’s ward 26, which includes Nkaneng – where Wonderkop, the site of the massacre, is situated – to the EFF. People there clearly hope things will change.
Meanwhile, Lonmin has given some widows jobs and is providing for orphans’ education, and the state is having compensation talks. But it is only mineworkers who were charged for the deaths of non-striking workers.
The bloodshed at Marikana happened in under a minute, right at the wheels of police Nyalas. That night, the people there stayed awake for the smell of gunfire, and the cries of those who had lost loved ones. But no one from the force has yet been prosecuted. Even if we are made to understand that the NPA may eventually lay charges, not everyone believes that.
And so, the victims are still going to have to rely on the creatively maladjusted – including Julius Malema’s aspirant socialists – to assist them.
Meanwhile, we are a nation in a whole lot of trouble, four years later.