Johannesburg - “When the 16th happened, my husband was in the mortuary. We were part of what happened at Marikana. We were the first people to get hurt by the Marikana massacre.”
These are the heart-wrenching words of Petunia Lepaaku, the widow of Warrant Officer Sello Lepaaku, who was killed three days before 34 striking miners were mowed down on August 16, 2012.
Like the families of the 34 slain miners, the widows and relatives of the 10 people killed before the Marikana tragedy feel that their quest for justice was not realised by the release of the report on Thursday. But they feel that they, in particular, have been forgotten.
Petunia’s husband was among the two police officers, two Lonmin security guards and six miners who were killed in the week preceding the massacre, when the police opened fire on striking miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine near Rustenburg.
“We are just a number, which is an excluded number. We are the excluded 10,” Petunia told The Star on Tuesday.
Sello was hacked to death in a clash between police and miners. He died on his way to hospital.
Although nothing would bring her husband back, Petunia said knowing what really happened on that fateful day would have brought closure to her and their three children, at least.
“I’ve come to understand and accept that we won’t know what happened in Marikana on the 13th (August). What we hoped for was for our president to tell us what the way forward is. What do we do now?”
Many families were hoping that the Marikana Report would provide some measure of closure and healing. But all of that was shattered when President Jacob Zuma released the report, which held no one directly accountable for the murders.
The report exonerated Deputy President and former Lonmin shareholder Cyril Ramaphosa, former police minister Nathi Nhleko and former mineral resources minister Susan Shabangu. Although it found that strikers had promoted a situation of conflict and confrontation which gave rise, directly or indirectly, to the deaths of Lonmin security guards and non-striking workers, no one specific was fingered.
Instead, it recommended that national police commissioner Riah Phiyega and former North West commissioner Lieutenant-General Zukiswa Mbombo’s fitness to hold office be investigated.
The report has left the families of the murdered miners seething.
An angry Lizzy Maubane, whose brother, Warrant Officer Tsietsi Monene was killed alongside Lepaaku on August 13, said she was bitterly disappointed by the report.
“We’ve been sidelined since the Marikana Commission started. As a family, we want to know why they killed him (Monene). Our questions have not been answered,” she said, adding that the commission had been a waste of time.
“What was the purpose of the commission? To rub salt in the old wounds? Sitting there looking at the photos of my brother lying there, wearing his uniform, hurt a lot.”
Maubane said the rest of her family, especially their mother, were struggling with the lack of closure. “She (the mother) just wants this chapter to be finalised, to be closed.”
Hester Mabebe was on her way home from work when Zuma started tabling the report.
The body of her brother, miner Eric Mabebe, was found on the morning of August 12 between two cars that had been set alight near one of the mineshafts. His body was full of stab wounds.
When Mabebe arrived home last Thursday, her children told her that nothing had been said about their uncle. Overcome by grief, she broke down and cried.
“I want to know if it means that my brother and those who were not killed by the police killed themselves. No one wants to talk about them. My brother was not killed by the police, he was killed by striking miners,” she said.
To her, Eric was more like a son than a younger brother. When their mother died in the early 1980s, he was only four years old. She had to leave school and come to Joburg to take care of her siblings.
“Our family are heartbroken. We want to know who his killers are so they can go to prison. My brother did not want to join the strike and we want to know who should take responsibility for his death.” –
Additional reporting by Botho Molosankwe
The Star