As the country draws closer towards marking 10 years since the Marikana Massacre, families of victims are suing the state and President Cyril Ramaphosa for R1 billion.
The families also want the government to apologise.
Solicitor-general Fhedzisani Pandelani from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, said half of the 48 cases that are still being dealt with are being finalised.
Pandelani, briefed the media on behalf of the government in Pretoria yesterday regarding the progress regarding Marikana-related litigations. He said all the cases would be finalised at the end of this month.
On 16 August 2012, the South African Police Service opened fire on a group of striking mine workers who protested over wages at Marikana in North West Province.
The police killed 34 mineworkers and left 78 seriously injured.
“As I stand here today there were 48 matters that were remaining but none of those matters related to loss of support due to death of any other person that has preferred a claim against the state because all of those matters were dealt with as at August 2021.
“The 48 matters that I am referring to now would relate to personal injuries where people had to be sent for medical examination, actuarial calculations and so forth,” Pandelani said.
He further said “All of those matters were set down at a High Court in Pretoria. The directive was that all of those matters should either be settled or alternatively they will have to serve before court before the end of August this year,” he said.
He informed the media that as he sat at the briefing, some of his colleagues were in court.
Pandelani did not give the exact figure as to how much victims stand to get.
While families of the victims want Ramaphosa to be held liable, Pandelani said of the 48 matters, Ramaphosa was never cited as a respondent.
Pandelani defended the delays, saying some of them are attributed to a clogged justice system.
He said policies had to be developed.
“There was never any policy applicable within the state which will compel to embark on any settlement of matters be it via arbitration or mediation. Delays will be a thing of the past because the office of the solicitor general has already developed a policy that is binding within state departments for any settlement matters and that policy has been approved on 9 November 2021. We will present that policy before parliament,” Pandelani said.
Organisation Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI), which has been representing 36 of the 37 mine workers who were killed by police, said the briefing by the solicitor general did not cover their cases.
“We have pending cases because we only finalised cases of the loss of support. There are general damages that were supposed to be compensated by the state to our clients and we know that there has not been any communication from the state office. The last time we had a conversation with state attorneys was last year,” SERI spokesperson Khuselwa Dyantyi said.
Dyantyi said two families did not receive the loss of support compensation.
She said that they were hoping to be invited and give them information pertaining to their cases.
Pandelani said around this time last year, about R70m had been paid for 35 families of slain mine workers.
Dyantyi said the offers they received for damages claims was from 2018 whereby the state offered R500 000 per family that covers all the claims.
“There are families which are more than 21 that must be included in that R500 000, so the families could not accept that offer and then they went back to request a better offer from the state.
“After the press conference of August last year we were hoping that they would at least consider and make a counter offer to say that we are trying to deal with these matters with humility which we did not see until today. The only payment we have seen was the one from 2018,” said Dyantyi.