the matter, only to be informed that their demands had to be channelled through NUM.22Had the management met the protesting RDOs, the deaths that followed could have been averted, but NUM opposed this course of action. Mineworker 10 used the language of paternalism to express his frustration: ‘We blame the employer for not caring about us, because as a parent, as a head office, if there is a dispute in the family he will go and address it, find out what is the problem, so that his children will lay their hearts on the table [and] tell him “this is our problem”’.
Rebuffed, the protesters returned to the stadium. There they agreed that the strike should be expanded to include other workers, starting with the night shift. They also convened a meeting of all workers, to be held at the stadium the following morning.
During the night of 10/11 August, NUM ferried employees into work. The Inquiry heard from Malesela Setelele, Chair of NUM’s branch at the Western Mines, that the local leadership had responded to reports of intimidation and the cancellation of the mine bus service, ‘by using the NUM vehicle, a Toyota Quantum, to transport [employees] to work throughout the mine.’ He explained: ‘this vehicle was not owned by NUM but had been made available to us by Lonmin… for bona fide NUM business’. He added: ‘also, in the early hours of 11 August 2012, [I] used a loudhailer whilst driving around, to inform people that the strike was not endorsed by the NUM and that they should report for duty.’23Setelele regarded his actions as fully justified. From his perspective, he was acting on behalf of his union in response to a strike that was unprotected and unofficial. For him, there was nothing peculiar about risking violent retribution to undertake a task the company itself was unwilling to perform. There were skirmishes that night, and he could be regarded as rather brave. Others, though, will see his role differently, defining him as a ‘scab’. In any case, NUM’s actions surely reduced its credibility among the strikers and intensified existing tensions.
The NUM shootings
That next morning, 11 August, the meeting agreed to follow management’s instruction and put their case to NUM. Some of the workers justified this decision in terms of correct protocol. Mineworker 1, for instance, told us: ‘We decided to go to the NUM offices so that they can tell us what we should do now, because we went to the employer on our own and they [NUM] went and stopped us from talking to the employer, and we wanted them to tell us what to do.’ Mineworker 10 put the matter this way: ‘We acknowledged that we made a mistake, that even though we did not want them [NUM] to represent us, we should have at least informed them that we were going to approach the employer’. Bhele said: ‘We admitted that we took a wrong turn’.24Between 2,000 and 3,000 strikers marched in the direction of the NUM office, located less than a kilometre away in the centre of Wonderkop. It is important to note that they were not armed, not even with traditional weapons. According to Mineworker 10, ‘We were singing, and no one was holding any weapon’. In answer to the question, ‘did you have your weapons then?’, Mineworker 8 responded: ‘No we did not have our weapons on that day.’
After passing the mine hostels, strikers turned left towards the NUM office (see Map 3).25But they never reached their destination. Before them, at a point where the main road ahead was under construction, there was, according to workers, a line of armed men wearing red T-shirts; some carried traditional weapons and some had guns. The strikers halted their march close to the main taxi rank to the right. The armed men open fire. The strikers scattered, mostly in the direction from where they had come. But two men were left behind, badly injured.
At the time there were press reports that these men had been killed, and it is possible that even the police thought this was the case.26Jared Sacks, who researched the event two weeks later, concluded: ‘Once striking RDOs were about 100–150 metres away from the NUM office, eyewitnesses, both participants in the march and informal traders in and around a nearby taxi rank, reported without exception that the “top five” NUM leaders and other shop stewards, between 15 and 20 in all, came out of the office and began shooting at the protesting strikers’.27The implication is that the men in red T-shirts included some of NUM’s local leadership. Apparently security guards were also present, but fired their guns into the air.28
Sacks’ account was corroborated by the testimony we collected. None of the workers who described the scene doubted that the gunfire came from NUM. Mineworker 8 stated: ‘When we were near the offices we found them outside, those people, our leaders, I can put it like that, they came out. Our leaders came out of the offices already having guns, and they just came out shooting’. Mineworker 4’s account is similar: ‘We were not fighting them. They [NUM] were the ones who shot at us... It was the union leaders, the union committee. They were the ones who shot at us.’ Mineworker 9 provided an interpretation: ‘They [NUM comrades] started shooting at us... It became clear that we were not accepted by the very union we voted for, and it also showed that they had strong relationships with our employers’. Similarly, Mineworker 8 concluded: ‘They [NUM leadership] don’t want us getting the money and I am very sure of that... because they are the ones who are always standing with management.’ Mineworker 10 was shocked by NUM’s response: ‘When the NUM saw us approaching its offices it didn’t even ask, it just opened bullets on the workers,’ he said, adding: ‘We thought, as its members, it would welcome us and hear what we had to say, and criticise us, because it had the right to criticise us after we went over its head’.
According to contributors in our Reference Group discussion, one of two workers hit by bullets managed to clamber over the fence that separates the road from the hostels, and was able to escape. The second man got as far as the smaller taxi rank just inside the hostel grounds, where he allegedly died.The inquiry heard testimony from the man who eventually escaped through the fence. He described how he had been shot in the back and then, having collapsed, was badly wounded on his head, by men who, he claimed, said they wanted to finish him off. He was able to identify his assailants, and it is possible that an attempted murder charge will now be brought against them. Evidence was presented that the second man was also shot in the back.29
In his opening address to the Farlam Commission, Karel Tip, acting on behalf of the NUM, accepted that some of the union’s members used firearms. He argued that this was ‘justified’ in the circumstances. It is now agreed that the two strikers who were shot did not die, but it is understandable that many workers thought that this was the case. The two men were, however, seriously injured and hospitalised, and it was, it would seem, a matter of good fortune that they were not killed.30
It is highly likely that many of the strikers who were attacked were members of NUM. This claim is based partly on a deduction. On 10 August Lonmin took out an injunction against the striking RDOs, naming 3,650 individuals. Of these, 13% had no union affiliation, 35% belonged to AMCU and 52% were members of NUM (which reflected the fact that AMCU was only dominant at Karee). Possibly a disproportionately high number of NUM RDOs refused to join the march (NUM claimed that some of its members only joined the stoppage because of intimidation), and perhaps some marchers were not RDOs, so we cannot assume that Lonmin’s percentages reflected the numbers outside the NUM offices. However, from our Reference Group and from the individual testimonies we recorded it is clear that a high proportion of the marchers were NUM members. Moreover, when it came to the massacre on 16 August, 10 of the 34 men who died were members of NUM, demonstrating continuing support from NUM members throughout the conflict.
In any case, the event was a turning point. Workers fled from the scene and headed towards the stadium. But security guards refused them re-entry, threatening to use force if necessary. The workers then headed for Wonderkop Koppie, the so-called ‘mountain’, two kilometres further west. This would be their home for the next five nights and days, though, of course, they did not know this at the time. One advantage of staying on the mountain is that it provided a good view. According to Mineworker 9, ‘The mountain is high [and] we chose it deliberately after NUM killed our members, so that we could easily see people when they come’. Though some workers went home at night, he and Mineworker 8 both refused to do so, because they had a fear of being killed (probably by NUM). Mineworker 8 described life on the mountain: ‘We were singing, talking
