not only found letters on the rocks that had been spray-painted in yellow, marking sites from where bodies had been removed, we also saw pools and rivulets of dried blood discoloured by the blue-green dye. Mineworker 5 was present on the Koppie; one of those lucky to survive. He recalls: ‘You were shot if you put up your hands.’ Needless to say, he did not raise his hands. Rather, he says: ‘I was taken by a gentleman who was of Indian ancestry. He held me and when I tried to stand up I was hit with guns, and he stopped them.’ A drop of humanity in a sea of bestiality. Allegedly, some workers were disarmed and then speared by the police (we heard this from a number of strikers including Mineworker 5). Whatever view one takes of the initial killings, it is clear that the men who died on the Killing Koppie were fleeing from the battlefield. Moreover, the precise locations of deaths and the autopsy evidence tend to reinforce the account provided by Mineworker 5, leading one to the conclusion that Killing Koppie was the site of cold-blooded murder.57
Immediate aftermath
Those who were arrested had to suffer ill-treatment and torture. Soon after his arrest, Mineworker 5 was told by police, spitefully it seems to me: ‘Right here we have made many widows... we have killed all these men.’ As with most of the other arrested survivors, he was initially held at a Lonmin facility known as B3. He pondered: ‘It seemed as though the police did not belong to the government, but that they belonged to the company.’ Later he was taken to a police station, where he had to sleep on a cement floor without a blanket (in the middle of winter), received only bread and tea without sugar, was unable to take his TB medication, and was refused a call to his children even though he was a widower. Other detainees were tortured. Early in the struggle, Mineworker 8 thought the police would protect the workers from NUM. After the massacre he was venomous: ‘I will just look at them and they are like dogs to me now... when I see a police now I feel like throwing up... I do not trust them anymore, they are like enemies.’
The massacre was an intensely traumatic experience for all its victims. Mineworker 1 recalled: ‘We had pain on the 16th, but it was more painful... on the 17th... because [if] one [comrade] did not come back... we did not know if he had died or what’. Mineworker 8 drew on his knowledge of history, but this did not hide his suffering. ‘Hey my man,’ he started, ‘my head was not working on that day and I was very, very numb and very, very nervous, because I was scared. I never knew of such things. I only knew of them like what had happened in 1976 and what happened in 1992, because of history.’ Linking this back to the present, he continued: ‘I would hear about massacres you see. I usually heard of that from history, but on that day it came back, so that I can see it. Even now, when I think back, I feel terrible, and when I reverse my thinking to that, I feel sad, still.’58For Mineworker 10, trauma was linked with a political assessment. He started: ‘I am still traumatised by the incident. Even when I see it on TV, I still get scared because I could not sleep the days following the incident.’ He then concluded: ‘It is worse because this has been done to us by a government we thought, with Zuma in power, things would change. But we are still oppressed and abused.’
The bloodshed, cruelty and sorrow of the massacre could have led to the collapse of the strike. That is what Lonmin, the police and NUM had expected. But it was not to be. Somehow, surviving leaders managed to rally the workers and stiffen their resolve to win the fight. This must have taken great courage and determination. Eventually, the company did agree to talk to the workers. Having done so, it conceded large increases in pay (22 per cent for RDOs) plus a R2,000 return-to-work bonus.59When this was announced on 18 September, it was greeted by the workers as a victory, as indeed it was. The scale of this achievement was soon reflected in a massive wave of unprotected strikes, led by rank-and-file committees, which spread from platinum mining, into gold, and on to other minerals, with ripples extending further into other South African industries. 34 workers were murdered by the police on the battlefield at Marikana, but they did not die in vain.
3
Background interviews
Undertaken by Thapelo Lekgowa and Peter Alexander
Joseph Mathunjwa, President, Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union
Joseph Muthunjwa: I was born in 1965. I am from the family of priesthood under the Salvation Army. The relatives of my mother were located around Johannesburg, Witbank, Ermelo. Some were mineworkers. After my high school I came to Witbank looking for a job. I couldn’t go to further education, my father was not getting paid enough to assist. I started working in construction around Witbank, close to the mines. Then I went to Tweefontein Colliery. I was not long there. Then I went to Douglas Colliery. I was working in a laboratory and later in the materials department, but these were not regarded as white-collar jobs, because within the very same departments those jobs were also classified for coloureds, Indians and whites. We were under categories 3 to 8 in those days, but they were on higher categories.
Interviewer: Do you remember the 1987 strike? As I recall one of the issues in Witbank was about workers wanting to make the hostels family hostels.
JM: I remember that one. It lasted for a month. I think it was a combination of many things, not really hostels per se. It was called by NUM.
Interviewer: From then, through to when AMCU was formed, it was 13 years or something like that, do you have strong memories of work in that period?
JM: I think from ’86 my presence at work was felt because I didn’t wait to join a union to express how I see things. Firstly, when I realised that we were confined in the hostel, [with] no transport for black workers to take them to the locations [townships], to stay with their families, I was the first black person who jumped into a white [only] bus in 1986, forcing my way to the location. Subsequent to that I was the first black person to enter into a white recreation club within the mine. That led me to many troubles with mine management. I was the first person at Douglas who led a campaign [for] workers to have houses outside the mine premises. So I led many campaigns. That was ’86, ’86. NUM was there, but it was not really, what can I say, more instrumental about living outside the mine. It was more focused on disciplinary hearing[s], but not this global approach on social issues.
Interviewer: How did you organise?
JM: I would go to the meetings, and people would hear about myself. Then I would go to the general managers’ office. All things started when I boarded the white transport by force. Then the managers had very much interest. ‘Who is this guy?’ They said: ‘There’s the union’. I said, the union does not address these issues. Then they asked: ‘What other issues?’ Then I made a list of those issues, and I started a campaign for those issues.
Interviewer: Are there things you remember during the 1990s?
JM: I still remember, there was a Comrade Mbotho, from Pondoland, who passed on, from Pondoland. He was very strong. He was like a chairman of NUM at Van Dyk’s Drift. He was a very strong Mpondo man. I remember he organised a big boycott of using those horse-trailer buses, for transporting you from hostel to shaft. How can I explain this? You have the head of the truck which has a link and it pulls like a bus, but semi bus. You cannot see where you are going, you are just inside, like you are transporting horses, race horses. He [the manager] changed the buses to give proper buses to the workers.
Interviewer: Later on you were expelled from NUM, so at some stage you must have joined?
JM: Yes. The workers were aware that there is this young man working in the mine and they said: ‘You have to be part of NUM in order [to fight for] all the issues that are affecting workers.’ Then I joined NUM, and the management didn’t like the manner in which things were raised, and I was transferred... When they saw that I was attending most of the meetings [and] becoming more influential to the workers, they sent me to one of the stores.
