Keyword: marikana massacre

Licenced to Kill

Richard Pithouse - Last week Inigo Gilmore’s documentary, South Africa’s Dirty Cops, was screened on British television. It deals with the torture and murder that have become common at the hands of the South African police and includes an examination of the two most high profile cases of political violence on the part of our police in recent years – the murder of Andries Tatane in Ficksburg in April 2011 and the Marikana Massacre in August last year. The scale of the Marikana Massacre, in...

Corporate Liability: From Apartheid Crimes to Marikana

SACSIS’ Fazila Farouk talks to Marjorie Jobson, Director of the Khulumani Support Group, who provides an update of South Africa’s apartheid reparations case that has been on going for a decade. According to Jobson, a lack of corporate accountability for apartheid crimes has resulted in apartheid era practices reproducing themselves in certain sectors of the post-apartheid economy, such as mining. She links the strife in Marikana today to the fact that mining companies were...

Socio-Economic Rights Still Eluding Marikana Communities

John Capel of the Bench Marks Foundation talks about the efforts of his organisation to widen the scope of the Marikana Commission of Inquiry (also known as the Farlam Commission), such that the investigation goes beyond and behind the killings of the 34 striking mineworkers, which shocked the world last year, to the socio-economic root causes of the strikes in the Rustenburg mining belt. A study by the Bench Marks Foundation, first released in 2007 and later updated in 2011, shows huge...

Getting Away with Murder

Jane Duncan - Many people were shocked by the judgement in the Andries Tatane case, who was killed by police rubber bullets in a service delivery protest in Ficksburg, and are even more shocked that the National Prosecuting Authority has decided against appealing the judgement. The fact that his fatal shooting had been caught on camera led many to assume that it would have been an open and shut case, and the responsible police officers would be found guilty of murder, convicted and sentenced. But this...

Diva with a Conscience: Masello Motana's 'Makarena on Marikana'

Fabulously talented singer, writer and actress, Masello Motano, is no ordinary pop diva. Hugely concerned about South Africa’s deep poverty, widening inequality and the disconnect between the country’s leaders and its people, she has launched the musical career of her alter ego, “Cyrilina Ramaposer” whose debut single “Makarina on Marikana” tackles the most pressing social injustices of the day. Edgy lyrics set to a profoundly effective minimalist tune,...

The Police at War Once Again

David Bruce - If one wants to understand the common thread behind police brutality in South Africa, the cruelty that last week killed taxi driver Mido Macia, the massacre of the miners at Marikana or the killing of Andries Tatane, it is helpful to go back to the ANC’s 2009 election manifesto. The manifesto largely rehashes old ideas. But in describing how the ANC will “intensify the fight against crime and corruption” there is one word in the manifesto that is relevant to understanding...

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