A survivor and a widow of the Marikana Massacre have accused President Cyril Ramaphosa of having “a heart of stone” for failing to visit them 13 years after the killings, even as he presided over the National Dialogue Convention in Pretoria this weekend.
The two say Ramaphosa has broken a promise he made to the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to meet survivors and widows of the 2012 tragedy, where police opened fire on striking Lonmin mineworkers, killing 34 and injuring 78 at the Marikana koppie in North West.
Mzoxolo Magidiwana, 36, says the silence from the Union Buildings is killing him faster than the nine bullets he survived on August 16, 2012.
Magidiwana found it difficult speaking to Sunday World as emotions still run deep.
The last hurrah
“This should be my last interview on the issue. I don’t want to talk to the media anymore because this thing is killing me. I feel I will die even before my time due to the physical illness and heartache,” he said.
“My heart is breaking every single day because the man behind all this is alive and is in power. He is just quiet. With the power he has, he can fix everything for all the survivors and widows. He is running the state. Surely, he cannot fail to come here and meet us.”
Magidiwana’s ordeal began when, wearing a green hoodie on the day of the massacre, he was mistaken for strike leader Mgcineni “Mambush” Noki — the man in the green blanket — and shot once. As he fell, police fired eight more rounds into his groin and abdomen at point-blank range. He miraculously survived, earning the grim nickname “Dead Man Walking.”
Today, he works as a general worker at Sibanye-Stillwater in Marikana, still living with the physical and emotional pain of his injuries. His wife and two children live in his home village of Nkanya, near Elliotdale in the Eastern Cape. He returned to Marikana this week for remembrance and spending the weekend on the koppie with other survivors.
“We only come to this mountain to reflect as individuals. We only communicate to one another through our grief. What happened here remains a nightmare we will never forget,” he said. “It is difficult. He is quiet. His silence doesn’t bother him but it is deeply hurting us. I see him as a man with a heart of a stone. Even boers, in all their evil past, did have a way of taking pity on their workers.”
But grief has hardened into fury. “We are treated like people who planned the massacre, but everyone knows who planned it. Your President did this. We want you to give him this message: come down here. We just want to hear from you. We want you to come apologise to us in person, and to the nation you are leading.”
Widow speaks
For Marikana widow Mathabang Ntsenyeho, 52, hope is no longer part of the equation. “There is no Cyril Ramaphosa who is going to sit down with survivors and widows. I’ve lost all hope. The man doesn’t care at all. His life is good. His children have everything they need and ours have to struggle just to get by,” she said.
Her husband, Motlalepula Andries Ntsenyeho, was killed at the koppie at the age of 40, leaving her with five children. “It’s very difficult. I’m a sickly person who is in and out of the doctor’s office frequently. I am unemployed. It has been rough raising children alone. There is no mercy coming from Ramaphosa. I can’t even begin to describe the kind of person he is,” she said.
Ntsenyeho lives in Vanderbijlpark in Gauteng in a house built by Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) after the massacre. “Amcu really played a better role than our government. Unfortunately, I’ve been having a challenge with paying for rates. We nearly lost the house but my 35-year-old son recently started working in Marikana as a miner. We’ve made arrangements to pay for the rates,” she said.
She says August has become a curse for her family and others impacted by the tragedy. “We will never move on. We will never heal. Every time August comes along, we relive the pain. And that is why we don’t understand how the President could ignore so many families like this. We are not saying money will bring back our husbands, but it can raise their children. Only Ramaphosa knows why he cannot afford to see us. During the commission we asked our lawyers to write him a letter asking him to meet us but he did not bother.”
Their lawyer, Andries Nkome, says the President’s absence is a betrayal. “The National Dialogue would bear some significance if the President dared visit Marikana,” he said. “The court has already dismissed his technicalities and pronounced that he is the mastermind behind the massacre. We await the date for his day in court.”
The controversial National Dialogue Convention, which continued on Saturday, brought together political parties, business, labour, and civil society to discuss South Africa’s political and economic future. But for Marikana’s survivors, unity speeches in Pretoria mean little while the koppie still stands as a monument to broken promises and justice delayed.
Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya did not respond to a media enquiry on the issues raised.
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