On 16th August 2012 striking South African miners ran towards a line of police who were pointing automatic rifles at them. They were gunned down.
At least 34 protesting workers were killed at the platinum mine northwest of Johannesburg, at what local press has dubbed the ‘Hill of Horrors’. The nightmarish, Ghost train-esque name sounds almost flippant, like something off a theme park map, but it grew more fitting when the allegations of witchcraft reached the news.
The closest many of us in the UK have come to a witch doctor is the glib David Seville song, but the craft is far darker than prescribing ‘oo ee oo ah ah’. One in five people in South Africa’s rural areas has had first-hand experience of a trafficked human body part after a muti killing and an estimated 27 million South Africans use indigenous medicines, though very little is known about the motivations for use. The story of this horrible bloodstain on the post-apartheid record of the country is permeated with references to traditional spiritual beliefs.
The beliefs have been prominent in the recent union turf war; in June Reuters reported that South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) accused the rival Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) of using witchcraft to boost recruiting.
‘One of the tools which is used strongly is ‘muti’, NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni told journalists, referring to traditional medicines often made from animal or human body parts. He said that NUM members believed that AMCU had a ‘very strong ‘sangoma’ or witch doctor, and that if they did not toe the line then they may have ‘bedroom problems at home’.
This was a strong allegation to make as it is an offence in South Africa to accuse another of using supernatural forces to cause disease or damage, just as it is to profess to knowledge of witchcraft yourself. AMCU General Secretary Jeff Mphahlehle retorted with ‘It is rubbish that he is saying. We uphold Christian principles, we don’t use sangomas.’
However, police said that they had taken pictures of an anointing ceremony by a sangoma at Marikana, and others who have attended AMCU meetings say that they involve a blend of Christianity and witchcraft. A sociology researcher from the University of Witwatersrand who has spent time with the platinum mining communities said ‘They have a prayer to start but then someone sprays around some muti.’
AMCU President Joseph Mathunjwa, the son of a Salvation Army preacher and says that he went down on his knees before the massed strikers at Marikana, begging them to disperse peacefully or risk being killed by police fire. However, this survival ultimatum does not seem to have made much difference to the protestors. Two miners who survived the shooting said they were made to believe that if they used muti by a traditional healer known as Nzabe in the Eastern Cape then bullets fired by the police would not harm them.
Nothi Zimanga said that miners drank brown potion to strengthen them ahead of their confrontation, were cut several times on their upper body and had a black substance smeared over the wounds. They were told that they should not look back and just charge forward. Lonmin miner Bulelani Malawana was reported as saying ‘After they got the muti people were so aggressive. They just wanted to fight. They felt so invincible.’
In less than a minute after the police opened fire, the running miners were crumpled to the ground. One striker said ‘Even at night when I sleep, I keep hearing those gunshots.’ The father-of-two was too frightened to give his name and said that he owed his survival to nothing more than luck.
It has recently been announced that charges against the 270 miners for the murder of 34 in these clashes have been dropped, with Nomgcobo Jiba, the acting national director of public prosecutions stating that “the murder charge against the current 270 suspects, which was provisional anyway, will be formally withdrawn provisionally in court on their next court appearance. Other provisional charges will remain.”
South Africa will have to examine the underlying anger in the country and accept that, aside from the muti, something else is not working.
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