When the apartheid state security apparatus unleashed its violence in Sharpeville in 1960, sixty-nine people were left dead. It was a traumatising episode in the struggle for black rights and racial equality in South Africa. Yet at that time, leaders of the liberation movement and the ordinary people of colour, who were the prime victims of such a draconian system already, knew that nothing was beyond the apartheid government. Fast-forward to 2012; the episode being the Marikana violence where police opened fire on miners protesting for a wage rise. Final result? Thirty-four dead and dozens wounded. The democracy math just doesn’t add up.
The latter episode is a clear reflection that beyond the propaganda of a rainbow nation—well-meaning as that may be—is a nation still divided. This division actualises itself in terms of inequality between the rich and the poor; and the state of racial integration. Some black people still live in deplorable conditions that could still fit neatly into the architecture of apartheid—a condition if dreams unfulfilled, the dreamer waiting patiently. In this sorry state of affairs reality is a nightmare and sleep offers better because one is allowed to dream being rich and well-off. Unfortunately, that is as far as the poor can go.
The unhealthy relationship between capital, mining union chief-whips and high-ranking government officials is being proffered as a possible explanation of the violence in Marikana in the Lonmin mines. Instead of putting miners’ rights first, the union leaders were climbing into bed with the mine bosses and it promised to be a steamy affair. And, as history has proven to us time and again, the state security apparatus came in defence of capital and shot dead—with live ammunition—over thirty workers.
Now, the South African government has recently initiated a commission of inquiry into the violence, but I feel it’s a little too late. The damage has already been done. Lives have already been lost. No number of commissions of inquiry can bring back the lives lost or piece together the families that have been shattered as a consequence. Whether the police were justified to open fire on the miners because they were getting rowdy and had taken muti (magical potion) that was supposed to make them invincible and bullet-proof is neither here nor there. The fact is that the officers of the law showed a strong inclination to pull the trigger that is reminiscent of the old regime and that is regrettable.
It is an open secret that South Africa is still a divided society, especially along racial lines. As a Swazi with relations in the Kingdom of Lesotho, I usually travel through the Free State province when I visit there. It is not an unusual sight to see a black man speaking to his white Afrikaner master, with his cap in hand, back slightly bowed. You may consider the example jejune, but these are reflections of how racial inequality is still part of the new South Africa. Perhaps Johannesburg and Cape Town is slowly integrating but in the rural areas racial integration, let alone integration, is close to nought. Something needs to be done urgently to tackle the ever-growing inequality in South Africa. Because if it’s not, the words “democracy”, “rainbow nation” will continue to be a thorn in the flesh of those whose lives haven’t changed for the better.
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