Editorial: Lonmin condemned in Marikana commission findings

The long-awaited report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Marikana mine massacre in Marikana, South Africa, has been released, and there’s plenty of finger pointing to go around.

The commission investigated the killing of 44 people and the injuring of many more that shocked the country and the world during Aug. 11–16, 2012, outside Lonmin’s platinum mine in Marikana in North West Province. Most of the fatalities were striking miners who’d been shot by police, in the worst explosion of violence by South African security forces against civilians since 1960.

South African President Jacob Zuma actually received the 646-page report in March 2015, but it was released to the general public on June 25, because he said his government needed to time to study the report.

The commission was headed by retired judge Ian Farlam and was tasked with examining the conduct of Lonmin, the South African Police Service, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the Department of Mineral Resources and other government departments, as well as individuals and groupings.

Lonmin was singled out for several shortcomings: not using its best efforts to resolve the dispute between it and its striking workers, nor between the strikers and non-striking workers; failing to respond to the outbreak of violence and protect its workers; insisting that its non-striking workers come to work despite a lack of protection for those workers from attacks.

The commission also condemned Lonmin at a much more fundamental level for operating its mine with a dehumanizing housing system that separated workers from their families for long periods, and indirectly encouraged as many as half its workers to pocket their living allowance and instead take up residence in informal shacks around the mine site that invariably coalesced into large, unruly and unregulated shanty towns.

The two unions were blasted for failing to exercise effective control over their members, allowing them to sing provocative songs and make inflammatory remarks, and NUM in particular for not making its best effort to negotiate with Lonmin.

The commission found that the police plan to deal with the unfolding threat of violence by strikers was defective in many respects, and should not have been implemented on the worst day of bloodshed on Aug. 16, when 34 miners were shot dead by police.

Instead, the commission said the police should have waited till the next day to act, and resorted to its original plan to encircle the strikers with barbed wire and offer them an exit point through which they would surrender their weapons.

What ensued instead was the police firing on the strikers in one scene, which spiralled later into a second scene of major killing — much of it execution-style — by police who were characterized by the commission as a exhibiting a “complete lack of command and control.”

The commission recommends that Lonmin be held to account by South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources for failing to comply with its housing obligations under the Social and Labour Plans, whereby it should have built 5,500 houses between 2005 and 2011.

For the police, the commission recommends it study and adopt the world’s best practices for maintaining public order without firing automatic weapons, and that operational communications during such crises be improved, recorded and preserved. Police should also improve their first aid training, especially with respect to gunshot wounds.

The commission noted the propensity in South Africa for strikers and protesters to carry sharp instruments and firearms, and urged strict enforcement of laws that prohibit such behaviour.

On June 26, President Zuma said at the sixtieth commemoration of the Freedom Charter in Kliptown, Soweto, that “work would begin to implement the recommendations of the report, so that there can be closure. We urge political parties not to use this tragedy for political posturing. This should instead unite us in resolving all forms of violence in this country.”