SAWT BEIRUT INTERNATIONAL

| 29 March 2024, Friday |

After 10 years, widows of victims of ‘Marikana massacre’ are left with no answers

Nosihle Ngweyi and Zameka Nongu struggle to the top of a tiny hill in Marikana, South Africa, and then somberly gaze at the location where their husbands were killed on August 16, 2012. After ten arduous years, they are still looking for solutions.

Their husbands were among the 34 striking miners who were fatally shot by police outside a platinum mine in the North West province town in the infamous “Marikana massacre,” which is regarded as the deadliest occurrence of its kind since the end of apartheid.

“Mama why did the police kill my father?” asks Ngweyi’s son, to which she has no answer.

The 10th anniversary of the killings is also being commemorated in “Marikana the Musical”, being performed in Pretoria, in which people dressed as miners and police re-enact the tragedy as sombre music plays in the background.

To the audience and actors alike, the violence is incomprehensible. Lead actor Mavuso Magabane said: “Every night before I come on stage I watch the videos, I relive the moment so that when I come on this stage I’m in a trance.”

    Source:
  • Reuters