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The Marikana Support Campaign is very concerned that the Farlam Commission is not creating any space to hear the testimonies of the ordinary people of Marikana.
Since the Commission was set up, there has been a wealth of testimonies from officials from SAPS, Lonmin, AMCU, NUM and the Church. However there has been a complete absence of the voices of mine workers and the affected community.

The Commission was recently presented with an opportunity to read a well-researched Book by Peter Alexander, Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope, Luke Sinwell and Bongani Xezwi from the University Of Johannesburg that contains word of mouth testimonies from the people of Marikana who gave their experiences of the strike and the massacre.

The Commission does not want anything to do with the book and gave a statement that ‘accepting the book may create a perception of Bias on the part of the Commission.’ The question however is how the commission can claim not to be biased or possibly understand thefull context of the Massacre when they do not want to hear the voices of people who were close to the massacred, people who experienced the strike and the build-up to the Massacre, people who lost their loved ones and bread winners?

It appears the Commission is only interested in evidence presented before the inquiry. This however reduces the ability of the inquiry to hear the voice of victims whose perspective has been minimised by trauma, arrests, torture and the inquiries own processes, all of which occur outside of the formal presentations to the inquiry. The value of social scientific enquiry is that it provides possibilities for examining deeper structures of power, and the impact these have on explanations and on assessments of culpability.

The Marikana Support Campaign is appalled by the manner in which the families and community of Marikana is being treated. Within this legal process there is no cognisance of the deep human tragedy these families and community have faced. As things stand the families are worried about how they will survive over the next few months without the financial support that they were accustomed to receiving from their bread winners.

The Marikana Support Campaign calls for the recognition of the voices of the people of Marikana if the Commission’s legal process and recommendations thereafter are to be balanced.

The book MARIKANA: ‘A view from the Mountain and a case to answer’ will be publicly presented to Senior Counsels engaged with the Commission at the Rustenburg Civic Centre at 1pm on 4th December, 2012. The book presentation will provide an opportunity to interview Alexander and colleagues who authored the book.
Prof. John Saul, the Canadian political scientist, one of the world’s top experts on liberation struggle in Southern Africa, comments that the book is: ‘well written, extremely scrupulous in its research and forceful in its argument’.
The book Launch will take place on 6th December, 2012 at 5:30pm at Auckland Park Campus, Council Chambers, University of Johannesburg and on 10 December 2012 in Cape Town at Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street.