Bloody Marikana: What the media didn’t tell you!
Sunday, 19 August 2012
We are lucky to find him. He was there the day workers were murdered. It’s not hard to see that the trauma is taking its toll on him. He offers to give us a tour of the murder scene. He warns us that there is blood everywhere and bits of bone. He knows every corner. “People were crushed” he keeps repeating. When he realises that we don’t quite understand what he means he explains that several workers were shot at and ran over by “inyalas”. He tells us some of the dead could have survived had they not been crushed by these heavy duty police vehicles. He is clear. This was an ambush, a joint operation between the police and the military. Soldiers with pump guns were standing on the other side of the mountain and shooting, he says. The workers were massacred on a ‘mountain’ behind the informal settlement where they live. The ambush occurred in their backyard. They posed no threat anyone. Since the strike began they had been gathering there, addressing the people and in the evenings dispersing peacefully. He says that after the shooting he witnessed police officers gathering and burning bullets at the scene after the massacre. On that day WHY bring in the army? Why did police burn evidence?
What is clear from what we are told is that this was an ambush. The video material in mainstream media showing workers charging at the police was in fact workers running away from bullets being hurled from behind. Why would workers, armed with knobknorries charge at armed police? The workers were completely surrounded and what we’ve been seeing in the media is only half the story. There was clearly a mission: shoot to kill, thus the deployment of the army.
Throughout our conversation with the worker, he keeps digging into his pocket for a phone that is in tatters. He explains that it’s his friend’s phone who was crushed in the carnage. It’s all he has left of his him. He explains that he wants to get someone to check the phone and retrieve his friend’s information from it. There’s an uncomfortable silence. He knows as well as we do that the phone cannot be revived, that his friend is not going to come back to life but none of us say it. What is there to say, really?
This report was brought to you by the SNI Operation Marikana crew.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!
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[...] “Bloody Marikana: What the media didn’t tell you,” by September National Imbizo Share this:ShareFacebookDiggTwitterRedditStumbleUponPrintEmailLike this:LikeOne blogger likes this. [...]
[...] confusion. Many were executed while trying to hide among rocks and under bushes. On the websit of September National Imbizo, the eyewitness is referred to as “our [...]
[...] There are other claims in that article and more in another here. [...]