Justice delayed is justice denied . . .

IMAGINE for a moment that you are a relative of one of the murdered Marikana miners. It’s been almost three years since your son, husband or brother was shot dead by trigger-happy cops.

The only thing you want is to have your loved one back, but since that is impossible, you at least want some form of justice.

You want someone to be held responsible for that bloody day in 2012.

When the Marikana Commission was announced, you thought it would hold those responsible for these terrible events accountable.

It should have lasted only a few months, but instead the commission dragged on for almost three years.

During this time you have not been able to grieve properly, and your emotional pain is matched only by the difficulty of making it through each month without your family’s breadwinner.

And 25 June is meant to bring some hope. You’re told, at the last minute, that the president will speak to you and to the nation, revealing the findings of the Farlam Commission, and maybe, just maybe, make it possible for you to have a good night’s sleep again.

Since no one knew that the report was going to be released, no plans have been made. But you eventually gather with your fellow widows in a boardroom owned by the mining company. Then, you discover that the TV doesn’t work, and you sit there powerless as the rest of the country hears how the rich and the powerful are absolved from any real wrongdoing.

Things weren’t any better for the relatives who could get to a working television, as they sat and watched their hopes being crushed.

For an event that was all about the Marikana massacre, it seemed somehow disconnected from the reality of that day.

The formal, stilted language of the report was a world away from the songs, chants and angry shouts, the rattle of gunfire, the moans of the wounded and dying.

It was all too clean, too ordered, no hint of the running, hiding and falling, of the smell of dust, gunpowder and blood.

If some people were expecting a report that was, to borrow from Shakespeare, sound and fury, but signifying nothing, then even they were disappointed. All we got was nothing, the sound and fury seemingly just too much effort to bother with.

Three years after her cops killed 34 miners, the police commissioner will apparently finally be investigated.

Did we need a commission to figure this out?

We should not, however, really be surprised. By now we should know that nothing of substance will ever come out of any of the commissions government so loves to employ
whenever it screws up. I’d love someone to point me to one of these expensive exercises that actually led to any good, concrete results. The end of the world will come before that happens.

FACE it, these commissions are nothing but a way for the powerful to distract us from their latest misbehaviour. It creates a false impression that something is being done to bring wrongdoers to justice, when all it does is delay any possible conclusion for so long that when it finally comes, the guilty hope the public has forgotten all about the original crime.

But the widows, mums, siblings and children of Marikana can’t forget. For them this is not just some news item to be dealt with and then discarded for the next juicy story. Big names like
Cyril Ramaphosa, Nathi Mthethwa and Susan Shabangu can now again sleep in peace, if they ever really worried that they’d end up in big kak (I don’t think so).

But the ordinary, poor people who had to bury their sons and husbands aren’t that lucky. For the suffering Marikana survivors, the nightmares will continue.

Send your thoughts to [email protected]

Until next week, salani kahle!

This article first appeared in the Sunday Sun.