Among the many images to have emerged from Thursday's memorial service for the Lonmin miners was one that I feel has been quite effective in placing the shootings firmly in the context of a troubled and bloody history.

And no, it was not of expelled ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, who had hijacked the service, turning it into a political rally in which he attacked the government -- although this has been a dominant theme in the media.

The photograph was of two women dressed in black sitting on rocks on a hill near the site where the 34 miners were mown down by police. It was a simple image, and the caption identified them only as members of a local church. 

But there was a timelessness about it and, if you didn't know better, you'd be hard pressed to say when exactly this photograph was taken. It could have been this century; it could have been during the last. In fact, the women's dresses were so formal and severe, that were this in sepia, you could be forgiven for thinking this was a scene from the 1890s or even earlier.

It is a cliche, used by the lazy and hard of thinking, that a picture is worth a thousand words, but here essentially was a South African narrative: in a country shaped and formed by a scramble for its mineral resources, a country where the battle for those resources continues and grows more violent with each passing day, women appear forever destined to gather in groups and mourn in the dust of the mining compounds.

History repeats itself. That's another tired saw, one that historians find intensely annoying. What is meant by this, though, is that we ignore the lessons thrown up by our past. It is not unreasonable, then, that some editorial writers have compared Marikana with Sharpeville and others referred to it as our democracy's Boipatong.

President Jacob Zuma's response to the shootings has been very poor; so uniquely awful, in fact, that there was hardly a moment in the last ten days when he did not seem wholly at a loss at what to say and what to do. 

True, he did visit Marikana on Wednesday and naturally he took the opportunity to explain to striking miners that when the tragedy happened he was in Mozambique, doing government stuff, but he had nevertheless cut short his trip and hurried back home as he had been shocked that so many people had died.

Unfortunately, our caring president explained, it was late, and so he could only meet with the police leadership that day, but he did manage to drop by the local hospital to visit injured miners. But he added, "I have already taken a decision to institute a commission of inquiry to investigate every aspect of what happened here. We want the truth."

And with that it seemed, as an unrestrained Ranjeni Munusamy wrote in the Daily Maverick, that Zuma had become the man he had once promised to be -- "The People's President" -- and the country could now see in him "traces of the president it really needs, a leader who lent an ear to the suffering and struck all the right notes to move the country beyond the horror of the Marikana tragedy."

But he was only playing catch-up. After all, Malema had already visited the miners. As one of them told Zuma, "He came. He listened. He cares."

And so Zuma announced the terms of reference of the inquiry to be headed by Judge Ian Farlam. Crucially, it's been structured so its findings will only be released after the ruling party's elective conference in December. The People's President taking action, once again, to look after himself.

But no matter. He was upstaged again by Malema on Thursday, who told mourners, "The government has turned into a pig. It eats its own people." His audience cheered as he told them that those cabinet ministers present were only there for the photo opportunity. With that, they and other government members abruptly left the service.

Earlier this week, and also in the Daily Maverick, the UCT philospher Jacques Rosseau wrote: "Besides anger and sadness, another reasonable reaction to a tragedy is perhaps to ask this question: when should South Africans begin entertaining the possibility that we have an illegitimate government? Not because they can't magically fix poverty, but because some in government seem intent on breaking the things they could fix, like education. (Education -- that would be one of the things that can help angry miners learn that it's not true that a sangoma can make you bulletproof.)"

On Thursday, you could say, that question was answered.

This article first appeared in The Weekend Argus.

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