Former public protector Thuli Madonsela asked South Africans not to forget the deaths of 44 other people in Marikana’s bloodbath eight years ago and to use devastating occasions to motivate the country to improve and heal.
She gave a memorial lecture on Friday afternoon.
Below is your full address. It is published here edition.
Nice day
I thank Sibanye-Stillwater for the privilege of delivering the conference commemorating the eighth anniversary of the Marikana murders.
I asked to communicate on the issues of healing, renewal and a positive and inclusive long-term for the region and the Community of Marikana. I added something to that, the act of remembering. Therefore, my convention is entitled “Remembering, Healing and Renewing – Reflections on How to Build a Positive and Inclusive Future for the Marikana Region and Community”.
Eight years ago, 44 human beings died. They didn’t have to, but they did. We were shocked, the world shocked. My center was addressed to the families. As a country, we spent 18 years in authorized democracy, 18 years in the implementation of a charter that commits us to heal the divisions of the afterlife and to build a society based on democratic values, social justice and human rights.
What went wrong? This prompted me to “remember” the memorial conference.
Marikana came because we forgot Array We have forgotten our terrible beyond, our most unfair and the legacy it has left us. We’ve forgotten about healing and we’re aiming for renewal. Baseless renewal cannot work. It’s like looking to rebuild a space whose base has structural failures. At some point, everything will collapse.
I like the fact that Sibanye-Stillwater gives priority to other people because Marikana was about other people. Most of the time, when we don’t forget the past, we valued leaders who were at the forefront, valued heroes, but we rarely communicate about the person, like Legogo Dlamini, for example.
When we communicate about Marikana, not everyone forgets the guy in the green blanket, and that’s important, but we’ll also have to not forget the other unnamed people who died, the other unnamed people who were mutilated. Widows, sons, daughters, moms and anonymous parents who today live with the pain of the past.
One of the things I love about Rwanda is the way they tell the story of the tragedy that struck this nation, just as South Africa is preparing for a new dawn of democracy.
The Rwandan Genocide Memorial is not complete with stories of heroes and political figures. It is a museum about the common person, about how the trauma affected her, about how her life spread during those tragic days. But the museum also tells stories of courage on the other side, stories of others who came out and mobilized to help, threatening themselves, their position and their families.
When we say we commemorate Marikana, we say that other people matter. Other people’s lives are important. And we tell families who have been affected by the loss of those 44 lives, that their lives are important and the lives they have enjoyed are important.
That is one of the reasons why I agreed to offer this commemorative conference. I’ve talked about a lot of heroes, but I think for me it’s the ultimate specialty because, at the end of the day, it’s the other people who make the global race.
Adam Smith once said of the justice factor: “Justice is the main pillar that sustains total construction. If removed, the great and immense fabric of human society will have to sink in an instant into atoms.
During those few days from August 12 to 16, 2012, the social fabric was altered. And this procedure that is happening today and has been going on ever since, is a procedure of reconstruction of the broken social fabric. But the social fabric was not set aside on the days of murder and rage. In fact, it was the damaged fabric of society that made Marikana possible.
And in the center, the memory failure.
I am pleased to read the documents on this healing procedure that we only talk about curative of the mine.
You look at the Marikana region as a total, and it’s an eco-formula technique. Companies such as IKEA in Sweden have adopted an eco-formula technique. They have gone from their old technique to capitalism, which was extractive and antagonistic, to a formula rooted in humanity, which here in South Africa we call ubuntu and Rwanda, they call ubumuntu. It is an understanding that society is a formula, that humanity is interdependent in itself and with nature, that as long as there is damage in a component of the formula, it will have an effect on the total formula.
I say that as long as there is injustice somewhere, there can be no lasting peace anywhere, and therefore this initiative that sees reminiscence as curative and renewal beyond the company itself is the right way forward.
I have spoken to some corporations interested in mining and other projects in rural areas, new projects. When you start these projects and don’t help the network locate their own resources of work, wealth and well-being, what happens is that a progression site is threatened because everyone needs something. Therefore, a technique that looks at the total ecosystem and helps everyone locate work tactics, wealth and well-being is the right way to be, and is part of the very concept of fair capital.
It is in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty until 2030 and structural inequalities during the same period.
We have a decade to do that, and our national progression plan needs us to do the same. At Thuma, we call this ecosystem technique entrepreneurial communities. In Israel, they call it Start-Up Nation. It’s about helping everyone take credit for everything they have, joining themselves, as a resource, to get up, to raise their families to heal their communities and become a healing force around the world.
At the University of Stellenbosch, we have something called the Meosa plan for social justice. It has similar elements in every hands to work to heal our communities from the point of the parish, taking credit for our intellectual property, taking credit for our physical resources, adding money, to make sure that we raise everyone, or all to get up, when no one is left behind. Because, like I said, when there’s a weakness somewhere in the system, it threatens everything.
So what state of the brain do we need? What state of the brain encouraged this replacement in Sibanye-Stillwater, which I hope will be the kind of brain that will permeate the entire mining industry?
It goes from an extractive technique to the dating between capital and work, between communities and companies, moving to a dating founded on ubuntu, and in this dating based on ubuntu, it is about co-creating the future.
I’ve analyzed the program and it includes unions, communities and I think it promises to be the kind of replacement that will make a difference just for you, but for the country as a whole.
But in order to do that, you need a set of expansion ideas, not a public relations exercise. You want a brain that recognizes the mistakes of the afterlife. You want a state of mind that embraces vulnerability, knowing that you will make mistakes, knowing that you have made mistakes, knowing that you will be criticized, but detecting anywhere where there have been mistakes and learning and advancing. And above all, this type of business requires collaboration. This requires giving up some of the things we love in the afterlife and building them from our ashes.
This country was destined to be reborn as a phoenix from the ashes of apartheid. Marikana and many things are happening today, adding other people who steal the poor, rob the fitness professionals who are on the front line, deny them non-public protective devices (PPE) or give them defective PPE just out of greed. That’s one of the facts we haven’t forgotten. We will have not to forget what has gone into the afterlife in order to face this beyond, dismantle that beyond and rebuild again. We want to renew not only the way we do things, but also the way we think, from extractive thinking to ubuntu thinking, from a polarized commitment between us to the co-creation of the communities in which we want to live and the long term we want.
What kind of leadership will we have to have an expansion mentality? At the Thuma Foundation, we say you want epic leadership, moral leadership, that you’re doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, not because your peers are doing it, not because you’re going to be bad, and not because you’re going to be rewarded if you do the right thing.
Just do it, because you see in the long run what others don’t see. The next thing in epic leadership is to be motivated through a goal. As a company, ask yourself what deadline you need for yourself, for your children. I saw a bank send statements to its consumers encouraging its customers to invest outdoors in South Africa, and I said, “Oh my God. That’s what James Patrick Kinney had in his head when he talked about the incrusting men and women who had an opportunity to rekindle an agonizing fireplace on a dark, bloodless night, and the six kept their newspapers because they didn’t need anyone in the room to take advantage of it. “So if you say you’re going to invest elsewhere because this specific flame of democracy, this specific flame of progression is reeling, you’re becoming because if you still need your circle of family to live in this country, we’re an ecosystem.
As long as there is injustice somewhere, there can be no lasting peace anywhere. You’ll get the money, will you get peace?
Sibanye-Stillwater, therefore, I congratulate you on this initiative. Impact awareness is the next issue. You have to think about the implications of what we do. In government, we say that when a policy is adopted, it is thought that it will affect all other people, other people with disabilities, other people in rural areas, other young people, women, municipalities, etc. Don’t settle for a prism of justice, it’s just us. The privileged, like me, because we have the low culmination of democracy, are proposing policies that will take advantage of all.
Another challenge we face is that we have abandoned the Equality Act, the promotional component, the equality promotion component of the Equality Act. We abandoned him and opted for BEE, and who took the beE credit? Those who have just picked up the culmination at low altitude, and here we are, 26 years in democracy and Marikana spent 18 years in democracy. It is not just about the situations of this business, which of course were deplorable, but the ecosystem as a whole. I didn’t remember, it’s not a cure, it’s not a renewal. That’s why we want to be aware of the impact.
The issue is a commitment to serve.
Who are you serving? We often need to serve those who serve us. Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. But again, at the end of the day, as long as there is injustice somewhere, there can be no lasting peace anywhere. And, therefore, a technique can mean serving everyone because you think from an ubuntu perspective, but the survival of the parts of an entity will be the strength of that whole entity. It’s epic leadership.
What replacement do we want to make this Sibanye-Stillwater business a success? I’ve already said we have to Array I think we forgot to cure. We have forgotten what happened in the afterlife and how the afterlife influences the present.
Judge Edwin Cameron says the afterlife will not end with us until we file his application for justice. That’s what it says in a case called Daniels vs. Daniels. Scribante, which is about the subject of the earth. But the afterlife is not done with us in all facets of our lives, because those extractive relationships, the relationships that put other people on the monopoly plateau while others were inactive, continue to influence today’s relationships when we now say that everyone can come in and play. But there is no area for newcomers unless we create an area for them.
Then it’s about remembering, healing consciously. But we can’t heal without remembering and we can’t renew without healing. So, in the future, it’s imaginable that what you’re doing can be a style of how we move THE AS forward, without being ashamed to look back and without asking who is to blame.
I know Sibanye-Stillwater is a new player. Sibanye-Stillwater was not in Marikana in August 2012. But that’s the attitude, when you’re in the same boat and the boat sinks, it’s dead to ask who’s to blame. The right query to make is: how can I help?
People make jokes about “thuma mine” (send me). The fact is that if each and every able South African said, for each and every challenge I can solve, “thuma mines,” this country could be overthrown. This next decade may be just the decade of sustainable development, or as the Thuma Foundation says, it may be just the decade of social justice, the decade in which we all grow through inclusion. We can do it.
Each generation has the opportunity and duty to identify and decisively address the urgent challenge of their time.
In my humble opinion, social justice and climate justice-based expansion are the ultimate urgent challenge of our time. This initiative of memory, renewal and reconstruction is precisely what we want as a nation. But it is the other people of Marikana who want it to the fullest because until those hearts are healed, they will have peace in this community, and as long as there is no peace in this community, there will be no peace in this country.
Thank you.
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