Marikana Memorial Project

Marikana Memorial and Urban Strategy

Marikana is located in the North West Province, approximately 80 kilometres west of Pretoria and 25 kilometres east of Rustenburg on South Africa’s ‘platinum belt’. The term ‘platinum belt’ refers to the territory defined by the collection of all platinum mining operations and their associated human settlements which sprawl across the North-Western veld. These settlements initially came to exist for the mining of platinum extracted from the Merensky Reef and the underlying UG2 reef which together form the world’s largest known depository of platinum group metals (PGM). Significant global demand for platinum only occurred in the 1970s as the USA and other countries mandated catalytic converters in cars. The commodity boom of the 2000s and the diversion of mining investment from the ‘maturing’ goldmines in Gauteng and the Free State to platinum reefs of North West and Limpopo saw the rapid influx of miners in search of employment and hence the incredible growth of the mining settlements (Makgetla & Levin, 2016: 7). Rapid economic growth occurred in the North-West from 2001 to 2011, whereafter stagnant demand and slowing prices initiated a reversal of this trend (Ibid:9).

Across the platinum belt the living conditions of the human settlements are very poor. According to a recent study performed by Trade and Industry Policy Strategies (TIPS ),entitled A perfect storm: migrancy and mining in the North West-Province , notes the failure to address the inhumane conditions of these settlements can be attributed to the following three factors:

• The weak housing market in the region and the historically weak provision of infrastructure caused as a structural legacy of apartheid in the former ‘homelands’;

• Weak resource capabilities and capacities of municipalities and provincial agencies; and

• The reluctance of established ‘traditional’ authorities of ‘homelands’ to release land for formal housing to in-migrants (Ibid: 13).

The platinum industry, even though only significantly coming to the fore in the mining industry in the last 15 years, perpetuated a migrant labour system which previously served the burgeoning gold sector as established during the apartheid era. The impoverished former ‘homelands’ with its lack of infrastructure and meagre job opportunities continued to push job seekers to the mining industries in search of a living which could support their families back home. The growth in the platinum sector inevitably brought in-migrants in search of opportunities onto the platinum belt

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Marikana/Wonderkop

+- 20 000 Residents in 2011
66% growth in 10 years
Triples in size; 2001 - 2011
Working men cause 60% population growth
35% of population are women
A third of residents are in-migrants since 2001
High levels of employment contrast to impoverished living and working conditions.
Living conditions considered 'significantly worse' than national average

(TIPs report)

Wonderkop Urban Strategy

The neighbourhood of Wonderkop adjacent to the site of the Marikana Massacre was found to be widely symptomatic of these typical issues found on the platinum belt. Rapid in-flux of miners over the past 15 years, the move away from hostel-type accommodation provided by the mining companies and the difficulty in acquiring land lead to the growth of Nkaneng, an informal settlement adjacent to Wonderkop.

Spatially these territories are disconnected from one another - Nkaneng, Wonderkop, Wonderkop Hostels and Wonderkop Stadium. The urban strategy calls for an urban upliftment in the identified precincts and to stimulate a higher degree of connectivity in the urban economy. Formalising of streets and the installation of water and sanitation services is a priority concern in Nkaneng.

Wonderkop Hostels are currently in the process of being converted into to family units, this scheme will need to be reviewed in light of the new urban strategy.

1. Gateway - Consolidate gateway site, pedestrianise, create public waiting areas, informal trading, upgrade taxi rank.

2. Wonderkop Stadium - Improve facilities, provide better access for schools in close proximity, uplift urban character

3. Institutional Precinct - Consolidate institutional precinct, upgrade urban character, provide public seating, hardscaping and landscaping.

New resource centre and police station.

4. Upgrade urban character around hospital, landscaping, hardscaping and public furniture.

5. Informal trading precinct - Create framework for existing informal traders, hardscaping, landscaping and public furniture improvements

6. Improve hardscaping, landscaping and provision of public furniture at retail outlet

7. Establish civic precinct - New clinic, new public bath-house and ablutions. Create Forecourt for Marikana memorial site, including parking and visitors centre.

8. Marikana Memorial Site - Develop memorial scheme in conjunction with public participation process

Marikana Memorial Project

Marikana - True Event or Historical repitition?

On 16 August 2012 shockwaves reverberated across the globe as images and footage were broadcast of 34 strikers gunned down by the South African Police Service at Marikana, a mining settlement close to Rustenburg on South Africa’s platinum belt. South Africans watched these images flicker across their screens with horror and utter disbelief, as what they were witnessing was the uncanny resurfacing of something they must have imagined remained firmly in the apartheid-era past; the state’s use of deadly violence brought to bear on its own citizenry. This event radically brought about the questioning of the post-apartheid socio-economic and political order and the integrity of the industrial relations regime (Chinguno, 2012: 04). Commentators soon contextualised the events at Marikana through an exceptionalist perspective with the use of a range of adjectives: a ‘turning point’ (Pityana, 2012; Legassick, 2012; Alexander, 2014), a ‘tipping point’ (Gumede, 2012), as a ‘seismic event’ (Alexander et al. 2012), and as marking a ‘tectonic shift’ (Smith, 2012). The significance of this was quickly likened to the the massacres at Sharpville (1960) and Soweto (1976) (Smith, 2012; Nqcukaitobi, 2013: 837). Conversely authors Nico Buitendag and Neil Coetzer, in their journal article History as a system of wrongs – examining South Africa’s Marikana Tragedy in a temporal Legal Context, argue that Marikana rather than a ‘turning point’, represents “…a repitition of historical events in a different temporal context within South Africa’s legal system” (Buitendag & Coetzer, Year: 96). To demonstrate this argument these authors point towards other instances of industrial action met with state violence under the Union and National Party governments as “…more suitable comparators to the actions of the ANC in 2012…” (Ibid: 97). The authors refer to a strike in 1914 that involved the deployment of armed forces, the infamous Rand Rebellion of 1922, the Great Strike of 1946 when nine black miners were gunned down, and the rolling strikes of 1973 which involved 200,000 workers which led to the death of 12 strikers (Ibid:98). These authors submit that not only have these events been ‘forgotten’ and ‘overlooked’ in the discourse surrounding Marikana, but that these memories should have and could have prevented history from repeating itself (Ibid: 99). Hence from Buitendag and Coetzer we may consider whether Marikana as a future object of historicity will become ‘a true event’, in the paradigmatic sense, or merely ‘business as usual’ in an ongoing cycle of industrial action in the mining industry, doomed to repeat itself because of our inability to remember.

Marikana - Narrative and the space of the Mountain.

Of course there has been the emergence of dominant narratives surrounding Marikana, much of which can be attributed to the media’s narrow and sensationalist focus which “…tend(s) to demonise the workers in favour of the state and big business” (Bruchausen, 2015: 413). Incredibly, Jane Duncan (2012) found that only 3 per cent of the 153 newspaper articles written directly following the event included interviews with the mineworkers themselves. Camalita Naicker, in her article Marikana and the Subaltern, The Politics of Specificity, calls out the media’s “obsession” with the ethnic and cultural features of the strike as being preoccupied with the use of muti and knobkerries (Naicker, 2015: 100).

It is suggested that the mode of political and collective organisation displayed at Marikana by the workers and ordinary people cannot solely be explained by the rivalry of trade unions or any of the dominant narratives which emerge around the discourse of Marikana for that matter. It is further suggested that the emergence of a horizontal mode of democratic praxis occurring in a subaltern sphere of politics can be attributed to the collective memory of the migrant labourers, the majority of whom come from Mpondoland in the Eastern Cape.

The emergence of the five madodas(men) at Thaba (mountain) is testament to this mode of cultural political praxis whereby representatives of the people were elected through consensus owing to the qualities they were known to embody within the community. Peter Alexander et al A View from the Mountain, from various interviews of those who were at the mountain, notes that,

The leaders were elected on the basis of their historical leadership in recreational spaces, the community and the workplace. Mambush, or ‘the man in the green blanket’, one of the leaders who was killed during the massacre, had obtained his nickname from a Sundowns’ soccer player named ‘Mambush Mudau.’ He was chosen since he had organised soccer games and always resolved minor problems in the workplace. He was particularly well known for having a mild temperament and for his conflict-resolution skills both at the workplace and at his home in the Eastern Cape. (Alexander et al, 2012: 10)

Naicker maintains that the qualities of those leaders elected in the worker committee, their ability to “maintain peace and order” and a commitment to the “principle of negotiation” or as what Alexander et al. describe as “keeping one’s cool” (Naicker, 2015, p. 105)(Alexander et al, 2012, pp. 2,10,11,22,104,131), are consistent with “…the way in which chiefs chose their counsel in the 1800s – 1900s, to how mountain committees functioned during the Mpondo Revolts.” (Naicker, 2015: 105). This uncovers tha significance of the space of the mountain for the striker and community during the days leading up to the Marikana Massacre:

Mountains, spiritual places where rituals were performed, provided protection during wars and were places where people could meet undisturbed. Well before the revolt, the Mphondo met in mountains to show their dissatisfaction with decisions taken by the Bhunga, particularly those concerning the concentration of power in the hands of chiefs, who could attend mountain meetings only if they came as an equal, a commoner, not a chief (Drew, 2012: 76).

Process - spatial/temporal mapping of event

A spatio-temporal mapping excercise of the Farlam Commission of inquiry report was embarked upon in order to ascertain the nature and extent of the event. This process led to a conceptual strategy for a memorial intervention on the site where the massacre took place. See slides above.

Design of Memorial - Concept and Symbolism

The research conducted had informed an approach and attitude towards contemporary memorialisation in the South African memorial landscape and created an understanding of the events at Marikana and their possible historical significance. The theoretical framework was then applied to this approach in order to generate methods for designing a memorial

From Barry Le Va, a post-minimal American artist,, the notion of a sculpture as a dispersion was introduced. This was instrumental in an memorial sculpture which attempted to manage a large site. Le Va’s ideas of sculpture as an exhibited aftermath was also proved fundamental in the aim of memorialising a traumatic event which had occurred on the site in the recent past.

From deconstruction theory, the setting up of an absence/presence dialectic between signifying and signified representations was borrowed as well as the notions of ‘trace layers’.

Stan Allen’s Field Theory, was instrumental in setting up and responding to field conditions within the landscape.

Analysis of Memorial and Use of Symbolism:

The memorial is conceptualised as a sculpture dispersed across the land scape.
What is dispersed are the representations of the absences or trace layers of the Marikana Massacre on the site of their occurrence.
The presence of the mountain, with its own generative potential, invokes the absence of those who died at Marikana.
Their absence is made present through the use of a grid imposed over Thaba and the ‘killing’ koppie. At each point of the grid a 25m high stele represents the spirit of 1 striker who died either at ‘scene 1’ or at
the ‘killing koppie’ (scene 2).
The presentness of the deceased of Marikana invokes the absence of the events of that day and the use of force by the SAPS.
This is made present by tracing these movements and energies on site through the use vertically rising rod-like elements in the landscape which suggest velocity and force.
These vertical elements set up a great number of perspectives and views of the massacre sites depending on the location of the participant.

Thus the memorial sculpture takes on the quality of ‘exhibited aftermath’, it allows for the private unlocking of the event within which the participant facilitates multiple interpretations of the events of 16 August through private mental reconstructions as cued by the sculpture and site. The memorial sculpture becomes as Le Va’s sculptures; “...dispersed spatially, perceived fragmentarily and completed only through mental reconstruction by the participant.” (Maizels, 2015)

Symbolism in the representative elements are abstracted to allow for multiple interpretations: For example, the vertical elements, though overtly referring to those that died through their numeri- cal value, could be metaphorically interpreted as assegais, an artefact which could symbolise the spirit of man through its’ cultural association, or could be interpreted as the long drills that RDO’s use as tools of their trade, thus symbolising the life of a worker.

The sculpture as dispersion also facilitates the commemorative events held at Thaba. The dispersed nature of the memorial sculpture allows the space for thousands to gather as is currently the case and participates in the bodily performance of ritual re-enactment through its presentness.

This design of a memorial sculpture to the victims of the Marikana Massacre is one particular response to the call to memorialise which has come from the families of those left behind, and the will to remember which has been displayed in recent collective remembrance of the traumatic events.