After 10 years, widows of victims of 'Marikana massacre' left with no answers

[August 16, 2022]  MARIKANA, South Africa (Reuters) - Nosihle Ngweyi and Zameka Nongu complete a laborious climb up a small hill in South Africa's Marikana town and look forlornly at the site where their husbands were killed on Aug. 16, 2012. Ten painstaking years have passed and they still seek answers. 

Zameka Nungu and Nosihle Ngweyi, two widows who lost their husbands during the brutal killing of miners, speak about how life has not changed for the better, in front of the hill where police killed 34 miners in 2012 in the "Marikana massacre", near the Lonmin mine in Rustenburg, northwest of Johannesburg July 19, 2022. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

Their husbands were among the 34 striking miners gunned down by the police in the infamous "Marikana massacre" outside a platinum mine in the North West province town, the worst such incident since the end of apartheid.

"Mama why did the police kill my father?" asks Ngweyi's son, to which she has no answer.

The 10th anniversary of the killings is also being commemorated in "Marikana the Musical", being performed in Pretoria, in which people dressed as miners and police re-enact the tragedy as sombre music plays in the background.

To the audience and actors alike, the violence is incomprehensible. Lead actor Mavuso Magabane said: "Every night before I come on stage I watch the videos, I relive the moment so that when I come on this stage I'm in a trance."

(Reporting by Sisipho Skweyiya and Shafiek Tassiem; Writing by Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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