On 16 August 2012, 34 people were killed in Marikana by the police. Promising justice, President Jacob Zuma announced a commission of inquiry into the deaths, as well as those of 10 people killed in the preceding week. Today the commission’s report is due. GREG NICOLSON looks at what we know from the inquiry and what to expect.

On Human Rights Day, a small group in the Workers’ Museum in Newtown watched Miners Shot Down. After the film, a man sitting with a young boy raised his hand. He wanted to know the director’s motivations, because after watching events unfold in Marikana and seeing the ongoing oppression of the black working class he felt like going to the nearest police station and burning it down.

Two-and-a-half years after the massacre, it’s incorrect to say that justice hasn’t been served. Justice has been inverted. Hundreds of striking miners were charged for causing the death of their own comrades. Liberation leaders and their allies have ignored a massacre so similar to those they now commemorate. No one from the SAPS, which killed dozens and then lied and deceived the public about its role, has been charged. There has been no closure for…

Source : Daily Maverick