A Promise Kept Through Tears Of Grief

They called him the man with the green blanket. In the days leading up to the Marikana massacre, Mgcineni ‘Mambush’ Noki was at the forefront, negotiating with police. On August 16, it will be five years since Noki died in a hail of bullets. What happened to the families of those who died with Noki in Marikana at Lonmin’s platinum mine, in South Africa’s North West province?

- Thobile Hans

On cold day in June, hundreds of young and elderly villagers in Mqanduli, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, some with faces painted with white clay and others smoking pipes, joined members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) who wore heavy green jackets to keep the cold at bay. Among them were Joseph Mathunjwa, Amcu’s fearless president, lawyers Dumisa Ntsebeza and James Nichol, the latter a pro bono lawyer from Britain. Mathunjwa, and his union members, were back at the village to fulfil a promise made to the Marikana families. Upon seeing desperation at the funeral of Noki in this village, Mathunjwa vowed to build 37 three-bedroom houses for the families of the deceased.

Mathunjwa tried in vain to stop the fatal charge of his men towards police during the Marikana massacre. He often wept at his failure. Now five years after the biggest incident of police brutality since democracy in South Africa, where 34 miners lost their lives, 78 were wounded and 250 sent to jail, Amcu returned to Mqanduli, to rejoice with the family of Noki, known as the man with the green blanket.

It took five years of struggle to raise the money to build the houses; Noki’s family was the first to benefit. The face-brick house stands among scattered mud houses standing on the side a hill next to a dusty road. Poverty is palpable in these parts of the Eastern Cape; as a result many young men are attracted to the mines, far from home, even before finishing school.

Mathunjwa, before cutting the ribbon to the house and handing it over to the 30-year-old widow of Noki, spoke harshly about youth who drop out of school and run to the mines. He did not spare the government either.