A major concern for the strikers was seeing the police rapidly reel out the razor wire using two or more Hippos. See Map 5. This shows the approximate position of the wire, which was positioned in a line northwards from a pylon close to the electrical power facility and then took a turn to the right in the direction of a small kraal (the first of three in that area). Mineworker 2 said they were being ‘closed in with a wire like we were cows’, and one of the miners’ wives said that the fencing was for ‘rats and dogs’.49The comments are significant because the police had begun treating the workers as if they were no longer human beings. A group of the miners’ leaders, including Mambush, tried to remonstrate with the police near a point marked + on Map 5. Their plea that a gap be left open, so that strikers could leave like human beings, fell on deaf ears. With guns aimed at the workers, it was clear that the police were now ready to shoot. A large number of the strikers rushed north-eastwards in the direction of Nkaneng, where many of them lived.
It was about now that the first shot was fired. According to members of our Reference Group, this came from behind the miners who were heading towards Nkaneng, hitting a worker at a point close to the second + on Map 5. Some fleeing strikers, including several leaders, now turned to the right, hoping to escape through a small gap between the wire and the first kraal. Most continued onwards, so there were no hoards of armed warriors following this leading group, as suggested in some media coverage though not by TV footage. One woman, a witness, later made the point that the strikers were running with their weapons down, and so were not a threat, and this can be seen in some photographs.50 It was too late. The leaders’ path was blocked by Hippos, and they were trapped. Mineworker 2 recalled: ‘People were not killed because they were fighting... We were shot while running. [We] went through the hole, and that is why we were shot.’
The order was given to fire. The command may have come from a white man, who did so, according to Mineworker 6, using the word ‘Red’.51There were no warning shots.52According to Mineworker 2, who was clearly present, ‘the first person who started to shoot was a soldier in a Hippo, and he never fired a warning shot, he just shot straight at us’. Within seconds seven workers had been slain, killed by automatic gunfire right in front of TV cameras (see Map 5). In photographs, their bodies are pictured in a pile, with a shack nearby. Moments later, another group of five men were killed, their bodies crushed against a kraal, as if cornered without any possibility of escape. Mineworker 8 questioned: ‘I get very amazed when the police say they were defending themselves, what were they defending themselves from?’
Some of the leading group were able to turn back. They joined other workers scattering in all directions. Many fled north; some went westwards in the hope of reaching Marikana; others just ran as far as they could and as quickly as their legs would carry them; and one, at least, crawled a long distance across rough ground, hoping to dodge bullets and Hippos.53It is difficult to imagine how terrifying and disorienting the situation must have been. There were armoured vehicles all around; there were helicopters in the sky; horses charging to and fro; police sweeping through on foot; stun grenades making a noise as loud as a bomb; tear gas; water cannons; rubber bullets; live rounds; and people being injected with syringes. This was not public order policing, this was warfare. A strike leader remarked: ‘Water, which is often used to warn people, was used later on, after a lot of people were shot at already’.54Perhaps confirming this, on 20 August we found blue-green water-canon dye in an arc well to the west of the mountain, far from the initial front line. Similarly, Mineworker 10 asserted: ‘They lied about rubber bullets. They did not use them.’ I have not heard of the use of injections before, and it remains to be seen why they were used and to what effect. There were many complaints that workers were trampled to death by Hippos.55Some had been made dizzy by tear gas and some had stumbled perhaps.56Some people we spoke to described deceased workers whose bodies were so badly crushed they could only be identified by finger prints. Helicopters used a range of weapons.
Of the 34 workers who were slaughtered on 16 August, 20 died in the opening encounter or very soon after and close by. The remainder were killed in one small location. This is the place known by some as Kleinkopje. But South Africa is littered with small koppies and it seems more appropriate to call it Killing Koppie. Here, some 300 metres to the west of the mountain, on a low rocky outcrop covered with shrubs and trees, the police killed 14 workers. On a grassy plane with few large bushes this was an obvious place to hide from bullets and Hippos, but it was relatively easy for the police to encircle and then move in for the kill. Workers told us that two helicopters came from the north, depositing their paramilitary cargo, and two or three Hippos moved in from the south. Mineworker 9 recalled: ‘That is where some of our members went in and never came back... the people who ran into the bush were ones being transported [in ambulances and police trucks]’. On 20 August, when we were directed to the Killing Koppie, we not only found letters on the rocks that had been spray-painted in yellow, marking sites from where bodies had been removed, we also saw pools and rivulets of dried blood discoloured by the blue-green dye. Mineworker 5 was present on the Koppie; one of those lucky to survive. He recalls: ‘You were shot if you put up your hands.’ Needless to say, he did not raise his hands. Rather, he says: ‘I was taken by a gentleman who was of Indian ancestry. He held me and when I tried to stand up I was hit with guns, and he stopped them.’ A drop of humanity in a sea of bestiality. Allegedly, some workers were disarmed and then speared by the police (we heard this from a number of strikers including Mineworker 5). Whatever view one takes of the initial killings, it is clear that the men who died on the Killing Koppie were fleeing from the battlefield. Moreover, the precise locations of deaths and the autopsy evidence tend to reinforce the account provided by Mineworker 5, leading one to the conclusion that Killing Koppie was the site of cold-blooded murder.57
Immediate aftermath
Those who were arrested had to suffer ill-treatment and torture. Soon after his arrest, Mineworker 5 was told by police, spitefully it seems to me: ‘Right here we have made many widows... we have killed all these men.’ As with most of the other arrested survivors, he was initially held at a Lonmin facility known as B3. He pondered: ‘It seemed as though the police did not belong to the government, but that they belonged to the company.’ Later he was taken to a police station, where he had to sleep on a cement floor without a blanket (in the middle of winter), received only bread and tea without sugar, was unable to take his TB medication, and was refused a call to his children even though he was a widower. Other detainees were tortured. Early in the struggle, Mineworker 8 thought the police would protect the workers from NUM. After the massacre he was venomous: ‘I will just look at them and they are like dogs to me now... when I see a police now I feel like throwing up... I do not trust them anymore, they are like enemies.’
The massacre was an intensely traumatic experience for all its victims. Mineworker 1 recalled: ‘We had pain on the 16th, but it was more painful... on the 17th... because [if] one [comrade] did not come back... we did not know if he had died or what’. Mineworker 8 drew on his knowledge of history, but this did not hide his suffering. ‘Hey my man,’ he started, ‘my head was not working on that day and I was very, very numb and very, very nervous, because I was scared. I never knew of such things. I only knew of them like what had happened in 1976 and what happened in 1992, because of history.’ Linking this back to the present, he continued: ‘I would hear about massacres you see. I usually heard of that from history, but on that day it came back, so that I can see it. Even now, when I think back, I feel terrible, and when I reverse my thinking to that, I feel sad, still.’58For Mineworker 10, trauma