In May 2017, while campaigning for the ANC presidency, then deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa visited Rhodes University in Makhanda, in Eastern Cape. It was five years since the Marikana massacre in which 34 miners were killed in one of the most violent labour disputes in democratic SA.
Many believed, and still do, that Ramaphosa who was at the time non-executive director of the mining company Lonmin, had at the very least a moral obligation to apologise for his part in events that ultimately led to the massacre.
It was therefore inevitable that he would be confronted with these questions while on the political campaign trail. In Makhanda a student asked him when he would visit families who had suffered immensely from the brutal killing of Lonmin workers.
Ramaphosa said Struggle veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had promised to take him to Marikana, an offer he pledged to take up soon.
A year later, Madikizela-Mandela died. At her funeral, Ramaphosa again promised to go to Marikana this time accompanied by EFF leader Julius Malema.
It has been two years since that promise and 8 years since the massacre and Ramaphosa, now state president, has yet to visit Marikana families.
It is a no brainer that Ramaphosa will not receive a hero’s welcome if and when he finally goes to that community.
Although he was absolved of legal liability for the massacre by a commission of inquiry, the victims’ families believe, fairly or not, that his call for a tough stance against the miners in the days leading up to the killings, had at the very least emboldened the police’s brutal actions that day.
Therefore as a leader he has a responsibility to live up to both his word and the victims' expectation to face them.
Speaking at the eighth commemoration of the massacre in Midrand, Johannesburg on Sunday, Nonkululeko Ngxande, one of the widows, said they were still waiting for an apology from the government.
"Even now there's hasn't been a single person from the government to come to us to apologise, we lost our husbands on that day,” she said.
In the absence of a reasonable explanation why the president has not gone to Marikana, we must then conclude that he has not yet found the courage to face victims of one of the deadliest massacres of our time.
If so, his conduct in this regard is frankly nothing short of disgraceful.
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