Everyone involved in the build-up to the shooting in Lonmin’s Marikana mine was responsible for the deaths of 34 mine workers, ANC national executive member Cyril Ramaphosa wrote in The Sunday Times.  

“There are very few innocents in this tragic saga. Those who suffered the greatest loss — the wives, partners and children of those who died — bear the least responsibility for what happened,” he said.   “For wherever we find ourselves, we cannot escape the sense that, through our action or inaction, we bear some responsibility for the circumstances that made such a tragedy possible.”  

Ramaphosa said Lonmin management, its board and all of its stakeholders, the National Union of Mineworkers, the Association and Mineworkers and Construction Union, the police and the striking miners were all responsible for the shooting.

He said most mines were located in areas with poor infrastructure, weak governance and few basic services. This often led to the development of informal settlements.

“This points to a need for better development planning and greater co-operation between government and mining companies,” he said.  

“We need to think beyond the social and labour plans that mining companies develop. We must measure success not merely by regulatory compliance, but by the tangible differences we make in the lives of people in mining communities.”  

Former ANC Youth League president Julius Malema said last week that the miners were shot to protect Ramaphosa’s shares in Lonmin.  

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Sat May 25 16:32:40 SAST 2013 ::

Aug 27, 2012

star88

Cyril Ramaphosa, own up to your capitalist and inhumane greed. Stop saying you are on the side of the poor when you continue to exploit, spit, abd look down on your fellow black African.

White capitalists are proud of exploiting black Africans, and that is why they will never bother to justify their evil greed by writing stupid letters to the Sunday Times, Cyril Ramaphosa.

This latest crass attempt to blame everyone is a cheap tactic by you Cyril Ramaphosa, your friends, and spin doctors ...
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Aug 27, 2012

Limpopoist

Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo sexwale have gathered their worth by selling black baclk to white slavery

To Cyril Ramaphosa : there is NO WE ,You are alone and white crookes
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Aug 27, 2012

Masheleng

He has been sitting pretty and enjoying the benefits from Lonmin's inhumane treatment of its black workers and now tries to spin a tragedy of this magnitude by apportioning collective blame. No, Sir! You and your cronies in the NEC are to blame, together with all your fat-cat pseudo communists who are living the life.

In your greed you have had little concern about conditions in "your" mines. We always believed that the brothers will agitate for change once co-opted by white business. But, lo and behold! White capital has converted you from a radical revolutionary into a fat lazy evolutionary.

Enjoy tour wealth and stop patronizing us.
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Aug 28, 2012

Mmalelengoana

Is a pity that amongst all 44 people reported dead are blacks. What is happening with us? What is happening to the black communities? Why are we eating ourselves?
You read over the news is all about blacks, we even turn to destroy our own things. Our locations were fitted with Telkom public phones and in all our locations those phones are no longer operating then the question remains, who destroyed them?

We are just a sick society; I have learned it was not only ANC that was fighting for the liberation of the black from jaws of apartheid, why can’t they share the little they had with other blacks.
Don’t they remember what Biko said “the basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.”
“So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.”

Alluuuutaaaa continua with the wild cat strike don’t see miners as criminals. NO, NO, NO. All of you are crying up for peace but who are the criminals? Miners or owners?

Ke boletṥe nna Mmalelengoana like it or not.
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