Once released, the Marikana Commission report will require thorough scrutiny, understanding and commitment to act on its recommendations.

Judge Neal Tuchten of the South Gauteng High Court dismissed the urgent application, on behalf of mineworkers, for President Jacob Zuma to release the Marikana report immediately.

Zuma, however, will not understand the importance of this report if he reads it in isolation from society. The report demands collective social action.

Not all of us are ready for the report. But as EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said in parliament, the report is a cure that might heal the wounds that our society is grappling with.

The report itself will likely deal with convoluted issues that are potentially life-changing.

Marikana exposed the inherent legacy and culture of the apartheid era police in the institutional practice of police today.

It also exposed the toxicity of collusion between politics and business - a legacy of the policy of broad-based black economic empowerment.

Empowerment partners and participants in the mining sector are chosen on the basis of their political connections with the governing party.

Unsurprisingly, this proximity to political power is exploited for non-compliance with aspects of the Mining Charter.

There are no consequences or withdrawal of mining rights instigated against offending companies that are politically connected.

Some of these companies are not even meeting their social and labour plan commitments to society. Yet, they enjoy political immunity.

They continue to be destructive on the environment, with backlogs in rehabilitation projects.

There is continued under-reporting on their operations' impact on ecosystems, biodiversity, local livelihoods sustainability and much more that is outside the purview of profit making.

Some of these mining companies are implicated in scandalous practices of profit shifting and tax avoidance, robbing the country of much needed revenue.

It was in the Marikana Commission that we discovered that Lonmin had failed to meet its target to build 5500 housing units by 2011.

It is not only Lonmin that is in breach of these fundamental rights, in a mining industry bedevilled by colonial and apartheid legacies that saw labour as undeserving of decent treatment.

This crime was carried on under the not-so-watchful eye of the Department of Mineral Resources.

It is criminal because housing and dignity are constitutional rights in South Africa. Actively undermining these rights is unconstitutional.

The scapegoat for the continued existence of this calamity is the phenomenon of "migrant labour".

This has been used to explain the difficulty in giving mineworkers decent living conditions.

Even executives in these mining operations are migrant labourers, yet they receive houses and other benefits like medical aid for themselves and their families, with decent retirement packages accumulated.

Mineworkers are seen as a problem, a burden on the company budgets because they are poor.

The industry treats them as beggars and not as decent human beings deserving of the highest quality of life possible.

The housing backlog could have been scrapped long ago had 10% of what has been paid to shareholders over the last 12 years been committed to this purpose.

The Marikana report will also deal with issues of accountability and focus on the importance of stakeholder engagement.

At the heart of the build-up and actual day of the August 16 2012 massacre is the arrogance of business in how it treats grievances of workers.

This permeates businesses well beyond the mining industry. Workers across the country remain marginalised in the companies they work for; they are almost a modern-day caricature of servants - speaking when spoken to with great submission and obedience.

We must search for new ways for business to conduct itself in South Africa.

We must also deal with the need for the democratisation of the labour movement space.

The tension between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) is an example of the depreciation of democracy in our country.

Leaders choose to be derogatory and violent towards each other. The body count of regional officials and shop stewards who have been killed in the turf war between NUM and Amcu in Marikana is worrisome for democracy.

Democracy rests on the exercise of people's power.

The Marikana report must be interrogated to give this full expression and delineate boundaries for police involvement.

Police cannot be used to intimidate and silence the voices of the people in protection of government and business failures.

Police brutality against society that South Africans have allowed to entrench itself needs to be undone. The prized National Development Plan demands this.

The involvement in the 2012 Marikana strike of people who were not in the employ of the company illuminates the destitution that exists through chronic unemployment and poor education. These too need urgent intervention.

Beyond formal bureaucratic processing and implementation of the Marikana Commission report, a societal dialogue is necessary to set our nation on a new course.

Comprehensively evaluated, the politics of the past 21 years have failed to cleanse South Africa of its past and rebirth it on an identifiable transformative path.

Lest they fester, our wounds need more than bandaging.

l Mnguni is a youth activist