Hon Speaker, Ms Pauline Masutle has become the 46th casualty of the Marikana disaster.
Beyond the praiseworthy wage agreement, a sad story of Marikana is continuing to unfold. It is the story of power at war with powerlessness. It is the story of need competing with greed. It is the story of poverty existing side by side with prosperity. It is the story of a bourgeois democracy confessing its sins and failures. It is the story of political heavyweights who are simultaneously economic mosquito weights. It is the story of buffaloes weighing more than human beings on the scales of African compradors.
Professor Muxe Nkondo aptly sums up the Marikana disaster, and I quote:
The mining poor in South Africa lack support for the fundamental functions of a human being. They are less well nourished than their mine- owning counterparts, less healthy, more vulnerable to physical violence and abuse. In a real sense, the mining poor are not full equals under the law. They do not have access to property as their counterparts do, the same capacity to make a contract, the same freedom of association, movement and choice.
Those who fail to create escape routes out of poverty make violent revolution inevitable. I thank you.