Cape Town - The daughter of Marikana victim Hassan Fundi broke down as she remembered details of her father’s killing at Marikana and the informal manner in which the family had found out.
A day before her father was killed, and while breaking his fast during the month of Ramadaan, he asked his son to get the bulletproof vest as he readied for work.
Just a 9-year-old at the time, Amina Fundi questioned how it would keep him protected, leaving most of his body exposed to fatal gunfire.
The Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education held a two-day programme commemorating 10 years after the Marikana massacre at Bertha House in Woodstock.
On August 16, police opened fire and killed 34 striking miners at the Lonmin mine in the North West. However, little is spoken of the 10 workers who were killed in days prior.
During the launch of Marikana: A People’s History, author Julian Brown said the book had attempted to tell a story that the commission of inquiry failed to do.
Seven people were killed in the first volley of fire, Brown said.
“And another seventeen who were hunted down and were shot as they were surrendering, as they were on the ground, (and) as they sat with their hands tied behind their backs by the police.”
Fundi said she received the news while spending the day at her aunt’s house during the month of Ramadaan.
“The day before, we were all sitting down breaking our fast and my dad got called in. He was a security guard, not a striking mineworker, and he got called in to go to work the next day and then he told my brother to bring the bulletproof vest,” Fundi said.
“Being nine and then going through such trauma, and it’s not the fact that it was just trauma, but also maybe how he passed on. Like me hearing he had his tongue cut out and half of his body cut and the rest of it burnt. The families and victims who died on August 12-14 are the forgotten ones, with the 10 deaths hardly acknowledged.”