Rethinking Marikana: Warm and Cold Lenses in Plea for Humanity

Abstract

This article examines a rethinking of the historic Marikana tragedy of 16 August 2012, as encoded in the eNCA documentary film The Marikana Massacre: Through the Lens. My approach is in the form of commentary on the act, scene, actor, agent and agency pertaining to the way the Marikana massacre is selectively revived in the documentary film. I make these comments in order to scaffold discussions of the documentary producers’ poíésis and praxis giving shape to their narrative. The presencing and absencing of the documentary are discussed in making the case for a need to analyse carefully the background of the Marikana shootings and the situation in which they occurred, in much the same way as it is necessary to explore the producers’ purpose and narrative in selecting to produce the documentary as they did. The study argues that the producers of the documentary film chose to narrate the small-person plight of the killed Marikana miners, security guards and police officers by silencing issues around other main actors one may categorise as symbolic of big-person state power, only to enrich the supposed bigger meaning contingent upon the audience’s pre-existing knowledge of the context of the incidents. In this way the illusory objectivity of the narration is strengthened towards a more cogent correlation with what obtains in the real world of nearly two decades of post-apartheid South Africa.