Some of you may know that I grew up in South Africa. I have lived in the UK for 17 years, but my heart is in Africa. I love the country and I love the people. In the 1980s many people fought for and won the end of apartheid and the beginning of democracy in South Africa. Long before Nelson Mandela was released from prison, brave men and women lost their lives for a better future for South Africans.
I have just watched a news items about the massacre of at least 18 protesting miners at Marikana platinum mine, north west of Johannesburg. Mines in South Africa have always been staffed by migrant workers, many of these men have families in other southern African countries. Even the South Africa workers live hundreds of miles away from their families. It is an extremely hard life.
The scenes I witnessed today, took me back nearly 30 years. I was still at school. Although the country never got to a state of civil war, there were riots all over the country, on a daily basis. One day, my cousin, a young policeman, was called out to riot duty. The commanding officer gave the order to fire on the crowd, and much like today, there was confusion about who had fired first, on whom, and who had been injured or killed.
Sadly, on that day someone did die. The ballistics were traced back to the weapon fired by my cousin. He was arrested, charged, convicted and jailed for manslaughter. He was 22 years old and went to jail for 4 years. I will never forget going to see him in Westville Maximum Security prison - it was hell. We all hoped that this was a lesson learned and would never be seen in South Africa's history again.
As an addendum to this story, by the time I got to university, apartheid was over, the last vestiges of the Nationalist government were clinging to power, and Nelson Mandela had been returned to the nation. One of the last acts of protest took place at Wits University in 1988. The fighting went on for hours. The tear gas clung to campus. We were surrounded by riot police, unable to leave the area. As the afternoon wore on, we begged the police to let us leave. They were young, frightened. We could see their white, sweaty, shaky knuckles on the triggers of their tear gas weapons. Without warning, they fired on us. A tear gas canister hit my friend on the shoulder, knocking her to the ground. I looked around for help and saw the Deputy Vice Chancellor standing behind us. I shouted at him to help, to intervene, to stop the riot. He fixed me with a steely glare and said 'In thirty years, you'll be telling this story and laughing about it'.
Well, Professor Shear, I'm not laughing today.
*Updated 20/08/2012
Since writing this post, it has been confirmed that 34 people were killed and 80 more were injured. Conversations on Twitter and when out and about, tell me that we are shocked by what has happened.
To read more of my posts from South Africa, please see:
Educating Africa
For the love of knowledge