/ 18 August 2022

Why the majority of South Africans don’t know about the Marikana massacre

Marikana

Only 40% of the South Africans who took part in a recent survey by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) reported knowing enough about the Marikana massacre to be able to explain it to a friend.

The HSRC designed and fielded a module of questions in the recently completed annual round of the South African Social Attitudes Survey to explore the patterns of collective memory after nearly 30 years of democracy.

Consisting of 2 996 respondents older than 15, the survey suggests that basic public awareness of the Marikana massacre, like other key historical events, is lower than anticipated.

The survey respondents were asked: “How familiar are you with the following historical events? Marikana massacre 2012.” 

In response, 17% indicated that they were unaware of it and 41% said they had heard of it but knew little about it. Only 40% reported knowing enough about Marikana to be able to explain it to a friend.

Disconcerting results

The results trouble Dr Benjamin Roberts, who is the acting strategic lead, research director and the  South African Social Attitudes Survey coordinator in the developmental, capable and ethical state research division at the HSRC. 

“The fact that only two-fifths of the adult public can even describe what the Marikana massacre was all about is really a tragedy in itself particularly because it’s such a recent, profound event, which has many lessons for society,” he said.

“It raises issues, firstly, about memory. If we look internationally — whether you talk about Rwanda and the genocide and how that’s memorialised and commemorated, at the Holocaust and how Germans have gone to great lengths to not overlook that painful chapter in their history, and there are many examples … I just worry about the South African case.”

South Africans across generations are not showing a sense of, “we know what these key far-reaching events are recently”, and even in the country’s slightly more distant past. “That includes youngsters who are part of the current school curriculum. It makes one worry why some of these key events are not coming through in levels of basic awareness. It’s not translating into increased levels of awareness intergenerationally, for instance. That includes FeesMustFall. You think the born-free generation would know a lot about FeesMustFall but that’s not necessarily the case as well.”

FeesMustFall Movement, 1976 Soweto Uprising, Sharpeville massacre

To gain a sense of the Marikana finding in relative perspective, Roberts and his colleagues compared the findings on knowledge of it to the FeesMustFall Movement of 2015 and 2016, the 1976 Soweto Uprising and the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. 

Awareness of the Marikana massacre was similar to the FeesMustFall Movement, with 16% having heard of the latter, 41% displaying limited knowledge and 40% no awareness. Familiarity of the 1976 Soweto youth uprising was marginally lower, and significantly lower in the case of the Sharpeville massacre. 

In all four instances, those who were confident they could describe the historical events to someone else ranged between 26% and 40%. “This suggests that awareness is likely to be event-specific, influenced by the relative recency of the events, and that the level of knowledge remains generally quite shallow,” the researchers said.

Women were slightly less knowledgeable than men. Age differences were non-linear in character, with low knowledge among youth — especially those in the 16 to 19 age group — rising to a high among those aged 35 to 49, and declining again among older age groups, especially those 65 years and older.

Collective memory

Roberts said the findings raise questions “about the way South Africans approach collective memory” and “how we think about commemorating and memorialising” events like Marikana.

“But those are very complex issues particularly when there are issues of accountability and culpability, which haven’t yet been addressed … Can the state go and provide memorials when they are seen as potentially part of the perpetrators of what happened 10 years ago? But what is sad is that there is no fundamental basic awareness, particularly when we want to deal with the trauma and deal with the pain.”

Marikana raises many different elements. “The issue of state power, state overreach, corporate power even and issues about fair living wages and social justice, and policing culture as well … These kinds of events, despite the tragedy and the trauma, are important episodes for societies as reflection points — that the lessons of the past must not be repeated. That is why it’s particularly worrisome that people can’t even describe what Marikana is about, irrespective of their ideological perspective on it.” 

Fundamental awareness is needed to be able to learn, “even if it’s the uncomfortable lessons of the past”, or to have earnest conversations about what it means for society that 34 people were killed while protesting for a fair wage. 

“What does it mean about the society we live in and what does it mean about what kind of society do we want? It goes back to Archbishop (Desmond) Tutu’s idea around the caring, compassionate society, and it’s about the values we want to espouse, so, the whole moral philosophy of Ubuntu even. It’s finding our humanness and dignity.”

Strong class gradient

The survey found, too, that a strong class gradient informs knowledge of the Marikana massacre with rural and, particularly, less educated adults displaying significantly lower awareness of the Sharpeville massacre. Those with a TV at home or internet access displayed higher knowledge levels than those without.

The researchers said looking across all these attributes, more than a fifth of youngsters (16 to 19 years) and students, those with less than a matric-level education, coloured and Indians, rural residents, and those living in North West, Northern Cape, Free State and Eastern Cape report not having heard of the Marikana massacre.  

The most surprising finding is the relatively low awareness among those in the North West. “This raises the question of whether this may partly reflect an attempt to actively forget or suppress traumatic memories associated with the August 2012 events in Marikana.”


An alternative explanation is that this historic event is not represented enough in the media accessible to this group.

Roberts is worried about the 16- to 19 year-old category. “We found that 27% have never heard [of the Marikana massacre] and only 34% could say what it was … Obviously it happened when they were very young … but you would think that during the course of their education, that they would have had some basic exposure to the episode, that it would have been some part of some conversation point, even for those that didn’t opt to take history as a matric choice.” 

Interest in history, culture influences awareness

Individual beliefs about the past and its relevance for the present had a strong influence on awareness of the Marikana massacre. Those who were interested in local history and culture were nearly four times more likely to be able to describe it than those not at all interested (55% compared to 14%). 

Those that believed that historical events were important for people living in South Africa today were two and a half times more likely to confidently explain the events of Marikana relative to those believing that such events are unimportant (55% versus 22%).

And those supporting the view that “we should forget the past, move on and stop talking about apartheid” were less knowledgeable of the Marikana massacre (37% able to explain event) than those challenging this viewpoint (52%). “Given the importance of such beliefs, it is encouraging that many South Africans recognise the importance of the past for the present,” the researchers said.

Overall, 71% were interested in South African history and culture (38% very interested, 33% somewhat interested), while 78% answered that historical events such as the Marikana massacre were very or somewhat important for people today (47% very, 32% somewhat). More ambiguously, 45% agreed that we should forget the past and move on, while 31% disagreed and 24% were neutral or uncertain.

Roberts said a proper national conversation about “why does Marikana matter and why does Sharpeville still matter”, 60 years on, is needed. “It’s about trying to motivate some of these underlying attitudes. The more we provoke and stimulate that interest, stimulate that recognition of the pain against forgetting. We cannot forget.”

The idea of the past being relevant to the present will see more of a general inclination towards greater awareness, he said, because “people will start being attuned to some of these events that have occurred and think through what it means today”.