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“If we sweep it under the carpet, it can happen again,” said Miners Shot Down filmmaker Rehad Desai, on the fourth anniversary of the Marikana massacre.
The SABC has still not screened the Emmy award-winning documentary, which was completed in 2014.
So the Right2Know campaign plans to hold a vigil against censorship from 6pm tonight in front of the SABC offices in Sea Point, in Cape Town.
The film documents the tragic events that unfolded in 2012, when 34 miners were shot dead by police at Lonmin’s mine at Marikana.
Desai said that it was “heartening” that a vigil was planned to apply pressure on the broadcaster, which he said had a duty to inform the public.
In the past, the SABC has denied that it refused to broadcast the documentary.
Last November, spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said it had been “prudent” to first wait until the Farlam commission of inquiry had completed its work and also that protocol needed to be followed and slots needed to be made available.
Desai said he was also not surprised at findings of Human rights organisation Amnesty International, which this week released a damning report on the inadequate housing that Lonmin provided for its employees.
“It shows the callous attitude towards the mining community. These people are nothing more than bodies. The fact that government can tolerate them not implementing their social labour plan they’ve committed to is beyond me,” he said.
According to a social labour plan of 2006, Lonmin undertook to build 5 500 houses for its workers by 2011.
But according to Amnesty International, Lonmin built three show houses, upgraded 60 of the 114 hostels in 2011, and since then had done little more.
The organisation said that Lonmin admitted that about 13 500 people had no formal housing.
These people live in precarious conditions in informal settlements around the mines.
Lonmin told Amnesty that it had built 2684 housing units in 2012 and planned various initiatives that would see another 11 000 built. Some of these would involve partnerships with local authorities. However, the company warned that it could review the amount of R100 million a year that it had allocated to housing because of its difficult economic circumstances.
Lerato Molebatsi, executive vice-president of Lonmin, wrote in a letter to Amnesty International that the supply of housing to its entire workforce would take time and would require the cooperation of all stakeholders, especially given the current economic constraints.
In view of this, Lonmin had recently indicated that the provision of R100 million a year might be reviewed, she said.
According to preliminary results Lonmin published on May 16, it expected an operating profit of up to $36 million (about R480 million at Monday’s exchange rate), compared with the previous year’s loss of $6 million due to the “favourable impact of our cost reductions”.
