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75 5 Interviews with mineworkers Undertaken by Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope, Luke Sinwell and Bongani Xezwi The interviews below are taken verbatim from translated transcripts. We did not intervene to censor or distort the workers’ voices. Most of them believed that two of their number had been killed in shootings outside the NUM offices on 11 August. We now know this was not the case. On this controversial incident, see Chapter 2. Mineworker 1 Mineworker: My brother, I was born in the Eastern Cape… while I was still learning at school, I told myself that I was not going back to school the next year, I wanted to go work. The reason why I wanted to go work was because all my friends were working and even on Christmas they had money, and whatever I got, I got from my friends… I told myself that I will not be able to go study anymore because I saw my friends working and the other reason was that I wanted to change my life. And even at home it was just my father only, my mother had already died, so a person’s life changes when you have no mother… and then we spoke with my friends that I will come in December, that I will come next year, so in December I gave my ID [identity document] to one of the guys, so that when he goes back to work they should find me work too. So at home we started with a flat, two room… and then I came here in Gauteng, and when I came here I went to Marikana where I started working in Wonderkop… but when I first got here I went to join the line… and then again… 76 Marikana: Voices from South Africa’s Mining Massacre I was hired, and when I was hired I loved the hostel. And I earned R1,300 when I first got here and I did not have a problem that I went there because I was still very young and I did not have many things to do. And everything I had to do was to make me happy and then now I enjoyed going on leave as a working person and that made me very happy. And in 2003 I came back and then at home my brother and father, as my father was still alive, they asked me now to get married. And then I saw that the time for me to get married has not come because I was still able to go there and there, you see? I was happy about the fact that I was still able to run there and there and then I told myself that, no, I will wait, and then my father died and we then buried him… and then I went back to work and earned a living and I was helping here at home. And then I told my brother that time for me to get married has not arrived because the person who wanted me to get married had died and I was not ready to get married. No my brother said, ‘No there is a problem with that’… [about two years later] I told my brother I now wanted to get married and he told me to, ‘Go think about that’ and I said to him I had thought about it and he still said, ‘No go back and think about it some more and then come back.’ And then I went back to Wonderkop and then I went back to him again… and I told him that, ‘No, I want to get married,’ and he said, ‘Okay’… and I got married and I took her from her home and brought her to [the] mine and so… I left her at home and I came back to Marikana and so when I got here I worked and in December came time for me to take cows to her home, and then we went on with my wife and we stayed at home and we were happy… We had a child and the child was a girl and she died. And maybe she was about 4 or 6 months and then again she got pregnant and we got twin boys. And that was not a problem but one died again and one survived, but then when I went back again the other one died again and we also lost another girl. And then I had another two...

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