Liberation’s Dream Deferred

In August 2012, 34 striking mineworkers were shot dead by police at the Lonmin mine in Marikana. The event drew global attention to South Africa and the gross inequalities and social injustice that continue to blight the country’s fledgling democracy just 20 years after apartheid. According to Desmond Tutu (2012), the event reflected how

unhealed wounds and divisions from South Africa’s past fatally combined with the reigning climate of political intolerance to trigger the appalling events.… As a country, we are failing to build on the foundations of magnanimity, caring, pride and hope embodied in the presidency of our extraordinary Tata Nelson Mandela. We have created a small handful of mega-rich beneficiaries of a black economic empowerment policy while spectacularly failing to narrow the gap in living standards between rich and poor South Africans.