A look of pain passes like a shadow over Aisha Fundi’s face. “You see that mountain,” she says, pointing to a verdant koppie in the distance. “That’s where my husband used to work.”
She moves away quickly, as if the mere sight of it hurts her too much: a poignant, constant reminder of all she has lost.
Three weeks ago, Fundi, who was widowed in the violence preceding the Marikana massacre, started working at Lonmin’s Middelkraal operations, knowing she would have to pass by here every day.
But Fundi has accepted she has to confront her own anguish.
“You just have to move on and face reality,” she shrugs, her purple cheetah print hijab fluttering in the gentle breeze.
It was on August 12, 2012, when striking mineworkers allegedly hacked and burnt her husband, Hassan, a Lonmin security supervisor, to death, along with colleague Frans Mabelane. Hassan’s lips and tongue were cut off for muti.
They were among the 10 people killed in the violence that struck the platinum mine, including non-striking mineworkers and two police officers, before the police killed 34 striking mineworkers four days later.
Now Fundi is one of the widows Lonmin has employed through its job replacement programme.
“On my first day, I dreamt about my husband, he was joking with me. It was as if he was happy to see me here. Sometimes I feel his presence.”
Still, at first Fundi was reluctant to take Lonmin’s job offer after the Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the Marikana shootings wrapped up last year.
“Considering the way my husband passed on, I was not sure if I could accept a job. I didn’t want to go into security… even now when I see their cars and their uniforms, it’s such a reminder.”
Then Lonmin suggested Fundi, who had given up her job as a maths teacher, run a classroom at its adult learning and education centre. That was out of the question.
“It’s located at the Wonderkop hostel, where my husband died. I couldn’t go there every day. I want to heal, and I never will if I have to see that horrible place.”
Fundi now works as a human resource administrator.
“It’s better that it’s not the mineworkers I see every day,” she says. “It’s not easy to forget.”
Sue Vey, Lonmin’s spokeswoman, explains Marikana families who lost breadwinners have all been offered positions to “help fill the financial void”. While some jobs have been filled by the children of mineworkers, mostly widows are employed.
“All the widows have received all statutory payments due to them. Lonmin will continue to find ways to assist families of the victims of the week that changed our lives,” she says. The mining company has also given 98 children bursaries.
Fundi’s husband was a devout Muslim of Malawian and Tanzanian descent. She converted to Islam when they married, and they have three children. “He was a humble, down-to-Earth guy. He loved to tell jokes and he loved children. They are still hurt, still angry. I tell them their father’s death was part of God’s plan.”
But like them, Fundi wants answers. That’s why for nearly 300 days she sat solemnly in the Centurion auditorium of the Farlam Commission, her face shrouded behind a veil, in mourning. She never missed a single day of the public hearings.
“I told myself that’s the only way I could find the truth, so I can tell my kids what happened to their father.”
Earlier this month, the commission’s report into the Marikana massacre was handed to President Jacob Zuma, although it is not known when its contents will be made public. For her part, Fundi can no longer wait. “It’s been a long, long walk,” she says. “We all need closure. This thing is not ending.”
Through the commission, she understood better what happened to Hassan. “I heard all the witnesses, all the deliberations and I got to understand, partially, what took place. It’s just that I don’t know who killed him. I hope the report will reveal those people. Nobody is saying ‘here I am’. Some say Mr X is lying. I don’t know who is right or wrong.”
She is referring to the “courageous” testimony of Mr X, a miner turned police witness, who claimed to be a leader of the unprotected strike and told the commission how he and another miner had stabbed Hassan with a bush knife, and spear.
“Although Mr X took responsibility, there are more people involved. Some of the other widows know who killed their husbands, but I don’t. The police have evidence because they found belongings, like cellphones, in the Eastern Cape.”
During the commission’s proceedings, she sat with Mabelane’s widow. They drew comfort from each other, always split from the widows of the shootings.
Fundi hopes the commission’s final report suggests a reconciliation programme to heal the fractious relations between the groups.
“We were not on good terms. Later I think most of them realised my husband didn’t do anything. I remember one widow from Lesotho, when the commission revealed the photos of Hassan’s body, was crying.
“The other widows said to her, ‘why are you crying? This person is not part of us’. But she said my husband didn’t do anything wrong. So there are some who understood. We need peace. These are people now working at Lonmin’s mine, we tend to be colleagues and meet every day.”
Like the other widows, she wants her husband’s name memorialised. She is adamant a memorial should be erected where Hassan died.
“You go there now, there is no indication that a person died there. I want something there to make people think every time they pass that place. To make people remember… and never do this again.”
Fundi, who lost her house in Marikana and had her possessions repossessed, has struggled.
“I have big shoes to fill. Hassan was a breadwinner in Malawi. I also have to take care of his family.”
“But I’m glad I’m at Lonmin. They knew my husband.”
One of her sons is in matric, the other an engineer in the navy, but it’s their youngest, Amina, 11, whom she worries about most. The child, she says, still carries a photograph of her father in her schoolbag.
“She didn’t want me to come to Lonmin. She said: ‘Mummy, maybe you won’t come back, like my dad’.”
Pretoria News Weekend