Pretoria - The families of murdered Marikana police officers on Wednesday pleaded with Marikana miners and families to return to the Farlam Commission of Inquiry.
“We really need other families to be here. We are all affected,” Lizzy Maubane, sister of slain Warrant Officer Tsietsi Monene, said on the sidelines of the commission.
Dali Mpofu, for the arrested and injured miners, provisionally withdrew from the commission due to a lack of funding.
Attempts in the courts to compel the State to pay for the miners' legal fees have been unsuccessful.
Aisha Fundi, widow of security guard Hassan Fundi, who was killed during the unrest, said she sympathised with the rest of those affected by the events at Marikana and she also wanted closure.
“We respect their views when it comes to this commission... we ask them to continue this journey with us.”
Fundi said she wanted to hear what happened to her husband's missing organs, including his tongue and lower jaw.
“I was told the post-mortem showed that organs were missing, and that they were given to a sangoma,” she said.
“We started here [at the commission] together, all of us, and we need to complete this together.”
News reports focused on the miners killed while the voices of the families of the other people killed were not heard, said Fundi.
Maubane said her family was still traumatised, and that Monene's five children were receiving ongoing counselling.
The commission is investigating the deaths of 44 people killed during strike-related unrest at Lonmin's platinum mining operations at Marikana, near Rustenburg in North West, in August last year.
Police shot dead 34 people, almost all striking mineworkers, on August 16, 2012, while trying to disperse and disarm them.
Ten people, including two police officers and two security guards, were killed in the preceding week.
Sapa