An Ubuntu-based Evaluation of the South African State's Responses to Marikana: Where's the Reconciliation?

Abstract

In this work of normative political philosophy, I consider the ethical status of the South African government's responses to the Marikana massacre, where police shot and killed more than 30 striking miners, in light of a moral principle grounded on values associated with ubuntu. I argue that there are several respects in which the government's reactions have been unethical from an ubuntu-oriented perspective, and also make positive suggestions about what it instead should have been doing. Much of what I recommend amounts to contending that the government should have taken resolute steps towards seeking reconciliation of a specific sort that I show follows from ubuntu interpreted as an ethical theory.

Acknowledgements

This article is a more intricate exploration of ideas that first appeared as a brief op-ed piece (Metz 2013). For written comments on a prior draft of this article, I would like to thank two anonymous referees for Politikon. This article has also benefited from oral feedback received from Christopher Wareham and from the audience at Evaluating the Aftermath of Marikana: Commemorating the Massacre, held at the University of Johannesburg in August 2013.

Notes

1 There are of course other normative questions one could ask, such as whether non-governmental agents have reacted to Marikana ethically, or whether non-governmental agents acted ethically in the run up to Marikana. I set aside such issues for the sake of focus.

2 See, e.g. Alexander (2013).

3 For discussion in the context of several traditional African societies, see Nkulu-N'Sengha (2009).

4 In the following exposition of ubuntu I draw on material from (Metz 2011a, 2014a; Metz and Gaie 2010).

5 For other philosophical interpretations of African ethics, see Bujo (1997) and Gyekye (1997), who deem vital force and the common good (respectively) to be foundational, and not an ideal of communal relationship, as I do.

6 This includes topics such as offering amnesty for political crimes (Metz 2011b), distributing political power and economic goods (Metz 2012a) and upholding human rights (Metz 2014b).

7 Cf. the remarks of Nigerians Gbadegesin (1991, 65) and Iroegbu (2005, 442), Ghanaian Gyekye (2004, 16) and Kenyan Masolo (2010, 240).

8 See Metz (2011a, 2012b); Metz and Gaie (2010) for answers to these and other important questions about how one might plausibly interpret ubuntu as an ethical principle.

 9 The next few paragraphs draw on Metz (2015, 124 & 125). For differing, but often compatible, appeals to ubuntu to ground reconciliation, see Tutu (1999), Louw (2006), Krog (2008), Villa-Vicencio (2009).

10 Below I indicate that she continued to be defensive during the hearings.

11 Note as well that the African National Congress did not attend commemorations of the events at Marikana that were held a year after them, with some miners ‘disappointed that the government is not here to mourn with them’ (BBC News 2013; see also Alexander 2013, 616).

12 For ubuntu-based discussion of such reactions, see (Metz 2011b).