Fiction, Reality and Contested Memory in God’s Bits of Wood and the “Marikana Commission Report”

Abstract

Reportage of violence against workers is often compromised by age-old tendencies in oppressive states to control narratives on epochal events considered potentially disruptive of existing exploitative economic relations through excision of uncomfortable truths from the official memories of states. Thus memory, in colonial and postcolonial contexts, has been a contested terrain, especially in the relationships between the state-aligned businesses and labour. There are parallels and contrasts in the remembering of violent labour-related events in Sembene Ousmane’s Gods Bits of Wood and the “Marikana Commission Report” which this article considers to be essential in preventing cyclical violence in the labour market. Hence this article comparatively discusses the treatment of history and memory as narrated in Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood and in Judge Farlam’s “Marikana Commission Report” on the Marikana massacre and argues that where memory is disputed and contested, the resultant submerging of truth for self-preservation reasons results in open-ended and recurrent violent events.

Opsomming

Verslaggewing oor geweld teen werkers word dikwels, as gevolg van eeue-oue neigings in onderdrukkende state, afgewater deur verhale van epiese gebeure te beheer as dit potensieel ontwrigtend vir bestaande uitbuitende ekonomiese ver-houdings is. Die verhoudings is dikwels geskoei op ongemaklike waarhede wat teenstryding is met offisiële herinneringe. Dus, geheue, in koloniale en post-koloniale kontekste is ’n betwiste veld in die verhouding tussen staat-georiënteerde besighede en arbeid. Daar is ooreenkomste en kontraste in die geheue van geweldadige arbeidsverwante gebeure in Sembene Ousmane se Gods Bits of Wood en die “Marikana Commission Report” wat in hierdie artikel as onontbeerlik beskou word om uiteindelik sikliese geweld in die arbeids­mark te voorkom. Die artikel vergelyk terselfdertyd die behandeling van die geskiedenis en geheue soos vertel in Ousmane se Gods Bits of Wood en Regter Farlam se “Marikana Commission Report” oor die Marikana slagting. Die artikel beweer dat, waar die geheue onder verdenking is en betwis word, die gevolglike onderdrukking van die waarheid vir selfbehoud lei tot oop en herhaalde geweldadige gebeure.