Nokuthula Zibambele said that her life and that of their 10 children had changed for the worst since that fateful day on 16 August 10 years ago.
MARIKANA - As South Africa and the international community reflect on the horror that was the Marikana massacre when 34 men were killed by the police during a strike over wages, a family continues to count the losses.
She is among dozens of other women who have had to leave their rural homes in the Eastern Cape, making the long journey to Marikana where they are now employed by the mine as part of a settlement agreement.Upon welcoming the Eyewitness News team into the one-bedroom flat at hostel one in Marikana, she immediately buries her face in her hands.
"When schools close, now the children ask 'are you coming back home?' and then I say I can’t come back because I am at work. The youngest one said then it doesn’t make a difference whether he goes home during the holidays or stays at the boarding house because it’s all the same because staying at home with no one there, it’s the same as staying at school. It is not nice at all to leave your home and children," she said.
She is aware that this is no place to raise children but had little choice after her daughter Sandisa, tasked with looking after the children at home, overdosed on pills in 2016. Her pain is palpable.
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