Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World

Service with me, Rachel Naylor. Today, I'm taking you back 10 years to the Mara

Canemasica in South Africa. 34 striking miners were shot dead by police, and in this

programme, you will hear those gunshots. It was one of the bloodiest police operations

since apartheid. I've been speaking to one of the survivors.

It's the 16th of August 2012, and workers at the Longman Platinum Mine in Mara Canem,

about a hundred kilometres north of Johannesburg, of on strike, for better pay.

I come from a very poor area. I came to work in the mine to improve the

standard of living for my family. I end 4,000 rent, working underground, but it's very

dangerous conditions. That's why I joined this strike.

That's Masakolo Magadiwana. He was 24. I'm working underground in the engineering department

of the mine, was his first job. His salary, 4,000 South African Rand, is the equivalent

of $250 a month. The strike was started by the rock drillers on the 10th of August.

3,000 of them walked out and appealed for other workers like Masakolo to join them,

but trouble had been brewing for days. Weapons drawn and already used in a dispute over wages.

Thousands of South Africans who work in the mine had downed tools, and they had been fighting

between rival unions. Ten people among them police and miners already dead.

But on the morning of the 16th, Masakolo was expecting good news, a resolution. He'd heard

that union leaders were meeting his employer. Police commissioner Suki's work in Bombo

also promised an end to the strike in a press conference. We will ask them to leave,

but then I don't want to explain to you if they don't want them. What I told you is

today we are ending this matter.

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