Marikana massacre

Lonmin employees gather on a hill called Wonderkop at Marikana, outside Rustenburg in the North West Province of South Africa August 15. The miners are calling for the minimum wage to be lifted from its current R4,000 a month to R12,500. The men are mostly Xhosa and Pondo speaking, and the strike was initiated by the drillers. Photograph Greg Marinovich

Multi-award-winning Marikana documentary screens on Al Jazeera

A powerful and disturbing documentary, beautifully shot, sensitively told and featuring a haunting soundtrack, ‘Miners Shot Down’ paints a disturbing picture of the mechanisms of power in South Africa, where corporations make profits by exploiting the poorest.

Marikana massacre

Lonmin employees gather on a hill called Wonderkop at Marikana, outside Rustenburg in the North West Province of South Africa August 15. The miners are calling for the minimum wage to be lifted from its current R4,000 a month to R12,500. The men are mostly Xhosa and Pondo speaking, and the strike was initiated by the drillers. Photograph Greg Marinovich

minersMiners Shot Down premieres on Wednesday, 13 August at 8pm GMT on Witness, Al Jazeera’s flagship documentary strand.

The multi-award-winning documentary will screen daily until 16 August, the two-year anniversary of the Marikana massacre it investigates.

In August 2012, mineworkers at Lonmin, one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines, began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. The police insisted that they shot in self-defence, but Miners Shot Down tells a different story.

Miners Shot Down tells a different story that unfolds over seven days, like a ticking time bomb. Through testimonies and previously unseen police, security and TV footage, director Rehad Desai reconstructs what happened in Marikana and the aftermath.

The film weaves together the central point of view of three strike leaders, Mambush, Tholakele and Mzoxolo, with compelling video footage, TV archive material and interviews with lawyers representing the miners in the ensuing commission of inquiry into the massacre.

Miners Shot Down follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.  What emerges is collusion at the top, spiralling violence and the country’s first post-apartheid massacre.

What emerges is a tragedy that arises out of the deep fault lines in South Africa’s nascent democracy, of enduring poverty and a 20-year-old, unfulfilled promise of a better life for all.

Miners Shot Down points to how far the African National Congress has strayed from its progressive liberationist roots and leaves audiences with an uncomfortable view of those that profit from minerals in the global South.

A powerful and disturbing film, beautifully shot, sensitively told and featuring a haunting soundtrack, Miners Shot Down paints a disturbing picture of the mechanisms of power in South Africa, where corporations make profits by exploiting the poorest.

The documentary has been a festival favourite, opening leading international documentary festivals like One World and Sheffield, and winning Best Film at One World in Prague; Movies That Matter in The Hague; and The Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival in Myanmar.

In South Africa, it’s won awards from the two leading festivals for documentaries, scooping the Special Choice Award at Encounters South African International Documentary Festival in June and both the Best South African Documentary and Amnesty International Human Rights Awards at Durban International Film Festival in July 2014.

The Durban jury said, “Miners Shot Down emerged as the overall winner of the award for its profoundly moving portrayal of the Marikana miners’ massacre. The human rights abuses so vividly portrayed include the right to life, the right to justice, the right to protection by the police, the right to know, the right to peaceful protest and the right to human dignity. This film is particularly important in South Africa at the present time, given the Farlam Judicial Commission currently investigating the tragedy.”

The ongoing Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the massacre began in October 2012 and recently had its deadline extended again until 30 September 2014.

What people are saying:

“Rehad Desai’s beautifully filmed and uncompromising documentary, Miners Shot Down, is about so much more than the massacre by police of 34 striking workers at the Lonmin platinum mine at Marikana in August 2012. The film offers a unique prism through which to view contemporary power relations in ‘democratic’ South Africa (and perhaps globally) where the unholy trinity of capital, politics and security were (and are) pitted against labour…” Marianne Thamm, Daily Maverick

“Literally left me speechless… The world looked different when I emerged from the cinema. It doesn’t often happen to me.” Charl Blignaut, CityPress

“Important, comprehensive and damning… Essential viewing.” Encounters South African Documentary Festival

UK screening times:

13 Aug 9pm| 14 Aug 1pm | 15 Aug  2am | 16 Aug  7am

For more information, visit http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness