Al-Qalam 
By Nabeelah Shaikh
Award-winning South African artist and activist Haroon Gunn-Salie is honouring and memorialising those killed in the Marikana massacre through a powerful mixed media art installation called Senzenina.
August marked the 10-year anniversary of the massacre which saw 34 mine workers being killed at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, Rustenburg, in the North West province. They were killed when police opened fire on them.
At the Constitution Hill precinct in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, Gunn-Salie’s installation includes seventeen life-sized figures cast in resin to resemble the miners struck down at Marikana. The installation forms part of a 10-year commemoration event organised at Constitution Hill in partnership with the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, an organisation that represents the families.
The massacre happened after unionized miners demanded a wage increase at the Lonmin platinum mine. They had been protesting for a week prior to the incident with several casualties occurring even before the massacre occurred. In total, police shot and killed 34 miners, left 78 seriously injured, which resulted in 250 mine workers being arrested.
Gunn-Salie believes that art has real potential to effect changes in society and it was important to capture and memorialize those who lost their lives in the tragedy through Senzenina. He chose to name it Senzenina, which translates to “What have we done?”
Senzenina is a powerful anti-apartheid protest song which was often sang at funerals and memorials. And in the case of the Marikana Massacre, Gunn-Salie said the miners had sung the song right before disassembling. The life-sized figures created by Gunn-Salie are headless and handless, and can be found installed at Number Four Prison.
Gunn-Salie says the reason he opted to portray the figures in this manner, was because the figures are rendered as identity-less.
“It’s an indignity, which is what this massacre represents. So putting the sculptures as headless and handless represents ghosts. When you’re talking about such deep inhumanity, how do you go about putting faces to something that is so violent?” Gunn-Salie remarked.
In the installation, he raises questions of multinational and police complicity in the killing of the striking mineworkers.
“For the work, I used police footage of the protesters at the precise moment before police opened fire on them, also used at the inquest to prove the protest’s peaceable assembly, to cast and memorialise the thirty-four individuals slain in a sculptural graveyard,” said Gunn-Salie.
Premiered
Senzenina has been showcased globally. The installation first premiered at the New Museum Triennial, Songs for Sabotage, in New York in 2018. It was later shown at the Frieze sculpture public exhibition in London’s Regents Park in the summer of 2019.
Gunn-Salie’s installation brings that tragic moment to life, and is accompanied by a surround-soundscape schematically recreating the scene from archival audio.
The surround-soundscape include calls for the mineworkers to disassemble peacefully; the fortification of the surrounding area and entrapment of the workers by police; an anti-apartheid freedom song lamented by the mineworkers moments before live ammunition was discharged; and blasts from the mine recalled by low-frequency sonic vibrations of the surrounding landscape emanating from an outcrop of granite boulders on the site.
“It’s a great honour for Senzenina to be installed at Constitution Hill for this commemoration that’s helping bring renewed awareness to the continued injustice of the Marikana massacre. It’s the first time the work is being exhibited publicly in Jo’burg, where it was originally made,” says Gunn-Salie. He also recently got the opportunity to present the installation to the widows and family members of the Marikana Massacre victims.
“This was a truly humbling experience for me, to be able to do this. It was amazing, it was emotional. I’m glad that the families actually got the opportunity to have that experience,” said Gunn-Salie.
Constitution Hill CEO, Dawn Robertson, said Senzenina is a sobering and forceful reminder of what happened at Marikana ten years ago and evokes questions about the massacre as part of South Africa’s wider history of struggle in the face of multiple injustices.
“Marikana was the worst massacre of its kind under our democratic order 10-years on; the families of the men, who died on that fateful day, are still searching for the truth of what exactly happened to them. This exhibition ensures we do not forget and hold those responsible to account so that the families know the truth and are able to heal and find closure,” said Robertson.
The installation will run until 31 October.
