The Star reports that survivors of the Marikana massacre have accused the government of seeking to settle only part of their claims for the tragedy.  

Attorney Andries Nkome, who represents the miners who were arrested and injured during the strike over wages at Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana in August 2012, said it was not true that the government had made a R100m settlement offer.  He indicated:  “The government seeks to only settle some of the claims and not the rest.  We are in discussions with them to say they must make sure that when they come to us with an offer, it ought to be for all the unlawful arrests, for all the unlawful injuries as well as the malicious prosecutions.  It is not even true that there is a settlement offer that has been tabled for R100m.  The claims we have lodged were for far more than R100m.”  Nkome said his clients were aggrieved when they heard about the R100m government settlement offer in the media.  In September last year, the family of one of the deceased miners who had seven dependants accepted a government payout of R3.9m.  The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA (SERI) said it was currently taking instructions from the families of the murdered miners on various offers of compensation that have been made by the state via the State Attorney.  “None of those offers, whether individually or collectively, amount to anything close to R100m,” it indicated.

• Read this report by Sibongile Mashaba in full at The Star

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