The remaining 24 out of 48 Marikana litigation matters, which are currently under way, are anticipated to be completed by the end of this month, Department of Justice and Constitutional Development Solicitor General Fhedzisani Pandelani said during a media briefing on August 10.

This update comes a decade after the strike at Lonmin Platinum in Marikana, where 34 mineworkers were killed by police fire, and another ten died in the prelude to the shooting.

Moreover, it followed on an update provided last year, Pandelani noted.

He said that, as undertaken in 2021, government’s resolve had been to deal with all the remaining matters pertaining to litigation as arising from Marikana.

He noted that it had been engaging with its counterparts, the attorneys representing the injured, and those with claims of malicious prosecution against the State, with this process embarked upon immediately following the update last year.

This entailed a court sanctioned case management system, with the deputy judge president for the High Court in Pretoria presiding over the issues.

These meetings, for all the remaining matters, were conducted with the deputy judge president as the presiding officer, along with everyone else that was representing the claimants, Pandelani explained.

He said half of the 48 matters had already been resolved, and that the rest (24), should be completed by the end of this month, at which time another update would be provided.

The 48 outstanding matters are not related to loss of support owing to the death of any other person that has prepared a claim against the State, with all of these matters having been dealt with by August 2021, Pandelani said.

Therefore, these 48 matters related to, in the main, where there were personal injuries, where people had to be sent for medical examination, or actuarial calculation, he noted.

Moreover, he said that all of the matters were set down by the Pretoria High Court and the directive was that all of those matters should either be settled or alternatively, they will have served before court before the end of this month.

Pandelani said that some of these matters were being heard in court currently. Moreover, he reiterated that, without individualising these matters, half of these had already been set.

The remaining matters are still subject to discussions between the parties, that is, representatives of the State and representatives of the claimants. These are aimed at reaching some sort of settlement, or alternatively, indicating to the deputy judge president that there is no agreement, in which case, the matter will then allocated to a judge for finality.

However, he emphasised that the dates that had been set did not go beyond August.

Pandelani expressed his regret that even though there was an anticipated completion date of the end of the month, it was regrettable that this had taken so long to resolve. Therefore, he said he had instructed the Office of the State Attorney that all of these matters be finalised; and assured that as much as was possible, these outstanding matters would be resolved by the end of the month.

He mentioned that some of the reasons for these processing taking so long were that there was never any policy applicable within this field to compel the State to embark on early settlement of matters, be it through mediation or arbitration.

He assured that delays such as this would not occur again, as the office of the solicitor general has already developed a policy that was binding within State departments for early settlement of matters, and this was approved by Cabinet on November 9, 2021, and will be presented before Parliament.

“Over and above that, we have developed other policies that will in fact obviate having to deal with matters of this nature, the delays that are inherent when you are litigating against the State. Those policies will in fact deal with how you initiate, how you defend, and how you oppose the matter,” Pandelani said.

He added that there was another policy that talked about coordination and management of all litigation against the State. While this new policy that was being developed was not so much triggered by the Marikana incident, Pandelani said, he emphasised that matters such as these should not be delayed, but should be dealt with at the earliest possible time.

Therefore, going forward, there would be about five policies geared towards dealing with matters of this nature, he informed.