Marikana - Ramaphosa must unburden himself
It took mere minutes and when it was all over, 34 mineworkers were dead.
16 August 2012 will forever be remembered as a blot on the democratic government's legacy.
The koppie, where the workers spent days protesting wages, was a spot we saw on each and every news bulletin. We will never forget.
The day and the deaths of the mineworker are also the biggest stains on the resume of a man who could very well become the country's next president.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was a Lonmin shareholder at the time, had called for "concomitant action" to end an unprotected strike in the days leading up to the massacre. He has since apologised for the remarks, saying he was only trying to prevent further bloodshed.
The apology has not gone down well with Marikana families, who continue to blame Ramaphosa for the events of that fateful day.
As one of the candidates vying for the leadership of the ANC in December, Ramaphosa has wasted no time in putting himself in the shop window. On a weekly basis he tells us that the ANC needs to change, get back to its core values and rediscover its raison d'être. He is (mostly) right. State capture must end and the corrupt must be brought to book. But more importantly, the ANC needs to reconnect with the people of this country.
Power struggles and factionalism have all but destroyed the ruling party and its alliance partner Cosatu. It's at a point where the once powerful National Union of Mineworkers is barely able to muster 1000 members to march on AngloGold to protest against the ever-increasing job losses in the mining sector.
In many ways Ramaphosa's transformation from militant union leader (he was SG of the NUM for nine years back in the day, when the union could still mobilise thousands at the drop of a makaraba) to comfortably-numb politician, mirrors that of the organization he wants to lead.
There is no doubt that the ANC has been moving away from the ordinary South African over the past few years. Its loss of electoral support proves as much. Sure, the worker-centric rhetoric is still there. If you attended the party's policy conference you would almost be fooled into thinking that the ordinary worker and their day-to-day struggles is still at the centre of ANC thinking.
Should he be elected ANC president in December, Ramaphosa might very well bring a welcome end to the Gupta family's stranglehold on the state, convince business to invest in the economy again and rid the ANC of those who do not have her best interests at heart.
But for all this to happen, Ramaphosa and the ANC's redemption needs to start in Marikana. An apology hundreds of kilometres away from the community still scarred by the killing of 34 people on the dusty fields that held their hopes and dreams for a better life is simply not enough. He needs to sit down with the mothers, look their children in the eyes and listen to the brothers and sisters of those killed. This is not only about Candidate Ramaphosa. This is about the ANC as an organisation. The slate cannot be wiped clean during a speech at Rhodes University. Absolution can only be granted by those who were betrayed on August 16, 2012.