On the morning of the Marikana massacre on 16 August 2012, the then North West police commissioner Lieutenant-General Zukiswa Mbombo did not mince her words. “Today is D-Day. We are ending this today. Don’t ask me how, but today we are ending this.” Later that Thursday, 34 striking Lonmin mineworkers were dead and 78 miners were wounded, as emerged at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry, and also in accounts like Greg Marinovich’s Murder at Small Koppie: The Real Story of the Marikana Massacre. Around that time, in an important signifier of shifting official attitudes, the government’s language increasingly turned to “law and order” and respecting “the authority of the state”, rather than providing safety and security to people and communities.