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Historically, police massacres in South Africa have been transformative events that reshaped the direction of South African politics. Many have argued that the Marikana Massacre —post-apartheid South Africa’s largest act of police violence— had similar transformative effects. Yet, more than ten years after the massacre, many of the structures that characterize South African democracy, including growing inequality and the use of State violence against Black citizens persist. Therefore, one could read the Marikana Massacre as a failed event: a set of possibilities for structural change that failed to materialize. Using the Marikana case to discuss sociological theories of events, this paper asks what factors may underlay such seemingly failed events.