RUSTENBURG, South Africa: South Africa opened an inquiry yesterday into the police killing of 34 miners and related violence that took place in August, vowing to uncover how a row over pay ended in the country’s worst bloodbath since the end of apartheid.
The Marikana Commission of Inquiry, appointed by President Jacob Zuma, began what is expected to be four months of deliberations at Rustenburg Civic Centre, a short distance from the mine where police gunned down striking platinum miners on August 16.
Sitting before a jet-black backdrop, former Supreme Court of Appeal judge Ian Farlam solemnly gavelled in the proceedings, which began with a roll call of the dead, a minute’s silence and a vow that the truth would be revealed.
“Our country weeps at this tragedy and we owe it to those concerned that we do our work as expeditiously as possible,”
Farlam said.
The commission has been asked to “investigate matters of public, national and international concern arising out of the tragic incidents at the Lonmin Mine in Marikana.”
In the coming weeks the South African police and government, miners and unions and British-headquartered mine owner Lonmin face tough questions about their conduct during the unrest, which began with miners striking for better pay on
August 10.
In the following days and weeks of violence a total of 46 people were killed, including two police officers, and more than 70 were injured.
But it was graphic footage of the events on August 16 that shocked the world and drew parallels with the brutality seen under white apartheid rule
before 1994.
Video footage showed miners, some armed with machetes and spears, advancing through scrubland toward a bank of heavily armed police, who opened up a barrage of fire that clouded the area with dust.
When the dust cleared, the bloodied bodies of scores of miners could be seen, some wounded and desperately labouring to take their last breaths.
No police have been charged in relation to the murders, but around 270 protesters and miners were arrested under a colonial and apartheid-era “common purpose” doctrine.
The murder charges were later dropped and separate charges against the group were delayed.
Farlam expressed hope that the three-person commission could help the “healing process.”
Testimony before the inquiry is expected to get under way in earnest tomorrow.
But there were calls for a delay yesterday, amid claims that the families of the victims — some of whom come from remote rural areas a long distance from the mine — are not adequately represented.
There are “some families who had not been advised there was a Commission of Inquiry into the deaths of their loved ones,” said Dumisa Ntsebeza, a former commissioner on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, who is representing victims’ families.
“The families must be assisted by the state to be properly represented here. They’ve got a right to be present.”
Representatives asked for a 14-day adjournment of proceedings to allow families to travel to Rustenburg, which lies at a two hours’ drive northwest of Johannesburg.
That request was denied.
AFP
