‘ Striking SA miners killed in cold blood’

“Heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood,” wrote South African photographer Greg Marinovich on the Daily Maverick news website.
Marinovich spent more than two weeks at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, interviewing witnesses and taking photos after police opened fire on striking workers on August 16.
Officers shot dead 34 and injured 78 after a stand-off between rival unions had already killed 10, including two police officers.
Television cameras screened a mass shooting, which police afterwards justified as self-defence.
But most of the dead were shot away from the cameras, said Marinovich.
“A minority were killed in the filmed event . . . The rest was murder on a massive scale.”
His photographs showed the letter “N” painted by police forensic experts on a rock crevice 300 metres behind the hill where the shooting was filmed.
The letter, the 14th of the alphabet, indicates corpse number 14 in the forensic investigation.
“Approaching N from all possible angles, observing the local geography, it is clear that to shoot N, the shooter would have to be close,” said Marinovich.
An eyewitness had also told the photographer that armoured police trucks had driven over some strikers, Marinovich wrote.
President Jacob Zuma last week appointed a judicial commission of inquiry into the events on the day.
Police watchdog spokesman Moses Dlamini declined to comment on the report.
“I can’t comment until I’ve read the article and spoken to investigators,” he said.
The Star newspaper on Monday reported that most of the dead were shot in the back while fleeing.
Marinovich won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his coverage of violence in South Africa’s townships at the end of apartheid.
His story as part of the “Bang Bang Club”, four photographers who covered the conflicts, was told in a book and Hollywood film.
Meanwhile, national police commissioner Riah Phiyega may soon have to count the cost of giving the police officers involved in the Marikana shooting her wholehearted support.
As the full scale of the tragedy became apparent, and many people based their interpretation of what had happened on television footage, Phiyega immediately jumped to defend her officers.
She explained: “The militant group stormed towards the police, firing shots and wielding dangerous weapons. Police retreated systematically and were forced to utilise maximum force to defend themselves.”
But as what happened comes under closer examination, she may find those words coming back to haunt her, and could determine her future in the post.
The Farlam Commission will investigate the role of the police. That would lead to questions about the wisdom of Phiyega’s earlier comments.
While politically she could argue that she was doing the right thing in defending her officers, publicly, that could lead to questions about whether she is competent to continue in the position.
She will be asked why she made public pronouncements in the first place, possibly without much information about what had happened.
However, it appears the root of why she behaved in this way relates to her perceived lack of legitimacy among serving police officers. If Zuma had appointed a senior police officer, with a long track record, to this post, that person would have felt under less pressure to make these comments.
They would have had a better understanding of the circumstances on the ground, even if they had not been present during the incident itself. They would not have jumped to make what could be a mistake that damages the rest of Phiyega’s tenure in the police service.
Thus Zuma himself may bear ultimate responsibility. — AFP/ewn.co.za.