South African police shoot dead striking miners

[Magda Hassan]

A black leader using apartheid-era law against black workers.

South Africa needs another revolution.

In the new South Africa you can be any colour under the sun but you con only serve the ruling class.

[Peter Lemkin]

A black leader using apartheid-era law against black workers.

South Africa needs another revolution.

In the new South Africa who can be any colour under the sun but you con only serve the ruling class.

As we can see so plainly in the USA of today, as well!

[Magda Hassan]

The World Sees Us as Boys and Savages
By Gillian Schutte · 6 Nov 2012

I met Marikana community member, mineworker and activist, Tsepo M, at a coffee shop in Melville. He had some business to attend to in Johannesburg and a colleague set up the meeting for me to discuss the current situation in Marikana.

A man in his late 50's, Tsepo's face bears the markings of years of hard work and struggle.

He tells me that he has been attending the Farlam Commission an intense situation, which is infused with painful moments and trauma. In addition to the struggles of the community members and witnesses in getting to the commission, many are the victims of the psychological and physical warfare being waged on the participants by the police.

He describes one such incident when he and a group of about 40 residents were coming back home from the commission. When they reached their village they were ambushed by a group of armed policemen who forced them all to lie on the ground. What followed after was what seemed like an hour of taunting and abuse as policemen threatened them by holding guns to their heads and whispering in their ears that they would end up like those massacred in September. They were told not to look at the faces of the police and kicked and slapped. Their identity books were checked and their names recorded. The message was clear they were being watched they were being tailed and no one is safe in Marikana.

Tsepo suggested to the group who were with him when this happened that they go to the police station to report but almost all said they were too terrified to do this.

"It is happening intermittently," He says. "We never really know when they will pounce on us."

This is an ongoing war on the people of Marikana to weaken their resolve. "It is terrifying, " Tsepo tells me. "We are living as if we are back in the days of apartheid constant fear. Women are terrified. They do not escape the intimidation, physical and emotional, dished out by the police. To us it is clear that they work on behalf of the capitalists."

I ask him if he is able to verify the rumours that women were being raped by the police in Marikana. He answers that this is the most difficult thing to verify because women are mostly way too afraid to speak out. He did hear these stories and one woman who spoke of it eventually fled the village. "It is the whole matter of the community shame. Once you have been raped the community will treat you differently. How will they look at your husband? Even those women whose husbands were shot will not talk about it if they were raped."

"Women have a very hard time of it in communities like ours. They are vulnerable to rape and exploitation. There are cases of sexual contracts between men and unemployed women and sometimes daughters are sold for sex. It is sheer economics and poverty that drive women this far. Also the rates of literacy are very low on this mine so women have few options for work. Those who go underground also become vulnerable to abuse. You know and this all leads to unsafe sex and a high prevalence of HIV."

Tsepo tells me that the literacy rates on mines are low. "This is because of the history of migrant labour. If you bring in men from other provinces you do not have their families to look after so it suits the mine owners to not employ from the local area. They just have never bothered to change anything since then. It is clear that families live around the mine but they still have not built a crèche or a school. The one local school in Mooi Nooi is really for those in supervisory positions and our kids do not get to go there. It is a real procedure to get into the school and it depends on who you know."

I ask Tsepo about the experience of living with no services. His face darkens. He tells me that there are some services at the hostels but that is all. There are about five toilets to every eighty men. The toilets are door-less. I enquire as to who removed the doors and he tells me that there were never any doors. "It cuts costs to have no doors but for us it tells us that they think we are not the same as white people that we do not need privacy like them."

I feel my heart shrink. There are times when I hate my own kind and what they have done to the indigenous people of South Africa. I want to know from Tsepo what it is like to know that there is so little value placed on the life of a black worker in South Africa. He looks me in the eye and describes the pain. "It hurts you know. Really it hurts. It is like they think we have no ambitions that we accept and deserve to live like dogs…or maybe they think we do not notice or mind that fact that we live in shacks. That is not true we have needs like any other human. We want a better life for our children. We want to live a decent life of our own. We want toilets with doors, access to water and housing."

"As it is we can only fetch water at midnight because the mine is using the water up until then and we have no pressure. You will see little children walking to taps far away from their homes to collect water at this time. Here it seems that human rights do not apply."

I tell him that if I were him I would see the white man as the main enemy yet I never heard the terms "white" in any of the struggle songs sang during the strike.

"No, they were there we refer to them as the employers and we all know who the employers are."

I ask how the community feels about Cyril Rhamaposa's betrayal of them. "We are very disappointed that he has never even bothered to interact with us. When he was given shares he should have come to us and asked what we needed. He could have put plans and pressure in place to help us with education and infrastructure. But he did not. Instead he gave the order to deal with us like animals going to the slaughter."

Tsepo and other workers from mines are currently organizing into worker support committees. "This is what will create solidarity with all workers around South African mines and give us autonomy. You know, we took it for a long time but the anger was building and building inside us. That is why the strikes happened. We are still angry and we will never accept this treatment again. It is the workers who will stand up for their own rights now through our autonomous structures. We are human beings and we demand to be treated as such. I know that the world sees us as boys when it suits them and as savage men when we stand up for our rights. We are human beings. We are fathers. We are men."

**The name of the interviewee has been changed to protect his identity for fear of further police intimidation.
Schutte is an award winning independent filmmaker, writer and social justice activist. She is a founding member of Media for Justice and co-producer at Handheld Films.

Read more articles by Gillian Schutte.
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http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/1479

[Jan Klimkowski]

Claims that weapons were planted on some of the dead miners, and others were executed away from the cameras.

South Africa mine massacre photos prompt claims of official cover-up

Police accused of planting weapons next to Marikana miners' bodies in bloodiest such incident since end of apartheid

David Smith in Johannesburg

The Guardian, Tuesday 6 November 2012 18.06 GMT


Police in South Africa have been accused of planting weapons on the bodies of dead miners as part of an official cover-up of the Marikana massacre, in August.

Damning photographic evidence was presented to an independent commission of inquiry examining the deaths of 46 people during nearly six weeks of violent strikes at the Lonmin-owned mine.

The revelation follows a series of media reports alleging that on the worst day of bloodshed, when 34 striking miners were killed, some were subjected to execution-style shootings away from the TV cameras.

Photographs taken by police on the night of 16 August showed more weapons by the bodies than photos taken immediately after massacre, the commission was told. The crime scene expert Captain Apollo Mohlaki, who took the night pictures, admitted the discrepancy.

In one picture, a dead man is seen lying on rocky ground near the mine; a second picture, taken later that same day, is identical except that a yellow-handled machete is now lying under the man's right hand. Mohlaki said he saw the weapon under the man's arm in the night photo he took, but when looking at the day photo of the same body, he said of the weapon: "It is not appearing. I don't see it."

George Bizos, a veteran human rights lawyer representing the mine workers, said the evidence presented at the commission indicated an attempt to alter the crime scene.

"The evidence clearly showed there is at least a strong prima facie case that there has been an attempt to defeat the ends of justice," he said. "Changing the evidence is a very serious offence."

Bizos, who defended Nelson Mandela during the Rivonia trial, half a century ago, called for high-ranking officials to be brought before the commission to explain whether they granted colleagues permission to move traditional weapons from where they had been found.

Ishmael Semenya, a police representative, said the national police commissioner, Riah Phiyega, had launched an investigation two weeks previously, after receiving evidence that one of the crime scenes had been tampered with.

But Bizos said Phiyega's investigation was not to be trusted because of her public statements shortly after the massacre. Three days later, Phiyega was quoted as saying: "Safety of the public is not negotiable. Don't be sorry about what happened."

Video evidence shown to the inquiry on Monday also indicated that some of the slain miners may have been handcuffed. Family members at the hearing wept as they saw two lifeless bodies with their hands tied behind their back.

When asked if he had seen whether any of the dead miners' hands were bound, Mohlaki said he had not. "If I am looking at the video, there is a person handcuffed possibly, but on the day I did not observe that," he said.

In one of the videos, police can be heard joking and laughing loudly next to the dead bodies, which lie scattered amid dust and blood. Bizos called for a transcript of what the police were saying.

In August, television footage of police opening fire on the miners caused shock around the world. And in subsequent weeks, the journalist Greg Marinovich produced a series of reports for the Daily Maverick website pointing to evidence that some of the miners had died at a second site, having probably been killed in cold blood. Autopsy reports allegedly show that several of the dead had bullet wounds in the back.

On Monday Dali Mpofu, a lawyer representing about 270 injured and arrested miners, told the inquiry: "Evidence is going to be led to the effect that the people at scene two were hiding away when they were shot."

Mpofu said one of the bodies recovered from the scene, known as Body C, stood out from the rest because it was "riddled" with 12 bullet wounds; all the other bodies had single bullet wounds.

The massacre of 34 workers was the bloodiest security incident since the end of apartheid, in 1994. The inquiry has heard that at least 900 bullets‚ "400 live rounds and 500 rubber bullets", were fired that day. It followed 10 fatalities, including those of two police officers who were hacked to death.

In the immediate aftermath, the authorities sought to portray the miners, who were striking illegally, as responsible for the violence. Some 270 of the striking miners were arrested and charged with murder, though the charges were later dropped.

The strike ended in September after workers agreed a 22% pay rise with the mine's owners, the platinum giant Lonmin.

The inquiry began last month and is expected to continue for four months, investigating the roles played by police, miners, unions and Lonmin in the deaths. It has been plagued by complaints that family members were unable to attend and allegations that police have arrested and tortured witnesses. Mpofu told the commission last week: "One person [said] he was beaten up until he soiled himself. Another lost the hearing in his right ear and another had visible scarring."

With their reputation already in tatters, the police have been criticised for a lack of full disclosure to the commission, which last week was shown a 41-minute police video that appeared to have missed out everything important.

James Nichol, a lawyer representing the families of the dead miners, said of the photo anomaly: "Even the police service did not know about these new photos until two Thursdays ago. Who concealed them until then? It's astonishing they have not come to light until now.

"There are only two possible conclusions: a cover-up and a systematic planting of evidence."

Referring to a video played to the commission, Nichol added: "What was grossly offensive was that you see dead bodies and what you hear is the raucous laughter of police officers."

Asked if he suspected a police cover-up, David Bruce, a senior researcher in the criminal justice programme at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, said: "To my mind, there is no question about that. When we're talking about a cover-up, we're talking about something very elaborate. There's a massive pattern of concealment that seems to permeate what the government is doing at the moment."

The police had followed an "illegal doctrine" of using maximum force that could be traced back to the government, in particular to the police minister, Nathi Mthethwa, Bruce added. "The issues of responsibility do go very directly to the minister," he said. "The police said the Friday after the massacre that they used maximum force and you've got several incidents where the minister recommended maximum force. As far as I'm concerned, it's an open-and-shut case."

Bruce called for Mthethwa and Phiyega to resign. "We have a government who are completely shameless. If you have any integrity around the office of the minister of police, something like that should have been followed the next day by the resignation of the minister."