Mine massacre raises spectre of apartheid

Saturday 18 August 2012

THE police killing of 34 striking platinum miners in the bloodiest security operation since the end of white rule has had a huge impact on South Africa.

PROBE: Crime investigators at the scene where striking miners were shot.

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Jon Herskovitz MARIKANA

Newspaper headlines screamed Bloodbath, Killing Field and Mine Slaughter, with graphic photographs of heavily armed white and black police officers walking casually past the bloodied corpses of black men lying in the dust. The images rekindled memories of South Africa's racist past.

Police chief Riah Phiyega confirmed 34 were dead and 78 injured after officers moved in on Thursday against 3000 striking drill operators armed with machetes and sticks on a rocky outcrop at the mine, 60 miles north-west of Johannesburg.Ms Phiyega, a former banking executive who was appointed to lead the police force in June, said officers had acted in self-defence against charging, armed assailants at Lonmin's Marikana platinum plant."The police members had to employ force to protect themselves from the charging group," she told reporters, noting that two policemen had been hacked to death by a mob at the mine on Tuesday.However, the South African Institute of Race relations likened the incident to the 1960 Sharpeville township massacre near Johannesburg, when apartheid police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, killing more than 50. Lucy Holborn, the institute's research manager, said: "Obviously the issues that have led to this are not the same as the past, but the response and the outcome is very similar."President Jacob Zuma cut short a visit to a regional summit in neighbouring Mozambique to head to the mine. Mr Zuma, who faces an internal leadership election in his ruling African National Congress (ANC) in December, said he was "shocked and dismayed" at the violence, but made no comment on the police behaviour."We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence," he said.Despite promises of a better life for all of South Africa's people, the ANC has struggled to provide basic services to millions in poor black townships.Efforts to redress the inequalities of apartheid have had mixed results. The mining sector comes in for particular criticism from radical ANC factions as a bastion of "white monopoly capital".As dawn broke, hundreds of police patrolled the dusty plains around the Marikana mine, which was forced to shut down earlier this week because of a rumbling union turf war that has hit the platinum sector this year.Investigators combed the site, collecting spent cartridges and the bloodstained weapons of the dead miners. Six firearms were recovered, including a service revolver from one of the police officers killed earlier in the week.Prior to Thursday, 10 people had died in nearly a week of conflict between rival unions at what is Lonmin's flagship plant. The London-headquartered company has been forced to shut down all of its South African platinum operations, which account for 12% of global output.

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Mine massacre raises spectre of apartheid

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