It's on a need to know basis
Damning New Marikana
Footage Further Implicates Police in Massacre
onOctober 21, 2013
Damning new footage uncovered by the Marikana Support Committee’s Rehad
Desai is, according to the filmmaker activist, set to further implicate the
South African Police Service in the deaths of 34 miners at Lonmin’sMarikana
mine on August 16 last year.
On Monday during a screening of the new footage at the Bioscope
Independent Cinema in Johannesburg, Desai, who is making a film about last
year’s strike at Marikana, alleged the new evidence confirmed “police told lies
about their role in the killings at Marikana” and called on the National
Prosecuting Authority to charge them with murder.The month-long strike at
Marikana claimed at least 44 lives.
Desai said he had uncovered the material in the course of conducting
research for his film and that some of the new evidence had been “partially”
submitted to the Farlam Commission of Inquiry “as part of exhibit AAA”. He said
he had spent months scouring the footage.
The footage, previously unseen by the public, first shows miners peacefully
moving off the koppie towards the Wonderkop informal settlement in the presence
of police and army armoured vehicles. According to Desai, it appears as though
the leaders of the strike, including Mgcineni “Mambush” Noki, commonly known as
the Man in the Green Blanket, were the first to leave the koppie.
Others followed, moving slowly and in an apparently unthreatening
manner. Then, it seems, Nyalas and other armoured vehicles herded the miners
away from the direction of the informal settlement and towards a phalanx of
Tactical Response Team policemen.
The footage previously made public is from these policemen’s view.
Vitally, from this new camera angle, one can see police firing what appears to
be birdshot from between the Nyalas at the corralled miners. Teargas also
appears to have been fired.
The footage shows that at this point the miners were still moving
slowly, crouching and attempting to avoid being hit. It is at this pivotal
moment that the volley of live ammunition commonly witnessed in footage so far
made public, can be heard.
Desai said: “The police have always insisted that officers spontaneously
used their firearms in the face of an alleged imminent attack by miners that
jeopardised police officers.” He told The Con this official line was
consistently advanced by the police’s senior counsel, Ishmael Semenya, at the
Farlam Commission, but that the new footage “put paid” to that argument and was
more suggestive of premeditated action on the part of the police.
Former state intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils, who was present at
the screening, said the footage made it “very clear” that the miners were
“terrified” after being shot at with “buckshot” and that “no one is drunk on
muthi or mad [as hypothesised by police and leaders from government and the
National Union of Mineworkers in statements after the massacre]. They are
walking in a very orderly way coming past the Nyalas when the police start
pumping buckshot at them.”
Desai also noted that the new footage shows “the police taking out their
pistols from their holsters well before the alleged attack and before the
miners arrived on the scene”. He also pointed out “that firearms can be heard
to be ‘cocked’ on four occasions, and on two of these occasions can be seen and
heard on the footage”. This, said Desai, was against the police’s standing
orders, which stated explicitly that guns should be drawn only in the case of
“imminent danger”.
Standing order 262 prohibits the use of live ammunition in events like
Marikana, its further stipulates that reasonable and minimum force can be used
but on the instruction of a commander. The standing order allows police to
either contain or disperse a crowd in such circumstances but does not give
detail on the measures allowed for dispersal.
“Before the miners reached the koppie where they were killed, they were
walking relatively slowly, not charging or attacking the police as alleged,”
observed Desai. “The miners were peacefully leaving the mountain at Marikana
shortly before they were attacked by police.”
According to Desai, this latest evidence adds to the mounting case
against the police’s actions on August 16 2012 and the bad faith with which
they have apparently approached the Farlam Commission. Last month, The Con
revealed that police allegedly tampered with video evidence by apparently
splicing together footage taken in the days preceding August 16 to create the
impression that miners had agreed to attack police.
Question marks also hang over the veracity of the police’s plan to deal
with the miners on August 16 last year. Experts are currently clarifying
whether the document had not been concocted weeks after the massacre.
Last week, the Farlam Commission heard evidence that police had ordered
four mortuary vehicles from the Phokeng mortuary before 8.30am on the morning
of August 16 – in apparent anticipation of the bloodletting that was to follow.
When questioning Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Scott who was responsible for
the police plan, the commission’s evidence leader Matthew Chaskalson SC noted
that police colonels had made the call because they “anticipated that there may
be people killed in the process of closing down the miners”.
The mortuary had only sent one van and Chaskalson had questioned Scott
on whether he knew what capacity the vehicles had and whether he knew the
officers who had ordered the vehicles. Scott answered the first question in the
negative but confirmed that he knew one of the two policemen mentioned.
Chaskalson will continue questioning Scott, who was instrumental in
drawing up the police’s plan used at Marikana, when the Commission reconvenes
on October 23. On behalf of the Marikana Support Campaign, Desai called on the
National Director of Public Prosecutions to withdraw charges laid against the
270 arrested and injured miners and, instead, to charge the police officers
present on August 16 with murder.
Main Picture: A screen grab from new footage released on October 21 that shows police
cocking guns in contravention of Standing Orders on crowd control, well before
the miners approach them. Filmmaker Rehad Desai has, who uncovered the new
footage, has alleged that the police action in this footage further implicate
them in the premeditated murder of 34v miners at Lonmin’sMarikana mine last
year and is contrary to the police version that they had killed in
self-defense.
