SNAGS ON FIRST DAY OF PROBE
Parallel site inspection by Amcu and protests hinder process
THE INQUIRY into the shooting at Marikana hit snags on its first day yesterday as members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union ( Amcu) union held a parallel site inspection while retired judge Ian Farlam conducted his official crime scene visit.
At the same time, a group of protesters marched in Marikana to voice their objection to the legal process.
One of the protesters, Spiwe Mbatha, said the community had come out to make a statement to the commission appointed by President Jacob Zuma.
“Whatever happened here is now being twisted and fabricated… We do not have faith in whatever processes they are having there,” he said.
A group known as the Marikana Support Campaign sent its members to stage the protest yesterday.
A co-ordinator of the group, Chris Molebatsi, said many other protests would be held in the future.
At the parallel site visit, a miner showed Amcu leader Joseph Mathunjwa areas where striking mine workers were shot by police.
He pointed to an area surrounded by rocks where a body was found, and said the miner was shot from a helicopter.
Mathunjwa took photographs and asked questions.
Thirty-four miners were killed and 78 were wounded when police opened fire while trying to disperse a group of protesters near Lonmin’s platinum mine in Marikana in August.
Before the site inspection began, Judge Farlam turned down requests by the lawyer representing 20 families of those killed to postpone the matter for 14 days.
Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza said he wanted the postponement because families of the slain mineworkers lived in rural areas of the Eastern Cape and did not know the inquiry had started.
Ntsebeza’s application was supported by Dali Mpofu, representing the arrested and injured miners.
Farlam said he had been informed the Social Development Department was arranging to bring the families to Rustenburg.
He said they would be shown a video of the in loco inspection and, if needed, would be taken to the scene.
A crime scene expert has pointed out to the Farlam Commission where bullet casings, stun grenades and rubber bullets were found at the scene.
According to the expert, a number of R5 rifle and pistol cartridges were found in areas surrounding the koppie, where police were believed to have been standing at the time of the shooting.
In another area, pistol cartridges and rubber bullets were found.
The expert, whose name could not be immediately established, also pointed out where bodies were found.
He showed commissioners a place where seven bodies were found, and said another five were found next to a kraal.
Farlam asked the expert to show the commission where the barbed wire was situated.
The commission was taken a few hundred metres to where a single body was found. The expert said the body, number 16, was found “in the road”.
Stun grenades, and cartridges of various calibres were also found next to the body, he said.
Three shotgun cartridges were found in another area. – Sapa