Marikana report ‘critical of Phiyega’
NATIONAL police commissioner Riah Phiyega is expected to be a major casualty of the Marikana Commission.
Judge Ian Farlam this week handed his much-awaited report to President Jacob Zuma.
The Presidency is yet to make the report public. Insiders say Zuma will study it before deciding whether the entire contents, or only selected sections, should be released.
Presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj would say only that Zuma, who spent much of the week in Algeria, had received the report.
Three sources with intimate knowledge of the commission process say the report is highly critical of the police’s conduct during the August 2012 clash with striking mine workers in which 34 miners were killed and 70 injured.
They say it is particularly harsh about Phiyega’s performance during the commission’s hearings.
Zuma appointed the commission a week after the massacre took place, to investigate what happened on the day and in the days leading up to the shooting.
Ten people, including police officers, had been killed in separate incidents days before the Marikana tragedy.
Police arrested more than 250 strikers.
The commission was tasked with investigating the conduct of the police and the role played by various parties, including mining company Lonmin Platinum, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and the National Union of Mineworkers.
The miners had embarked on an unprotected strike demanding a salary of R12 500 and improved living conditions.
Most of the miners who participated in the strike were former NUM members who accused the ANC-aligned union of having sold them out.
A number of NUM leaders were killed, allegedly by the strikers, on the days leading up to August 16 2012.
The NUM met its lawyers this week to prepare a response to the report should it be critical of the union.
Dali Mpofu, a lawyer who represented some of the strikers and their families at the inquiry, said yesterday he had not yet seen the report.