Anger over ‘arbitrary deadline’
THE July 31 deadline set by President Jacob Zuma for the Farlam commission to conclude its inquiry into the Marikana mine massacre has reduced its proceedings to the equivalent of legal speed dating.
With cross-examination constrained to, in some instances, 30 minutes, there is concern among the families of the dead miners and the miners arrested and allegedly tortured that time allocations are insufficient.
This week, lawyers bartered minutes with each other in an attempt to squeeze in questions as lines of interrogation were cut short by commission chairman retired Judge Ian Farlam.
The counsel for the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), Anthony Gotz, gave 15 minutes of his allocated time to the South African Human Rights Commission’s advocate Michelle le Roux, who had applied for twoand-a-half hours’ cross-examination but was allocated an hour.
Gotz was unable to explore three areas of cross-examination that he had intended to cover with Captain Paul Loest, who commanded the tactical response team line at scene one where 17 miners were shot on August 16 2012.
Le Roux complained to Farlam that she had “filleted [her] crossexamination considerably”.
One lawyer told a Sunday Times reporter that, considering the time allocated to previous witnesses, the commission was in danger of degenerating into a “farce”.
Loest was cross-examined for just more than a day and a half this week, which “undermines the credibility of the commission process”, said the South African Human Rights Commission.
The Marikana Support Campaign, which has called on Zuma to reconsider the “arbitrary deadline”, said that whereas the “main perpetrators of the killings” were being rushed through cross-examination, the commission had spent “a prolonged and tiresome 10 days”— six of them by police counsel — cross-examining Mzoxolo Magidiwana, a miner shot nine times on August 16.
It added that Amcu president Joseph Mathunjwa was questioned for seven days about the “hours he spent trying to mediate the dispute”.
The South African Human Rights Commission has lodged a complaint with Zuma about the “sudden rush to complete oral evidence” and also asked him to extend the deadline.
According to one lawyer, there are indications that the commission has “recognised the problem”, but it is understood that legal action could be pursued if it continues its work in this manner.