Pretoria - Suspended national police commissioner General Riah Phiyega doctored statements to keep the media and the public in the dark about the true nature of events that unfolded during the Marikana massacre.
Former brigadier and SAPS media relations officer Lindela Mashigo told the Claassen Board of Inquiry on Thursday of alterations to the media statement of August 17, 2012.
The board is investigating the fitness of the national police commissioner to hold office as recommended by the Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the tragedy.
The terms of reference of the Claassen inqury include investigating whether Phiyega, acting with others in the South African Police Service leadership structures, misled the Farlam Commission by hiding the fact that they had authorised the “tactical option” during a management meeting on the day before the killings.
The Claassen inquiry is also investigating whether Phiyega, while taking the decision to go the tactical route, could have foreseen the “tragic and catastrophic consequences which ensued”.
During cross-examination by evidence leader advocate Ismail Jamie SC, Mashigo was asked to describe the changes dictated to him by Phiyega pertaining to the media statement.
Mashigo, now media relations director for the City of Tshwane, made the damning allegation while giving his testimony.
Mashigo said he arrived at Marikana and was tasked with altering an internal briefing document which was later submitted during the Farlam Commission hearings as exhibit FFF4.
The statement distributed to the media was submitted as FFF5. “The changes came about when we were putting together a statement and they were dictated to me by the national commissioner,” Mashigo said.
“I copied the document titled FFF4 and pasted it on the page that contained the police logo because it was going to be a statement. The first change that was dictated was not to differentiate between Scene 1 and Scene 2.”
He was referring to the two scenes where the 34 miners were gunned down by the police.
The changes about the two scenes were to be used during the briefing and served to keep the media in the dark about the true nature of events, and to present it as a single incident in which the miners were killed.
Mashigo said Phiyega dictated these changes during a briefing which took place at a Lonmin building.
“As you will see in the media statement, there was no Scene 1 and Scene 2,” he testified.
“The second change that I had to effect was the ‘systematical withdrawal of the police’. That too was dictated to me by the national commissioner,” said Mashigo.
Jamie read an extract from the final police statement which specified that police officers retreated systematically and were forced to utilise maximum force to defend themselves.
Responding to Jamie’s request to clarify how the statement was included, Mashigo said that was the line he was referring to.
“Besides not mentioning or differentiating between the two scenes, that is a line that was dictated to me by the national commissioner when we were compiling that media statement,” said the former SAPS spokesman.
Mashigo also confirmed that another line that was suggested to him by the suspended commissioner entailed the advancing of a “militant group” approaching the police.