Johannesburg - Expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema will accompany Lonmin mineworkers to lay charges against the police on Tuesday.
“President Julius Malema will accompany leaders of the Lonmin mineworkers to Marikana Police Station (at 7am) to go open a police case of murder against all the policemen and women who killed the 34 mineworkers in Marikana,” former ANCYL spokesman Floyd Shivambu said in statement.
President Jacob Zuma has ordered a judicial commission of inquiry into the deaths of 34 mine workers died and injury of 78 when police opened fire on them on a hilltop near Lonmin's Marikana mine, in North West.
Another 10 people, including two policemen and two security guards, were killed in violence at the mine in the week before the shooting.
Shivambu said the inquiry did not guarantee that justice would be served.
“We know that the commission of inquiry does not exonerate those who killed people from the fact that they killed people,” said Shivambu.
“On many occasions, police officers have been arrested for murder, like was the situation in the case of Andries Tatane, and it will be the responsibility and burden of the police to prove that what they did does not amount to a criminal offence.”
Police arrested 260 mine workers for public violence after the shooting. They were denied bail by the Ga-Rankuwa Magistrate's Court on Monday.
Malema lambasted Zuma in an address to the Marikana community on Saturday.
He told them that if they were asked who the country's president was, they should say they did not have a president: “I don’t have a president. Zuma is not a president.”
He called for Zuma's resignation and that of Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, accusing them of failing the miners.
The protests were believed to be linked to rivalry between the National Union of Mineworkers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union over recognition agreements at the mine. Workers also wanted higher pay. - Sapa