Cape Town - National police commissioner Riah Phiyega’s job is on the line after the Farlam Commission found that police top structures approved the operation in which 34 miners were shot dead at Marikana three years ago and deliberately sought to mislead the public into thinking the officers had acted purely in self-defence.
The commission of inquiry’s 646-page report, released by President Jacob Zuma on Thursday, ordered a probe regarding Phiyega’s fitness to hold office while clearing Cabinet ministers of responsibility for the worst loss of life in a single post-apartheid police operation.
It noted that after the August 16, 2012, shooting, an initial police report was sent to Zuma as he was in Mozambique, as well as to the minister of international relations. This report made it clear that 16 miners were shot on the hill in Marikana where police surrounded them, and 15 more as police pursued miners into a nearby field. Later, more succumbed to gunshot wounds suffered at both scenes, raising the death toll.
A nearly identical statement was read out by Phiyega at a media briefing, but with one “very material difference”. Whereas Zuma was informed that police also opened fire in the field, her statement “does not disclose this”.
“It creates the impression that there was only one shooting incident, which culminated in the police having to defend themselves with maximum force against a storming group of strikers who fired shots and wielded dangerous weapons.”
The commission said the deviation “resulted in a deliberate misleading of the public” and noted that under questioning Phiyega could not explain the discrepancy, but accepted authorship of what she had told the press.
The report made equally damning findings against North West provincial police commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo, also recommending a probe into her fitness for the job, and called on prosecuting authorities in that province to mull the possibility of criminal charges against police involved in the operation.
Summarising the report in a televised address, Zuma said police had jumped the gun and it was likely that waiting one more day, instead of storming the hill near Lonmin’s Marikana mine on the 16th, could have prevented the strikers’ deaths.
“The commission has found that it would have been impossible to disarm and disperse the strikers without significant bloodshed, on the afternoon of the 16th of August.
“The police should have waited until the following day, when the original encirclement plan, which was substantially risk-free, could have been implemented.”
The plan would have seen officers circle strikers with barbed wire, leaving them a small passage through which to file away from the site. However, this was only enforceable early in the morning when there few miners on the koppie. Instead, police followed instructions from the provincial command, that were approved at national level, to use force to disperse the miners late on the afternoon of the 16th. In the preceding week, 10 people had died during violence at the mine.
“The decision was instead taken by Lieutenant-General Mbombo, the North West police commissioner, and was endorsed by the SAPS leadership at an extraordinary session of the National Management Forum,” Zuma read from the report, which was handed to him at the end of March.
The commission found that the police operation should have been halted after the shooting at the koppie, and that there was “a complete lack of control and command” as police pursued miners. It accused the police of failing to get medical help for wounded miners fast enough, and said at least one might have survived had he been treated sooner.
In contrast to police top brass, Nathi Mthethwa, the police minister at the time, got away with a slap on the wrist. The commission commented that a speech by Mthethwa after the shooting in which he exhorted police to “continue ensuring that lives are saved”, was misplaced, as were similar remarks by Phiyega.
“It was, in the Commission’s view, a serious error of judgment on their part to go as far as they did in giving what would have been understood to be an unqualified endorsement of the police action.”
But, Zuma stressed, the commission found that “the executive played no role in the decision of the police to implement the tactical option on 16 August 2012”.
It also concluded that no responsibility for the fatalities could be laid at the door of Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was at the time a non-executive director at Lonmin and sent an email to the company’s chief commercial officer describing the strike as criminal and urging “concomitant action”.
Zuma said he had written to Phiyega to inform her of the probe the commission ordered against her. The commission faulted Lonmin on five counts, including an insistence that miners who were not on strike come to work while it could not guarantee their safety at the mine near Rustenburg.
The report criticised the National Union of Mineworkers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union for not exercising effective control over their members.
ANA