South Africa police say they killed 34 miners
Friday - 8/17/2012, 9:14am ET
By MICHELLE FAUL and JON GAMBRELL
Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - Frantic wives searched for missing loved ones, President Jacob Zuma rushed home from a regional summit and some miners vowed a fight to the death Friday as police finally announced the toll from the previous day's shooting by officers of striking platinum miners: 34 dead and 78 wounded.
Police Chief Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega said that Thursday was a dark day for South Africa and no time for pointing fingers, as people compared the shootings to apartheid-era state violence and political parties and labor unions demanded an investigation. Phiyega took over in June after two police commissioners were indicted for corruption and other charges. She already had her work cut out trying to reform a corrupt and scandal-ridden force.
Thursday's shootings are seen as a microcosm of the myriad problems facing South Africa 18 years after white racist rule ended, including growing inequality between a white minority joined by a small black elite while most blacks endure high unemployment and inadequate housing, health care and education.
Zuma's government has played down demands that South Africa's mines and farms be nationalized. His party's powerful youth wing argues that nationalization is the only way to redress the evils of the apartheid past. Zuma's office confirmed that he had left a regional summit in Mozambique and was on his way to the mine, 70 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.
The shootings "awaken us to the reality of the time bomb that has stopped ticking _ it has exploded," The Sowetan newspaper said in a front-page editorial Friday. "Africans area pitted against each other... They are fighting for a bigger slice of the mineral wealth of the country."
At hospitals in the area, people gathered, hoping to find missing family members among the wounded. At the scrubland scene of the killings, a woman carrying a baby on her back said she was looking for a missing miner.
"My husband left yesterday morning at 7 a.m. to come to the protest and he never came back," said Nobantu Mkhuze.
At least 10 other people were killed during the week-old strike, including two police officers battered to death by strikers and two mine security guards burned alive when strikers set their vehicle ablaze.
Makhosi Mbongane, a 32-year-old winch operator, said mine managers should have come to the striking workers rather than send police. Strikers were demanding monthly salary raises from $625 to $1,563. Mbongane vowed that he was not going back to work and would not allow anyone else to do so either.
"They can beat us, kill us and kick and trample on us with their feet, do whatever they want to do, we aren't going to go back to work," he told The Associated Press. "If they employ other people they won't be able to work either, we will stay here and kill them."
Shares in platinum miner Lonmin PLC fell as much as 8 percent Friday after it was revealed Friday that South African police officers killed more than 30 striking miners at the company's mine. Since violence broke out last weekend at the Marikana mine, shares have fallen by as much as 20 percent, wiping some 390 million pounds ($610 million) off the company's market value. The company, the world's third-largest platinum miner, has also been hit by Thursday's announcement that Chief Executive Ian Farmer is hospitalized with a serious illness.
On a chilly, sunlit Friday morning, police investigators and forensic experts watched by about 100 people combed the scene of the shooting, planting multicolored cones and numbered placards to mark evidence amid the dirt and bushes where the shooting took place. Police also searched the rocky outcropping where thousands of miners had gathered daily to strike.
The South Africa Police Service defended officers' actions, saying in a statement that they were "viciously attacked by the group, using a variety of weapons, including firearms. The police, in order to protect their own lives and in self-defense, were forced to engage the group with force."
Shocked South Africans watched replay after replay of video of the shooting that erupted Thursday afternoon after police used water cannon, and then stun grenades and tear gas in an effort to disperse the strikers and get them to hand over their home-made machetes, clubs and home-made spears. Some miners did leave, though others carrying weapons began war chants and marched toward the township near the mine.
Suddenly, a group of miners rushed through the underbrush and haze of tear gas at a line of police officers. Officers immediately opened fire, with miners falling to the ground. Dozens of shots were fired by police armed with automatic rifles and pistols.
