"African lives cheap as ever," read a headline in the Sowetan newspaper.
Bloody Marikana: What the media didn't tell you.
Earlier today, SNI members set off to Marikana, the crime scene at which several black workers were shot and killed last week. Getting into the town is not an easy feat. There are at least four road blocks before you can gain access into it and at each stop SNI is stopped and interrogated by the police: Why are we there, why did we choose this particular time to visit, who is our leader? These are sensitive times, we're told and therefore every measure must be taken.
The purpose of the interrogation is clear: to intimidate anyone who may be there to fan the fires. The town itself is ghostly quiet. The locals confirm the obvious to us: since the killings, everyone is scared to come out or talk: it's a police state. We pass through a residential area no different to any other squatter camp, only thing is this black dump is next to the South Africa's biggest platinum mine and feeds it with cheap black labour.
At the rock formation at which mineworkers camped peacefully for a week, a lone man stands a few metres from us as if he's eavesdropping. We call out to him and from a distance says he'll speak to us only talk if we promise not take pictures or video footage of him. We assure him that we are from a movement that is stands with the black workers of Lonmin and will therefore not compromise his security in any way.
We are lucky to find him. He was there the day workers were murdered. It's not hard to see that the trauma is taking its toll on him. He offers to give us a tour of the murder scene and warns us that there is blood everywhere and bits of bone. He has obviously made it through this route. He knows every corner. "People were crushed", he keeps repeating. When he realises that we don't quite understand what he means he explains that several workers were shot at and ran over by "inyalas". He tells us some of the dead could have survived had they not been crushed by these heavy duty police vehicles.
He then takes us to a range of rocks where several hundred more workers were stationed. There the surface is blue from whatever chemical was sprayed from a water bomb that attacked from above. The rocks, the plants and the grass is covered in in a deep blue colour. workers were spray bombed with this from helicopters above. Their eyes stung, couldn't breath and were effectively immobilised. Our guide confirms that the majority of those who are currently detained were actually from this group.
The water bomb clearly had traces of poison and one cannot help but think ok Woutter Basson's biological warfare operations during apartheid. SNI has obtained samples of the substance and will submit it for tests.
For the rest of the guided tour, our friend shows us how several people were shot while they were hiding between the rocks and under bushes. We see for ourselves splatters of blood that indicate the determination to dig workers out of their hiding holes and shoot them dead. All sorts of items of clothing and shoes, soiled with blood lie all around the scene.
What is clear from what we are told is that this was an ambush. The video material in mainstream media showing workers charging at the police was in fact workers running away from bullets being hurled from behind. Why would workers, armed with knobknorries charge at armed police? The workers were completely surrounded and what we've been seeing in the media is only half the story. There was clearly a mission to shoot to kill, thus the deployment of the army.
Throughout our conversation with the worker, he keeps digging into his pocket for a phone that is in tatters. He explains that it's his friend's phone who was crushed in the carnage. Its all he has left of his friend. He explains that he wants to get someone to check the phone and get his friend's information from it. There's an uncomfortable silence. He knows as well as we do that the phone cannot be revived, that his friend is not going to come back to life but none of us say it. What is there to say, really?
This report was brought to you by the SNI Operation Marikana crew.
Courtesy of Bandy Mkyze
South Africa Mine Shooting Leaves Many Dead....VIDEO
Africa Mine Shooting Leaves Many Dead
Police say 34 people were killed and 78 injured when they opened fire on striking miners in South Africa.
Apartheid Did Not Die: South African Police Massacre Striking Miners..SOUTH AFRICA MINE MUST CLOSED DOWN..AFRICA RESOURCES FOR AFRICANS ..REVOLUTION IS NOW..ZUMA MUST GO..
Cubans, Angolans and Namibians, fought along with the ANC in Angola to rid the region of the apartheid SADF forces. The Cubans served in Angola between 1975-1989.Guerrilla Camp in Angola
SOUTH AFRICANS TIME FOR REAL REVOLUTION!
The Sharpeville Massacre of the ANC regime.
JOHANNESBURG — Police chief Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega says 48 miners died and another 104 were wounded when police opened fire on strikers in one of the worst police shootings in South Africa since apartheid.
Zuma the sellout South Africa president.Apartheid Did Not Die:
How diamonds, mining fuel Africa's conflicts
To hear Phiyega, the police commissioner, describe it, the police weighed all their options and made a decision to fence in the miners with barbed wire -- to compartmentalize them into more manageable groups. She defended police actions, saying it was a desperate last measure against protesters who were dangerous.
"The armed protesters moved toward the police," she said. "They were driven back with tear gas and rubber bullets. But when they fired, police used maximum force."
But journalists at the scene could not say whether the protesters fired first.
"We cannot say to you the police were provoked," Mngambi said.
Then, the police unleashed a barrage of gunfire. One witness said it went on for three minutes.
Men dropped to the ground. Some lay motionless; others were still moving. Blood spilled onto the parched earth.
The images spread fast on the news, on the Internet. Marikana was one of the bloodiest incidents since the end of apartheid in 1994.
South Africans were taken back to that time of mandated racial separation and horrific incidents of police brutality against black people. Some likened Marikana to Sharpeville, where in 1960, police fired on a crowd of black demonstrators, killing 69 people.
There was clear evidence, the South African Institute for Race Relations said, that policemen randomly shot into the crowd with rifles and handguns.
"There is also evidence of their continuing to shoot after a number of bodies can be seen dropping and others turning to run. This is reminiscent of the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.
"In our view," the institute said, "what happened at Lonmin is completely unacceptable. We hold no brief for the use of violence in labor or any other disputes. But even if the police were provoked or shot at during yesterday's incident, or were angry at the killing of two police officers in the days before, no disciplined and properly trained policeman would shoot into a crowd. Yesterday's incident was a disaster waiting to happen."
Marikana, said some, exposed deep-rooted problems that have been bubbling in South Africa.
"I think this us a sign of underlying structural issues which you have seen in South Africa for a long time," said Mark Rosenberg, an Africa analyst with the risk research firm Eurasia Group.
"There has been an increase in violent protests both by miners and also by citizens living in townships who are upset with the level and pace of service delivery," he said.
People are no longer willing to sit and wait around for the African National Congress to deliver.
"They are becoming more and more impatient and they're becoming more and more violent as a result," Rosenberg said.
The company's financial officer, Simon Scott, expressed condolences to the family and friends of the workers and police officers who died this week. He said the company would assist with funerals and grief counseling.
Scott said Lonmin has worked for years to achieve good labor relations and said the "illegal strike we've seen is so disappointing and damaging."
"If the industry continues to be damaged by illegal actions it is not just the economy which suffers, but all our employees, their families and dependents," Scott said about South Africa's vital mining sector. "We need our employees to come back to work and we need to get mining again."
But Friday at Marikana, all was quiet. The Lonmin mine remained shut.
On the dry, dusty surrounding streets, a heavy police presence remained. And women searched desperately for husbands, fathers and brothers who did not come home.
A 9-year-old boy said he was convinced he saw his father shot on television.
One of the miners, who did not want to be identified, told CNN that none of the mine workers fired at police. But regardless of whether their actions were legal or illegal, he said, none of this should have happened.
"They should not have died," he said. "All they want is a wage increase."
He said he thought South Africa was a democracy, a nation of free people. But it didn't feel that way this week at Marikana.
Cubans, Angolans and Namibians, fought along with the ANC in Angola to rid the region of the apartheid SADF forces. The Cubans served in Angola between 1975-1989.Guerrilla Camp in Angola
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