Cape Town — The commission which delved into the killings of striking miners on South Africa's platinum mining belt in 2012 has made a range of strongly critical findings against the police, extending up to the country's national police chief.
In a report which reads in parts like those of judicial inquiries into police massacres in the apartheid era, the commission criticised the return of the military-style policing which was abolished in the early years of South Africa's democracy.
After the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in 1994, the name of the police force was changed to the South African Police Service (SAPS) and military ranks for its officers were abolished. However, ranks were reintroduced during President Jacob Zuma's first term in office.
As is to be expected from a commission presided over by a long-time appellate judge - Justice Ian Farlam, who during apartheid acted for the defence in a number of political trials - the report is cautiously worded.
But underlying its recommendations that prosecutors should investigate charges against police for the killings of 34 miners, and that the National Commissioner of Police, Riah Phiyega, should face a formal hearing on her "fitness for office", are findings which are devastating to a police force which since 1994 has been trying to build a reputation as a non-partisan service working in the broader public interest.
The commission was particularly critical of the conduct and capabilities of the regional police chief, Lieutenant-General Zukiswa Mbombo, who retired suddenly last month, some weeks after the commission's report was handed to President Zuma.
The commission said Mbombo, the Provincial Commissioner of Police for the North-West Province, "took into account irrelevant political considerations" in handling the consequences of a violence-plagued strike at the Lonmin platinum mine at Marikana, north-west of Johannesburg.
Among these considerations: wanting to end the violence before opposition politicians could claim credit; protecting the image of the established union which is supportive of the ANC; and not wanting mining companies to be seen as supportive of a new, rival union.
Of General Phiyega, the commission said she was "complicit in engaging in discussions where political factors were inappropriately considered and discussed in relation to policing the situation at Marikana. This is inconsistent with our constitutional and statutory regime which requires that policing be conducted in an impartial and unbiased manner."
The commission noted that "the full extent" of Mbombo's operational experience as a police officer was carrying out crime prevention duties in 1980 and 1981 after training in Transkei in the Eastern Cape. Her subsequent career was in administrative and financial posts.
In a section of the report which adopted the conclusion of its evidence leaders, the commission found that Mbombo "has had no experience of ever commanding any Public Order Policing, whether as a unit commander, operational commander or overall commander. She has in fact never worked in Public Order Policing at all except for once when she was young, when she was a constable...
"It should be self-evident that the Provincial Commissioner did not have the training, the skills or the experience to enable her to make decisions as to what should be done in the complex and difficult situation at Marikana. She was simply unqualified to do so."
Despite this, Mbombo was the officer who took decisions that police should adopt and implement a "tactical option" which led to shootings on two hills where miners were gathered on the day of the killings, August 16, 2012. Her decisions were "inexplicable" and "reckless", the commission found.
"The National Commissioner (Phiyega) was, if anything, in an even worse position. She had been appointed to head the SAPS just a few months earlier, after receiving professional training in social work and having had a professional career focused largely on human resources and on the management of state enterprises.
"She had no policing expertise and experience whatsoever. The consequence of this situation is that the two senior officers in the decision-making line were entirely unqualified to make any decisions at all bearing on police operational matters."
Of the first confrontation between police and miners on August 16, the commission found that some police may have believed that they or their colleagues were under attack by the miners.
"Whether or not their apprehension was correct, there were grounds for such an apprehension. That, however, did not provide any justification for a fusillade of fire, by multiple members of the Tactical Response Team, using high-velocity weapons, some of which may have been on automatic.
"If shooting was necessary and justified, the justification was limited to identifying and dealing with particular members of the approaching group who posed a direct threat, and doing so in a manner which was aimed not at killing them, but at incapacitating them.
"Instead, what happened was a fusillade of uncoordinated shooting, some of the shots being fired at a time when it was impossible to see precisely what was happening and whether [there] was actually still a threat, and some of it plainly going well beyond the time when there was any conceivable threat of imminent harm or danger to life."
Of the second confrontation, the commission adopted its evidence leaders' conclusion that the conduct of the police "is typical of a military rather than a police response. 295 rounds of live ammunition were fired at the strikers... At the very most, 14 rounds of live ammunition were fired at the police ...
"Firing hundreds of rounds into the koppie (hill) is typical of a military action, aimed at overpowering and destroying an enemy. A policing operation would be limited to firing shots at particular members of the group on the koppie who posed an imminent threat to life.
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"With the exception of those few with whom there was an engagement at close quarters, the only strikers who could have been a threat of imminent danger to life would have been those who were shooting firearms, as they were all at some distance from the police.
"It is clear from the evidence that either none, or very few, of the strikers who were killed had been shooting at the police. The obvious question, then, is why they were shot. The explanation is that this was a paramilitary operation, with the aim of annihilating those who were perceived as the enemy."
In other sections of its report, the commission:
- Criticised police use of a 5.56 mm military assault rifle known as the R5, a variant of the Israeli Galil assault rifle, which was introduced during the final years of apartheid. It said R5 bullets disintegrated when entering victims' bodies, making it impossible for ballistic experts to connect a shooter with a victim.
- Said no medical treatment was given to wounded victims for nearly an hour after the first confrontation, and there was a "substantial delay" in providing attention after the second.
- Laid out evidence strongly suggesting that the leadership of the police withheld or destroyed evidence in an attempt to mislead the commission.
